FIFA’s #WorldCupAtHome digital campaign has won the Content Creation Award at the 2020 Leaders Sports Awards.
The #WorldCupAtHome campaign was created to engage with fans during the absence of football due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The campaign went for several months and focused on reliving past FIFA World Cup matches and moments.
Content was shared across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, GIPHY, FIFA.com, and playlists on Spotify – the digital content reached 300 million people in 126 countries.
The digital campaign also drew responses from current and former football stars, with Diego Maradona, Kylian Mbappé and Kristine Lilly joining the conversation around the #WorldCupAtHome campaign.
Leaders are a premium conference and content platform for leaders in international sports business. The Leaders Sports Awards were created in 2015 recognise to innovation within the sports business industry.
The 2020 awards focused on celebrating organisations that have been able to create relevant content during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When the scale of what was happening became clear, we had to quickly ask ourselves ‘what does the world need from FIFA right now?’,” FIFA’s Chief Commercial Officer Simon Thomas said about FIFA’s digital campaign.
“We have an incredibly rich archive, full of treasured football moments, and this campaign gave us a platform to experiment and innovate, as well as to support critical health messages and entertain our fans in this time of uncertainty.”
FIFA said that they wanted “to create an entertaining ‘replacement’ for live football and bring new digital life to great FIFA World Cup™ footage” and engage with their global fan base.
Throughout the campaign FIFA also reminded fans of the ‘stay at home’ public health message.
The campaign started in early March where FIFA offered fans the opportunity to vote on which games would be broadcast on YouTube. The winning matches were then premiered on the official FIFA YouTube channel and FIFA.com as full match replays.
The 50th anniversary of the 1970 World Cup held in Mexico and the 30th anniversary of the 1990 World Cup in Italy were also celebrated as part of the campaign.
