adidas made an impact on world cricket’s biggest event, without being an official sponsor. During the live broadcasts of the 2015 Cricket World Cup, adidas gave a billion Indian fans a chance to feel a direct connection with the Indian cricket team. We asked fans to touch the ground where they play cricket and send their support to the Indian team with a photo using #SacredGround. During World Cup matches, the Indian team joined the Sacred Ground campaign by touching the ground during live broadcasts witnessed by millions.

adidas cricket was not an official sponsor of the 2015 Cricket World Cup. But we still wanted to gain an unfair share of the conversation in the world’s biggest cricket market- India.

In India, Cricket is not a sport, but a religion. With the World Cup happening in Australia, fans in India were looking for a way to feel closer to their team.

We knew we would have a far greater impact than any sponsor, if adidas could make all that support from home, felt on foreign soil.

With one simple gesture, adidas connected one team to one billion fans. During India’s World Cup matches, #SacredGround trended on Twitter, and the fans’ social involvement led to over 131 million social impressions. As the support grew, something amazing happened; players in the Indian team joined the Sacred Ground campaign by touching the ground during live broadcasts, witnessed by millions of viewers. This became a ritual they performed at every single match, including; India vs Bangladesh, 98 million viewers; India vs South Africa, 257 million viewers; India vs West Indies, 262 million viewers. And then, in the most watched sporting event in history, India vs Pakistan, Indian players made the Sacred Ground gesture in front of over one billion viewers. All this happened without any official World Cup sponsorship and without a single rupee spent on media.

The act of bending down and touching the ground is a gesture used at places of worship by millions of Indians every day. During the Cricket World Cup, we applied that gesture to India’s other religion- cricket. And used it to help fans send their support directly to the Indian team. adidas teamed up with India’s most popular cricketer, Virat Kohli, and asked fans to touch the ground where they play cricket, take a photo and show their support using #SacredGround. Our message struck a chord with Kohli’s massive social following. Along with fans, celebrities and sports stars joined in to send their support through #SacredGround. But then something amazing happened. Players in Indian team joined the Sacred Ground campaign, touching the ground during live broadcasts witnessed by millions. As Indian players made this exact same gesture at each game, the support grew bigger.