The Everyday Tactician campaign is relevant for Gaming Entertainment because it blurred the lines between gaming and sports to engage entertain fans. Xbox promoted launch of Football Manager 2024 with a first-of-its-kind activation, inviting gamers to apply for a job in a football club. Xbox challenged the expertise of football fans to drive engagement with the game. A documentary followed the hired tactician using game data and skills to advise the team, as Bromley FC achieved their best season ever. The campaign demonstrated the untapped power of the gaming community and the unmatched technical detail of the game.

In the UK, football is the most popular national sport. It has an almost religious following with fans constantly playing, discussing, arguing and dreaming about the game. Bromley FC are in the National League which is a highly competitive league but without the big budgets of the Premier League.

National League sides struggle to hire top talent as bigger, richer Premier League clubs hire the best. Top-tier football is currently being transformed by the increased use of data to win games, with teams of tacticians who use data to inform tactical decisions. But lower league teams are struggling to innovate.

Football Manager is an award-winning football simulation game series that started in 1982. It’s the world’s most advanced football simulator, using real world football data collected by over 2000 scouts across every football league. The game gives you an unprecedented suite of data that only top managers would have access to, helping gamers analyse everything from XG (expected goals) to historical data going back 20 years. In FM you play as a manager and control tactics rather than controlling the players actions directly as in FIFA.

Xbox champions the power of gaming under their current tagline ‘Power Your Dreams’ and in this case they were able to power gamers’ dreams to work in pro football and Bromley FC’s dream to challenge for promotion.

Football Manager 24 (FM24) launched in November 2023. The game is historically a PC game but console is now the fastest growing platform, so Xbox is in a race to establish themselves as the first choice for gamers, rather than their competitor PlayStation. Xbox is the brand which “Powers your dreams” so they wanted to empower gamers to unlock the full potential of their football dreams. Xbox Game Pass is Xbox’s subscription service – a ‘Netflix for games’ – that gives players access to hundreds of games for a monthly price. The brief was to make Football Manager fans see Xbox Game Pass as the best place to play. The objectives were to increase the number of Xbox players of FM24 compared to FM23 and to increase Xbox’s brand association with football.

Our campaign CTA was “Get a job as a tactician for Bromley FC just by playing Football Manager.” We chose to target the most dedicated fans of football and Football Manager with a campaign that would offer them a once in a lifetime chance to start a career in football. The campaign directly addressed gamers’ dreams of doing the things they do in game in real life and football fans’ dreams of getting to work in the sport they love. Our approach was to advertise it like any other job at Bromley FC, announcing it via Bromley X/Twitter, the Bromley website and LinkedIn, knowing that because of the innovative application process it would echo out to a larger audience.

For the launch of FM24 on Xbox Game Pass, Xbox showed the power of gaming. They partnered with Bromley Football Club to announce a job as a football tactician. The only way to apply was through FM24 on Xbox. Nathan Owolabi, a Football Manager fanatic and Wembley Stadium tour guide secured the job. Nathan’s journey from gaming chair to dugout was filmed in a documentary on TNT, the UK’s biggest sports channel. The documentary explored the similarities and differences between the real and virtual worlds as Nathan overcame his shyness and bonded with the team, some of whom initially doubted his gaming credentials. Nathan brought his skills and experience from the game to the team’s backroom working on data-based team selection, opponent analysis and tactics. His work helped the club secure their best league performance in their 130-year history, proving that a gamer can change the game of football.

In November 2023, to launch FM24 on Xbox GamePass, Bromley FC announced an open job role as a tactician, with applications exclusively through Xbox. Manager Andy Woodman told viewers “it could be you” in a viral press conference video on Bromley’s twitter viewed 2M times. Hundreds of commenters claimed “it’s my time” or tagged friends to apply. Rather than showing a CV, applicants had to gain the Xbox achievement “Championes” by winning a league and submit a 1-minute video telling Bromley FC’s manager why they deserved the job. Outlets spanning BBC Sport, Daily Mail, Hypebeast, The Athletic and foreign press covered it. We also ran targeted ads on social media and LinkedIn. After an intensive selection process Bromley interviewed three gamers and one was given the job. An in-depth documentary followed Nathan Owolabi’s journey, going behind the scenes of Bromley throughout the season as he helped them challenge for promotion.

- 190% increase in Xbox gamers on FM24 compared to FM23

- 1.5 billion total campaign impressions

- 1.2 million people saw the job advertisement

- FM24 Impressions increased by 416%

- It was the most played Football Manager game ever

- Bromley FC had their highest league position, highest points tally and fewest defeats

- Most successful season in Bromley FC’s 130-year history.

To prove the technical ability of FM24 and the gamers who play it, we had to find a football team who truly believed in the idea and would provide a real, full-time job role for the top applicant. To find the right partner we interviewed over 30 teams. The production process included consulting with employment lawyers, producing legal contracts and creating a job application process in-game using an Xbox achievement that still complied with UK employment law. Because only one candidate could get the role, we created a documentary which followed the gamer inside Bromley FC and showed the challenges and successes transitioning from the virtual world into the real world. The ambition of the project was to see if the gamer really could help the team. At the end of the season Bromley FC had their best result since 1892.