As a main sponsor of UCL, Heineken wants to make the world of football more inclusive and give a fresh perspective on what makes a hardcore fan… truly hardcore.

We wanted to reach as many hardcore football fans as possible. And especially fans that are not always considered as being hardcore by society. And why? Because they are showing their passion in ways that perhaps we don’t expect.

They know all the lyrics to the chants, they go to the stadium every Sunday, they’re loud and hard to be around. Hardcore football fans, right? The truth is there are more hardcore fans out there that are crazy and obsessed. But not the kind of “crazy” we’d think of.

Through research and social media listening, we found real stories of fans that are quite surprising. And they all became part of a film that celebrated the ones that to Heineken are the true hardcore fans.

Being on a mission to make football more inclusive and free of stereotypes,this was the time to question ourselves what makes a hardcore football fan a true hardcore fan.Real data found through research and focus groups,but also real stories that we came across online and on social media pages built by fans,revealed there are so many hardcore fans that no one thinks of as hardcore,just because they are not as we portray them in our minds.Hardcore fans are indeed crazy, but the way they behave is sometimes completely unexpected.So we had to tell the stories of those who are usually left out when it comes to their extreme passion and craziness just because sometimes it’s not so loud,obvious or striking.There are more fans out there that can be considered true hardcore fans and we are saying cheers to them.

Not only is every character in the film inspired by real fans, but the stories ironically followed news and trends from the football world. That’s how an Asian girl fan became a character in the film, because so many Asians watch football in a different time zone. Another scene that got inspired by real news was the priest who names Inter’s players in the Mass and decides not to leave out Romelu Lukaku from his prayer, despite his transfer to Roma that upset his fans. As well as the anonymous Brazilian fan who left his entire estate to Neymar. The nuns who never miss a match and love to chant the Naples anthem are also mentioned in the film.

The campaign reached more than 650M people with coverage in top-tier outlets across 29 countries (in 7 out of 10 key markets).

Across all platforms, owned content generated more than 33K engagements and over 1.9M organic views with the Virgil Signing post (the post that announced him joining our campaign) accounting for 82% of the engagement and 35% of impressions.

With 1,7k mentions of Real Hardcore Fan since launch, 657M impressions and a 99% positive response to the campaign, our message reached fans across the globe helping to change the perception of what a hardcore fan is.