How SPORTFIVE teamed up with EA SPORTS to kickstart a new era of gaming.
Discover the inside story behind the launch of one of the biggest rebranding projects ever.
In this Success Story:
Challenge
SPORTFIVE has supported EA SPORTS with the activation of their league, club and athlete rights for over two decades. In 2023, following EA SPORTS' departure from FIFA, SPORTFIVE's role became even more critical, supporting one of the largest rebranding projects ever: the launch of EA SPORTS FC 24.
SPORTFIVE were tasked with the delivery of partner rights across 12 European clubs, nine leagues and federations, as well as EA SPORTS’ roster of FC Ambassadors, featuring athletes such as Erling Haaland, Vinicius Junior, and Sam Kerr.
The objective was to manage and leverage the rights within EA SPORTS' extensive football partnership portfolio, in order to create and execute an activation plan that maximised channel engagement to drive mass awareness and ultimately leave a lasting and memorable first impression of EA SPORTS FC 24.
Solution
SPORTFIVE provided EA SPORTS with a dedicated International Account Management team that sat across four European countries.
The team supported in developing bespoke activation and rights delivery for each FC 24 partner that aligned to EA SPORTS’ global campaigns. This predominantly included the utilisation of player access time and the allocation of digital and promotional rights to create bespoke content on partner channels, ensuring that FC 24 had a strong presence across all EA SPORTS’ partner channels throughout the extensive launch period.
Once the activation plans were established, SPORTFIVE’s role was to provide support as a key point of call for all stakeholders, facilitating player access time, talent briefs, rights-holder approvals and content scheduling to deliver against EA SPORTS’ objectives.
As market leaders in perimeter advertising, SPORTFIVE also delivered an extensive LED package across Premier League, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 to drive mass awareness of FC 24 in both EA SPORTS' core and growth markets.
Outcome
EA SPORTS FC was unveiled to the world in April 2023, kickstarting an extensive pre-launch campaign for FC 24.
SPORTFIVE supported EA SPORTS in the delivery of a comprehensive and impactful activation plan across 21 global partners and FC 24 ambassadors. Activations on partner club channels saw over 800 social media posts published across more than 300 club and league channels, achieving record numbers of impressions, engagement and views.
Beyond social media, the Premier League, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 LED package elevated the campaign further to reach a global audience of 263 million delivering over £10 million in media value across EA SPORTS’ core and growth markets (Nielsen Sports).
FC 24 finally launched on 29 September 2023, attracting 11.3 million players in its first week
+0M
Impressions across partner club and ambassador channels (124% YoY increase)
+0M
Video views on partner club channels
+0M
Engagements across partner club and ambassador channels (87.5% YoY increase)
FC 24 Launch in numbers
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+ £10 M
Global media value delivered through LED brand awareness campaign (sum of 100% media equivalency) - [Nielsen Sports]
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+ 263 M
Global audience of LED brand awareness campaign - [Nielsen Sports]
