eLaLiga Santander is the official competition in Spain for FIFA’s football videogame, bringing together La Liga and Electronic Arts, its developer. As our main audience is made up of Gen Z and millennials, our principal objective was to increase tournament participantion, growing community and improving Brand notoriety. With this action our goal was to bring the audience closer to clubs and players, interviewing some of the best eLaLiga competitors and giving a glimpse of what lies backstage at the tournament. eLaLiga was a success last season under the concept “What Can’t Be, Can Be”, in both reach and audience.

La Liga, its clubs, and eSports came together successfully in one unified proposition of value.

In the world of gaming, there is something representative and indispensable that defines a particular lifestyle: the gamers’ chairs. An authentic symbol of the 21st century. A second skin from which they chase their dreams. It’s probably the most comfortable place on the planet for a professional gamer.

That’s why, in order to communicate eLaLiga Santander’s gran finale, we created the most uncomfortable chairs on Earth. Three chairs as impossible as they are necessary, so that our finalists would step out of their usual environment, putting their minds (and backs) to the test. A chair-shaped reminder so they would not forget where they are, on the verge of the final moments of eLaLiga Santander, a situation where a simple moment of relaxation could be the end of a year’s worth of work.

We created a new type of content, entertainment never before seen in the world of eSports. We put a spin on the classic, well-worn format of interviews and transformed it into something irreverent and fresh. For the first time, gaming stars were seen from another point of view, more relatable, fun, modern. We put them to the test both physically and mentally, asking them questions no one ever had before, making them uncomfortable on purpose, and interviewing them in chairs that were similarly uncomfortable. The result was branded content, vibrant with responses that would never have been obtained otherwise.

Once the interviews were over, we edited them down into short pieces that were shared on the YouTube and Twitch profiles of each of the gamers, as well as on the official channels for both EA Sports and eLaLiga Santander.

These three impossible chairs were created by generating a branded content campaign where we interviewed the most important gamers in our country, and we submitted them to a very uncomfortable interview. The evolution of this action was plagued with numerous obstacles, starting with the budget of only 20K.

Moreover, the action itself was somewhat dangerous. Since the questions had not been decided beforehand, none of the interviewees had any idea what they would be asked, and there were various questions that exhausted some of the players’ nerves and patience. But this action also had two great allies: the support of Aitana Gago, a famous Spanish designer whose work has been exhibited in San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Milan. She was in charge of creating three very detailed torture chairs with one sole objective: remind the eLaLiga stars that only a maximum state of tension could ensure their victory in this championship.

Once the interviews were over, we edited them down and converted them in to short pieces that were shared on the YouTube and Twitch profiles of each of the gamers, as well as on the official channels for both EA Sports and eLaLiga.