At the start of 2021, TikTok was growing rapidly, surpassing 100m European users. But as TikTok became a mainstay for teenagers, others increasingly saw it as “childish” and “not for people like me.”

Football and TikTok were operating in different worlds, which is exactly why UEFA Euro 2020 was the perfect cultural ally in tackling these perception problems. By becoming the first entertainment platform to sponsor a major football tournament, TikTok could reach and influence its detractors.

But if we were to change perceptions and create a football revolution on the platform, we needed an idea that would immediately deliver credibility. We needed to give TikTok a role in football that would genuinely offer fans something they’d never had before.

All designed to deliver:

- Increased consumption of football content on TikTok

- High awareness of Euro 2020 partnership

- A positive shift in association with football and brand likeability

TikTok’s success is borne from the communities who gather on the platform. Over a billion people use TikTok as a place to co-create, be themselves and have fun. Focusing on fans, instead of just leveraging the sponsorship IP, would allow TikTok to bring this strength to football.

This led to the creation of ‘Where Fans Play’: a campaign platform which promised to put fans back at the heart of football for Euro 2020, using their voices in advertising and activations.

‘Where Fans Play’ would offer fans what no-one else could. Any brand can access star players, sponsorship IP and polished actors, assuming you have the budget, but no other brand on the planet has access to the world’s fastest-growing creator community. This allowed TikTok to go beyond the cliched fandom of face paints and flags, everywhere in football sponsorship, and put real fans centre stage.

Legendary Scottish manager Jock Stein once said that “football without fans is nothing.” With stadiums closing during the pandemic, this sentiment gained ground in tandem with a cultural desire to put fans back at the heart of the game.

To make ‘Where Fans Play’ distinctive and culturally-relevant, this cultural desire was important. This meant boldly handing over creative control to football fans from TikTok’s community.

This approach would allow us to go where other tournament sponsors couldn’t. Rather than a sanitised, stock-photo version of fandom, propped up by paying football superstars, we would show real football fans in all their diverse, passionate and outright eccentric glory.

If ‘Where Fans Play’ was going to stick, we needed to make it true not just on the platform, but in our campaign executions too. Luckily we had over a billion collaborators ready to make it happen.

‘Where Fans Play’ was a bridge between TikTok’s community and European football fandom. So for TV, we used real fan content alongside iconic football moments, evoking nostalgia with a TikTok twist. Our OOH and short-form executions were put in the hands of over 94 individual creators.

And for all the content we couldn’t quite fit in advertising, we created the Euro 2020 Hub: an on-platform destination where fans could explore the mountains of football content available on TikTok. This included a performance from football fan Ed Sheeran gig, as we convinced him to play live on TikTok from the roof of his favourite club.

This Hub then helped us create the first ever official tournament fan awards for the best content. This content also fueled a refreshed TV ad for the Final as we proved just how united TikTok was with fans, something other sponsors could never achieve.

After the final whistle, it was clear that TikTok’s approach of prioritising the fun, positive and inclusive side of fandom had paid off.

With over 2000 pieces of news coverage, ‘Where Fans Play’ helped TikTok achieve the second highest awareness among Euro 2020 sponsors, despite the brand being completely new to football.

Producing over 100m+ visits to the Euro 2020 Hub, a 186% growth in football content consumption and hundreds of new football creators, we’d created a football revolution on TikTok.

This led to a 28% uplift in people associating TikTok with football and a 20% uplift in “brand love”, meaning the days of TikTok being seen as an app for dancing teenagers were over.

Since Euro 2020, ‘Where Fans Play’ has introduced TikTok in sports as varied as rugby, cricket and Formula 1, giving all fans a place to play.