Lionel Messi finally winning his dream trophy, streets filled with rowdy Argentinians, and… Santa Claus? After 36 years without winning the World Cup, we were not ready to stop celebrating football and start celebrating Christmas. So, inspired by a popular meme on social media, we decided to give Argentinians something unique, something that we couldn’t have done in our 28 years of existence, and might take another 36 years more to pull again. We got Lionel Messi to lift the biggest cup of the world at precisely the moment everyone raises theirs in Argentina. And everyone welcomed us at their tables.

TyC sports is, arguably, the most Argentinian of brands. Year after year, we connect with people based on the one thing that Argentinians cherish above all things: football. While year after year we had to sit back and let Christmas be the center of attention, this year the World Cup gave us an opportunity to keep engaging with our fans. We synchronized the replay of the final match of the World Cup (the one Argentina won vs France) so that it started at 20:01:42 on Christmas Eve. Why? So that at precisely midnight, when everyone in Argentina raised their cups for the Christmas Toast (a timeless tradition), Lionel Messi did the same with THE cup, hoping that people would tune in to the channel and gather round the TV to toast. And it happened. We even became the most watched tv channel of the night, dethroning Cronica, a rival channel.

For tv channels in Argentina, Christmas night was always an uphill battle. People were either focused on their family reunions, or worse, tuning in to Crónica, a rival channel station. But on the year of a World Cup (and one that Argentinians won, for that matter), could the number one sports channel in all of the country hack its way into a set tradition? After all, if there’s one thing Argentinians value above all things it’s football.

Every year Argentinians raise their cups at midnight on Christmas to toast, but this year we had footage of the most famous Argentinian on the planet lifting THE cup. If we played our cards right, we could get Argentinians to welcome us to their tables. We could make Lionel Messi toast with a whole country. Or, more accurately, we could make a whole country toast with Messi.

As a sports channel, we had the rights to broadcast the replay of the Final match of the World Cup. Instead of doing it at any random moment, we chose to start it at 20:01:32. We let people know in advance with a post in social media a few days from the event, and then watched as it spread like wildfire. And at 20hrs, tens of thousands of argentinians tuned their tvs to TyC Sports, to watch the kick-off to, arguably, one of the greatest matches in World Cup history. We became part of a timeless tradition, the one of the Christmas toast, just by scheduling a match to begin at a specific time.

The world cup replay, and Messi raising the cup at 00.00.00 was trending topic number one…. yes, it was TYC sports on the first place, and Merry Christmas second, kind of funny but completely true.

People choose to watch a sport channel while maintaining a timeless tradition like the toast at midnight.

The replay made TYC sports, the most watched channel on Christmas night, and based on rating, more than 500.000 homes had the channel on while raising their cups for a toast. This has never happened before!