Handball is a huge sport in Norway, but very few has the opportunity to actually travel to the European Championship in Croatia. That´s why we created the ”ROAR-O-MATIC”. A new and innovative way in using mixed media to support the team. On the newspaper VG.no people could write their chants, which was then sent directly to Norwegian supporters in Croatia, who cried them out loud LIVE during Norway`s matches.

While watching Norway`s games in the handball tournament on TV, people could make their own cheers, hymns, chants, roars and send them directly to VG´s own crowd of supporters that had "uniforms" and very good seats in the arena, almost always visible and audible in the TV-broadcast (Their placement and actions were pre approved with the company running the broadcast, and also the International Handball Association). As the leader of the crowd received a "roar" on a tailor made live interface, he would start conducting the performance of these roars live, so the TV-audience could see and hear, and of course the main objective was to make a substantial contribution to the overall atmosphere, that could actually effect the Norwegian team´s performance in the game.

The sound of the crowd cheering for their team is an important element in most sports, and it impacts the players performance. In Norway, the European championship in handball is a major event. Each game in Croatia had up to 1 million Norwegian viewers on TV (1/5 of the population). However, most people have to watch the game on TV in their home. We know people go bananas at home during the games, shouting, jumping in their couches, tweeting, swearing at the TV etc. So we wanted to channel some of the frenzy through pour platform, and directly into Norway's game, using the crowd as sort of an interactive human megaphone.

We created a service, the Roar-O-Matic, on VG´s own page where you could write your hymns, chants and roars. The Roar-O-Matic was launched right before the championship started. The page had a countdown to every match, and as soon as Norway`s next match started, you could start contributing. At the same time you pushed "send", the group of supporters would scream it out loud in the arena. The group of supporters at the arena aired everything LIVE on Snapchat, so you could see and hear your own chants in social media, as well as on the broadcast on Television. A selection of the chants we received, was used as advertising before Norway`s next match, inspiring even more people to join!

Among a target group of 700.000 people (between 15-25), we managed to drive more than 100.000 visits to the site, which generated thousands of roars. Since our own supporter group in the arena was uniformed, and very visible and audible during the TV-broadcast, we also reached a substantial part of the Norwegian population that weren´t in the core target group.