Situation: The U.S. Women’s National Team’s disappointing performance in the 2023 World Cup left the world questioning the strength of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). We needed to show the world not only that the NWSL is still must-watch soccer, but also that it offers something you can’t find in any other league: must-watch drama.

Brief: Show the world how the drama of the 2023 NWSL season makes it must-watch television for both soccer and TV drama fans.

Objective: Drive conversation around the 2023 NWSL Finals, inspiring new audiences to tune in to the season finale of TV’s hottest drama.

When current fans spoke about the NWSL, they highlighted their love for the league’s "chaos," "unpredictability," and how "you couldn't write this stuff!" These fans didn’t sound like they were describing their favorite sport – they sounded like they were describing their favorite TV drama. In this campaign, we treated the 2023 NWSL season as if it were a real TV drama by promoting the 2023 NWSL Finals as its must-watch season finale.

And because we felt the NWSL was the best drama on TV, we literally submitted the 2023 NWSL season to the Golden Globes “Television - Best Drama” category. We submitted the season for TV’s most prestigious award both because we believed the league deserved it, but also because doing so would give us the ability to play with the cadence, style of humor, and media channels that viewers would expect from a TV drama.

Nike recognized the overlap in how existing fans speak about the NWSL and how TV drama fans speak about their favorite dramas and wanted to inspire this new audience to watch the NWSL. Crossing genres and submitting the NWSL for a Golden Globe not only drove earned attention for the NWSL through the stunt itself, but it also unlocked an entire world of media partnerships unavailable to a traditional sports campaign. Via the high profile stunt, our media partners were able to leverage the moment to engage our audience in a way that felt authentic.

And because we played into the culture of TV drama and celebrity, we knew that our crossover wouldn’t be off putting to viewers – it would delight them. As one commenter would go on to put it “[This is] the crossover of the century.”

We kicked off our campaign with our stunt, partnering with the NWSL to submit the 2023 NWSL season for the Golden Globes Awards’ “Best Television Series – Drama'' category. To show Nike was serious about the submission, we placed a “For Your Consideration” billboard in West Hollywood, the strip where studios promote their TV shows. We partnered with celebrity gossip influencer @deuxmoi to “leak” our submission using our billboard as a catalyst to create chatter and intrigue. We tapped into PAPER Magazine to officially confirm the Golden Globe submission. Key media outlets exploded the campaign into a world of content spanning online news features (via The Gist), podcast segments (via Barstool Sports), and social gossip (via TikTok Creators).

The results were, unsurprisingly, dramatic. In the five days leading up to the NWSL Finals, our campaign generated 50M+ impressions and nearly 10M views across 70+ distinct custom content pieces through digital sport + culture partnerships.

Fans rushed to agree that the 2023 season was worthy of the “Best Drama” award. Even Megan Rapinoe joined in on the conversation and reposted the submission to her handle! The strategic seeding of our content through TV drama channels bursted into a groundswell of organic media coverage and dialogue about the NWSL, resulting in a 1,074% increase in conversation around the NWSL finals compared to the previous week. Year over year we saw a 40% increase in conversation, as well as a tripling of Google searches for the match. A truly dramatic result for the “Best Drama on TV Right Now.”