A whole new ball game: Brand reflections from our creative director at the Champions League final in Istanbul

Written by Sam Swaffield, Creative Director

I was incredibly lucky to be a guest of Manchester City at last weekends’ Champions League final in Istanbul. As a football fan, and a professional creative, the whole experience was absolutely awe-inspiring, sometimes overwhelming, both sickly sweet and viscerally authentic, passionate, partisan and branded to the very brim. Here are my five takeaways from a creative point-of-view. 

RETHINK YOUR IDEA OF FAN EXPERIENCE 

Domestically, we look at football as a national treasure and as such festishise the heritage (and heresy) that surrounds it. Being at a global event like the Champions League final opens your eyes to a whole different vision. In England, anything that feels fake, insincere or appropriating of football culture is called out and does brand damage. When you have 400million viewers world-wide, each with a different view of fan culture, planners and creatives approach work with a far broader, sometimes alien looking vision of the game and its followers. Football is way bigger than a single, myopic viewpoint in London or Manchester, and the briefs are pointing more towards emerging markets abroad. Get ready for being the secondary audience! 

IT’S FOOTBALL, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

You can see how Premier League clubs consider their CX more and more these days. The music, the fireworks, the mascots...these are not new. What I found in Istanbul however was the football match was far closer to an entertainment event (a concert or a festival for example) than a sporting one. We work on the Sidemen’s more-viewed-than-the-Champions-League-final charity match and that is a raucous, high-intensity, sensory overloading Beatles-esque pop concert with a bit of ball kicking in-between. This game was the same. Rather than the big screens showing players and games before kick-off, we saw giant adverts for PepsiCo’s Lays crisps, Oppo phones from China and a particularly tedious JustEat spot. Then came the mini-music festival…think Super Bowl halftime show but with 20k Mancunians. Fire, fireworks, laser show…this was less a game of football and more an international entertainment event, and brands approached it accordingly. 

NO PLACE FOR SMALL FRY 

The Champions League final is a playground for the superbrands. Walking around the stadium, in the city, through the UEFA-sanctioned fan parks and on every single piece of event collateral there is no space for interlopers. We know from our work around significant calendar events that a brief from our solicitor accompanies the creative one, too. Copyright infringement is policed heavily to protect the incredible investment from brands, rumoured to be near the €100m mark, and even though there’s a small handful of marquee partners, they all look for something to own. For example, Mastercard’s sponsorship of the mascots was as big a deal in the stadium as it was in the accompanying social campaign that hugged the event. The idea of smaller, tactical deals for brands around the final is impossible, and the buy-in to play with the big boys is taking an interesting turn, too because of... 

CRYPTO

Decentralised crypto brokers loomed large over the event. The Champions League final offers a sort-of legitamisation for these faceless, nebulous companies. And so, while I say there was little room for outsiders, somehow I learned the name of about 10 new digital currency ventures. When I was a boy, people still threw actual coins at football games, now I’m dodging get-rich-quick schemes. The future of big event marketing will see fewer household names and more head-scratching, abstract ones. Brands will have to be smarter in how they attach themselves to these events. 

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY HAVE A HUGE ROLE TO PLAY

Sponsorship without tactics is a nice gig to have, sure. Getting your giant logo on giant screens is great, but a luxury few of us, or our clients, can afford. There was scant evidence of creativity in Istanbul. I could point to Volkswagen’s mini ball car at the World Cup and European Cups as a small tactic that pushed things forward and attracted loads of brand love. There was no space for such frivolities here. It was back in Manchester that I saw some great innovative, guerilla marketing in action. On their open top bus parade through a stormy Manchester city centre, one entrepreneur in the <checks notes> bespoke inflatable business decided to physically throw small blow-up player dolls right into the heart of the inebriated squad’s bus. The players took to the small dolls and used them as props to rally the crowd for the rest of the parade, bringing fame to the creator and opening up the opportunity for hundreds of player dolls going forwards. I fear that sort of behaviour may have landed me in a Turkish jail if the UEFA police had caught me doing that on Saturday, but back home in Manchester it was great to see some innovation, creativity and fun in the Champions League marketing mix. 

In summary, brands are finding it easier to simply attach their name to these events.

Connections with fans of any real depth are sometimes found through longevity (Heineken have been a principal sponsor since 1996, for example), with creativity and storytelling evidently falling by the wayside. The real story was unravelling on the pitch, luckily, but with broader, global briefs falling on agency desks, creatives and their teams will have to work much harder to remain centre of attention without coming up with some actual ideas.