Once the jewel in the crown of the dot-com era, eBay has, in recent years, struggled to compete with marketplace superpowers like Amazon. eBay's key point of difference from these competitors is that it was founded on being the people’s marketplace, driven by democratising commerce. They needed to showcase this ethos and reignite its cultural relevance in 2022. They needed something to put eBay back into conversations in pubs, and living rooms up and down the country.

Our brief was to demonstrate eBay’s democratic ethos in popular culture to strengthen its point of difference with competitors as a marketplace powered by real people. To target an overly-exclusive, overly-elitist moment in culture that could do with a bit of eBay, and democratise it.

Our objective was to refocus attention from the elitist, big-money world of modern football to the true heart of the sport - Sunday League.

Football has become elitist. As billionaires and oil barons flood the big leagues, small local teams are being pushed to the sidelines. eBay, the world's most democratic marketplace, believes in people having the power. During the ultra-expensive Transfer Window, we put unreachable legends, Roberto Carlos & Eni Aluko, within reach of humble Sunday League clubs. Listing them on eBay for anyone to bid on. Not for millions, but just £5. Reminding the world that football isn't all about money, but passion and community. For the first time ever, we brought Super League attention to Sunday League.

Every weekend, 2 million amateurs get up early, lace their boots, and play on the nation's worst pitches. Not for money, but a love of the game. Sunday League is, and always will be, the heart of British football. But the attention and wealth gap between Sunday League and the football elite is so great that the real people who make the game so beautiful no longer see a space for themselves in the sport. It is this target audience that we wanted to introduce to the key message that eBay is and always has been fundamentally democratic in its approach to the marketplace.

We used social media to meet fans where they follow and discuss football, capitalising on the legendary status of our talent to capture the imagination of football fans and jump on the wave of speculation that comes with the Transfer Window.

We tapped up World Cup legend Roberto Carlos, and Serie A superstar, Eni Aluko, to be transfer-listed on eBay for any Sunday League team to sign for just £5. Opening up the exclusive and elitist Transfer Window to teams at the heart of British football. Legendary Sky Sports pundit Chris Kamara also joined the bill to act as a familiar voice and bring even more big football drama to Sunday League.

We used our legends’ own social channels to meet fans where they follow and discuss football. From there, talent featured in coverage across TV, radio, print, digital, social and chats in pubs.

The work released throughout the January Transfer Window, hijacking the conversation in social media and PR. In March coverage of the legends' Sunday League debuts released via content films and was heavily covered in the press, reaching millions through major news and sports broadcasters.

eBay’s Dream Transfer secured 778 placements, including 20 TV features; 162 radio segments; 75 articles in national publications (including 7 of the major sports pages), 214 articles in regional titles and 302 pieces in sports and lifestyle titles. Between the launch, in early January and the matches in March, all major broadcasters including BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, Sky Sports and Channel 5 News reported on eBay’s Dream Transfer. News of the signings for each of the legendary footballers and their subsequent match days reached approximately 6.9 million viewers through TV outlets alone.

100% of all press coverage had positive or neutral sentiment and while the campaign was live eBay's sentiment on social increased by 50%.