UEFA EURO 2016 was a global phenomenon. From 10 June to 10 July, 24 countries, 51 matches, 10 host cities, 2.4 million stadium spectators – the EURO had always been among the largest sporting events in the world, but never on this scale.
We would partner France in hosting this great festival of football. Unity, rivalry, authenticity, festivity, intensity, excellence and passion; core brand values that almost transcend sport. Passion, in particular, is what stood out at EURO 2016.
In addition to the traditional, physical Fanzones that would be in each host city across France, we wanted to engage with fans across the world by delivering a digital experience that would bring them closer to the tournament, regardless of their location.
Predicting the final outcome of a football match or tournament is something most fans do instinctively. The act of calling in advance the end result, or indeed match details such as the goal scorers, can be as much a personal challenge as one to play against friends or colleagues.
Our task was to improve on this tried and tested area of gaming, offering a new and exciting online gaming experience for EURO 2016.
Our main objectives were to:
- Recast prediction as a relevant and fun experience that fans would like to share with friends and colleagues
- Increase participation rates by 50% over previous editions of the same competition
- Deliver high exposure opportunity to the sponsor
Our strategy was to engage with fans well before the tournament started, to build an audience and keep their attention right the way through to the final in Paris. Our main areas of focus would be:
Before the tournament (when fans begin to think about the competition) -
- Tap into the popular offline activity of predicting the winner of a competition
- Develop a user experience that is fun, emotional and with strong social sharing options to make it viral
- Launch the game coinciding with the end of the club season
During the tournament (when fans are focused on live match action) -
- Develop a simple, easy-to-interact experience during a busy tournament calendar
- Offer the opportunity to play with family and friends
A promotion plan to ensure high visibility focusing heavily on social media and leveraging our access to famous ex-players
Our Bracket Predictor to pick the overall tournament winner built an early audience in the weeks before EURO 2016 kicked off. The daily Match Predictor proved hugely popular with its integrated delivery across browsers, mobile and social.
David Trezeguet, whose golden goal won the EURO 2000 final for France, was available for a daily challenge – and to offer suggestions. Fans could make informed decisions based on all the latest news, live data and Player Barometer guidance from the homepage and the individual team pages – we provided EURO 2016 fans with the most integrated and engaging predictor game available.
Before the tournament we revived the brackets concept and adapted it to fit the competition format. We launched the game in early May, little more than a month before the competition started, to coincide with fans shifting their focus towards UEFA EURO 2016.
The users had to go through a series of steps to finally predict their winner of the tournament. The experience was enhanced by a visual design that made each step not only easily manageable for the users but enjoyable, too.
The concept was developed with mobile devices in mind, and therefore many elements were designed to be easily operable by thumb. If they so wished, users could break their journey – perhaps to do further research – and continue it later.
At the end of the process, we offered gamers the chance to share a visually appealing asset with friends on leading social media sites. During the tournament users’ points tallies were updated as events unfolded.
This bite-size, match-day activation gave fans another engagement opportunity. Each match was packaged into a card and the number of events to predict were collapsed into a limited choice pattern. You could choose only to predict the expected final score for each match.
It was possible to predict any number of matches. We added a way for users to show their confidence in their predictions by putting a ‘joker’ to any of them.
For the knockout rounds when there were fewer matches, we added more events that users could predict to get bonus points.
They could not only share their predictions but also challenge friends and colleagues to see who fared the best. As an added attraction, we offered fans an opportunity to test their prediction skills with those of famous ex-players.
Both the Brackets and Match Predictors were a massive success, shattering all previous records of participation.
We had just under half a million entries for Brackets predictor. Over 670,000 fans participated separately for Match predictor, making over 8.5 million individual predictions. There were over half a million downloads of the dedicated mobile app for the game.
