Golden Rice Bowl. “ We got noodles, fried rice, teriyaki chicken, orange chicken, and beef and broccoli. “ The best Burger King ever! The Navajo Code Talker exhibit is fantastic, and the cultural education exhibit is First Class. Jun 30, 2021 Turns out, the release of the Stevenage Challenge coincided with Burger King’s partnership with Uber Eats. Having the food delivered to them made the challenge even more compelling for some 10 million FIFA ‘20 players. Stevenage FC became the most used team in FIFA’s career mode.
Fast food brand sponsors a little-known football team to make them the biggest online club in the world
This story originally appeared on Contagious I/O, our online intelligence tool. To find out more click here.
As part of its sponsorship of 4th division UK football team Stevenage FC, Burger King launched a campaign that aimed to transform a relatively unknown team into one of the biggest online clubs in the world.
The brand partnered with David The Agency to launch the Stevenage Challenge, which invited players of the popular football game Fifa 20 to select Stevenage FC from the list of teams and complete a series of in-game challenges. Players could also bring in high profile, non-Stevenage players to play for the team, and every player appeared in Burger King’s branded jerseys.
Fans were encouraged to upload videos of their completed in-game challenges, such as scoring a goal from a free kick, a chip shot goal or putting one in the back of the net from past the half-way line, and share them with Burger King on Twitter to be in with a chance of winning prizes.
The global campaign launched across the USA, in China, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Spain. The brand offered rewards including free delivery, free Whopper meals and even the chance to win free Whoppers for a whole year.
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It’s in the game / The Fifa game franchise is the bestselling sports franchise of all time, with the game’s developer Electronic Arts (EA) revealing in September 2018 that across all Fifa titles, the company had sold more than 260 million units since it launched in 1993. The audience numbers are impressive too, with EA reporting that the 2018 version of the game saw gamers playing 7 billion football matches and scoring 17 billion goals, while the competitive global series of Fifa had 20 million players across 60 countries.
The Stevenage FC stadium will play a maximum of 52 games a season, which could either be home or away across the league. Its home ground, the Lamex Stadium, has a maximum capacity of 6,722 people, which is small when compared with England’s national team’s Wembley stadium, which has 90,000. Compared with the limited brand exposure at physical games, the digital Fifa 20 platform could put Burger King in front of the game’s audience all day, every day. Stevenage is at least three years away from being in the same league as the biggest clubs in the country, and it lacks the equivalent talent or investment to achieve promotion to the Premier League. Considering that Manchester United FC was paid £64 million ($82 million) by Chevrolet by way of shirt sponsorship this season, Burger King’s back door route into the same digital exposure is a thrifty move.
The underdogs / Sports marketing provides a fertile landscape for brands to find the stories of underdogs and thrust them into the limelight. In 2018, Burger King’s parent company Restaurant Brands International reported that the fast food chain achieved revenues of $1.6 billion. Despite its success, Burger King still positions itself as a challenger brand in the fast food market, consistently flinging jibes at market leader McDonald’s with activations like the McWhopper, The Wropper Detour and Scary Clown Night.
Burger King’s sponsorship of Stevenage FC is a partnership that complements the brand’s personality and comms, because it takes the opportunity to support a little guy who could do with a boost. At the time of publishing, Stevenage is currently in last place in League 2 of the English Football League, making them the most ‘underdog’ team in UK professional football.
In the 18/19 football League Two season, Stevenage finished the league at 10th place in the table. While league success for Stevenage FC may be looking unlikely, other brands have backed underdogs to considerable success. Recently Contagious covered the story of Bud Light backing the Super Bowl-winning NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, who at the start of the season had 50-1 odds of winning. You can read Contagious’s Insight & Strategy piece on the Philly Philly campaign here, which shows that there are big gains to be won from backing the little guy.
Want to create better, braver work? Join us at Most Contagious 2020 for two days of insightful and inspirational talks distilling the year's most vital advertising trends and campaigns. Click here for the line-up and tickets.
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Burger King's decision to become the front-of-shirt sponsor for League Two side Stevenage in 2018 has paid off after their bold plan to go virtually viral succeeded beyond all expectations.
Despite the club languishing at the bottom of the professional pyramid in England, Stevenage do make the cut in each edition of the video game FIFA.
That's where Burger King saw their chance for some unlikely exposure as they got their logo on Stevenage's jersey to ensure it also appeared in the EA Sports game.
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From there, they created The Stevenage Challenge that encouraged gamers to play with the club, sign big-name players and share any success on social media.
To date, it's safe to say the marketing ploy has worked a treat with over 25,000 goals scored by Stevenage posted online and the team quickly becoming the most used in FIFA's career mode.
The likes of Lionel Messi and Mohamed Salah have all also been signed by players taking part in The Stevenage Challenge, meaning Burger King have somehow ended up on the virtual shirts worn by football's biggest stars.
“You haven’t heard of Stevenage Football Club, right? Well, neither had we but we realised that even though they’re at the bottom of England’s fourth division, they were going to be appear in the same video game that all the expensive players were going to be in. And that’s when, almost two years ago, we decided to sponsor Stevenage,' a Burger King spokesperson said on a video posted on Twitter.
— Stevenage FC 🔴⚪ (@StevenageFC) September 23, 2020
'Because if we put our logo on their real shirt we would definitely have our logo in the game. Introducing The Stevenage Challenge.
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'Gamers around the world immediately started Stevenage. Signing the best players to our team and playing with them. For every goal they shared on Twitter we gave them rewards.
'The news took the gaming community by storm. Just like that our small team in real life turned into the biggest team online.”
According to Burger King, Stevenage's jerseys sold out for the first time in their history as a result of the ingenious marketing ploy.
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The club are lucky to still be in League Two after finishing 23rd out of 24 teams last season and only avoided relegation after Bury's expulsion from League One meant just bottom-side Macclesfield Town dropped down to the National League.
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Stevenage have begun the new season with one win and one draw from their first two league games and continue to have the Burger King logo on the front of their shirts.