The U.S. Soccer Federation had a whopping promotional challenge ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup - get Americans rooting for its U.S. Men’s Team to win. For a nation in which professional soccer is still a relatively nascent sport, lighting a fire of national support and unity behind the team demanded promotional engagement that only could be achieved through stirring activations. In the lead-up to Brazil, U.S. Soccer held a Send-off Series of matches in major cities along with fan activation events that gave established and emerging fans a live, front-row preview of their team. In New York Times Square, a Fan Appreciation Day broadcast live on top sports television network ESPN put Americans and their team together one-on-one. During the World Cup, we held massive live viewing events at landmark locales Soldier Field and Grant Park in Chicago that inspired watch parties across the nation.

The U.S. is a big, four-time-zone country accustomed to cheering for local teams. Americans haven’t really known how to root for just one national team like the rest of the world. The 2014 FIFA World Cup was a game-changing opportunity to rally Americans around their team and look at soccer in a new nationalistic way … as Americans instead of New Yorkers, Chicagoans or Bostonians. Engaging Americans physically, via live promotional events, and virtually, through social and digital, could create a new national mindset to set soccer in the U.S. on a new course.

Live events were the promotional fuel for victory in U.S. Soccer’s game plan to excite and engage Americans.

103,483 attended the three-market Send-off Series and activations, and more than 75,000 attended U.S. Soccer-hosted outdoor viewing parties in Chicago alone, helping achieve front-page stories in 1,523 U.S. newspapers during the World Cup. U.S. Soccer social posts led to 14.2 million engagements, 264 million Twitter impressions and 2.7 billion Facebook impressions. Hashtags resulted in 3.1+ million tweets and 8.5 billion impressions, beating #WorldSeries and rivaling #SuperBowl.

A YouTube series - 23 Players - drew 609,168 unique views.

Engagement catapulted. The 2014 World Cup was the most-viewed soccer tournament ever in the U.S., outperforming the previous World Series (baseball) and pro-basketball finals as the U.S. advanced to the Round-of-16. Post-2014 World Cup and compared to the previous 2010 Cup, Nielsen reported major soccer match attendance nearly doubled.

“One Nation. One Team.” was an creative platform built to accomplish something that had not been done before – unite and rally Americans to look at soccer in a new nationalistic way … to get their heads and hearts into the game as Americans instead of New Yorkers, Chicagoans or Bostonians.

“This is the World Cup!” became the mantra, a figurative palms-in-the-air for people in every walk of U.S. life to get behind the team and our country on this world stage.

To promote this call-to-action among Americans, U.S. Soccer staged a series of competitive matches as a send-off for the team, then planned fan activations that coincided with these. The events sparked broad national attention and set the stage for even bigger watch events during the World Cups itself. They also helped ignite a rich social media response.