Marketing Umph16 Jun 2020 12:38
Adidas recreated the canceled European Championship in the FIFA Playstation video game last month as a way to offset some of the inventory it lost from the live matches. Matches between 12 footballers and 12 celebrities were live-streamed across Adidas’ Facebook Live, IGTV and YouTube Live profiles in Turkey. Aside from all the players wearing Adidas-branded apparel in those broadcasts, its logo was also visible in the game thanks to it being a kit manufacturer and sponsor for many of the teams recreated in the game. In other words, Adidas turned the FIFA game into a straightforward sponsorship opportunity but found a way to amplify it across its main social networks.
So far the results have been encouraging for Adidas.
Live audiences for the virtual matches have so far been twice the size of those for Turkey’s top football league, according to Adidas. To date, the matches have generated around 1.2 million viewers who watch between 20 and 40 mins of a match. The popularity of the matches is also having a material effect on the business. Adidas shopping app downloads in Turkey have doubled since the beginning of the campaign that’s fuelled a 25% rise in daily revenue from the app, per Adidas.