The EE Wembley Cup 2018

Rip up the rulebook. Who says you can’t?

In 2018 the EE Wembley Cup was back, but not as everyone knew it. This year we took the traditional football rulebook & ripped it up, reimagining the game for a new generation of fans.

Elite athleticism, unapproachable players, TV style coverage, stuffy pundits, soulless studios, old rules and regulations were all out. Our football was built for YouTube; personality driven, rule breaking, designed for the small screen and starring an irreverent new breed of football entertainers.

Four of YouTube’s most talked about teams battled it over a six-part series for a star-studded live final held at Wembley Stadium.

Corporate sponsorship around football is challenging – frequently associated with the negatives of the modern game. A badging exercise wouldn’t be enough to nurture a meaningful relationship with younger fans (16-30 years old).

Enter EE’s Wembley Cup.

Now with three seasons of learnings under the belt, one thing stood out and defined our 2018 approach - social has transformed fan engagement with football.

With low attention as a result of an abundance of content, traditional long-form video and channel mixes wouldn’t cut-through – we needed to deliver an experience tailored to modern behaviour.

With the deepest understanding of this demographic, influencers presented a rich opportunity. Working in collaboration, we harvested insights from the audiences of YouTube's four most talked about teams, taking feedback and media consumption behaviour into account. This intelligence helped shape everything from the choice of teams and influencers to the show format, match rules and shooting style.

Hosted by Wembley Cup co-creator Spencer Owen, the series was structured around a classic tournament with some big twists.

Faster footy was in with 30-minute matches replacing the traditional 90, yellow cards were swapped for sin bins and penalty shoot outs were ditched for ‘Man Down Time’ where players were removed from the pitch every minute until a team scored.

Four teams: HashTag United, F2 FC, Rebel FC and XO FC played each other in a group stage. This was published via their social platforms alongside an abundance of extra content that they created off their own backs – all in a bid to stoke the rivalry and gain bragging rights. The winning team got first pick of four footballing legends in an all new Wembley Cup Draft. And everything ended with a live semi-final and final both played on the same day in front a live audience at Wembley

Influencers and fans wholeheartedly embraced 2018’s Wembley Cup.

Amassing a total 21.2million content views and 3.47million engagements the campaign captivated people around the country. Due to the collaborative nature of the tournament, our influencers went beyond their contractual obligations, with their rivalry spilling out across social media. This added a further 16m views to the 5m core campaign content and helped generated a massive 17,410 ticket sales for the live final, with a further 1.6million tuning in to stream via YouTube - a larger audience than any Premier League game that weekend.

This ensured delivery against campaign objectives, with a survey showing uplifts in consideration (18%), association with “a brand for people like me” (19%) and a whopping increase of 42% in people feeling more “positively” towards EE.

EE’s Wembley Cup 2018 showcased the power and potential of co-creation, whilst firmly establishing its culturally relevant credentials among our target demographic.