The most important football competitions in the world have global stars who are gay. The problem is that none of them dare come out (not one active elite footballer has come out in any professional league). This is due to the terrible consequences they will suffer is they dare to tell the world they are gay. In the case of Julio Zuñiga (the modern day footballer who stars in the film): he was murdered in 2007 after coming out. Homophobia is a very sensitive topic in all elite sports competitions, but unfortunately there isn’t much content to raise awareness about it: for many it’s still taboo and most sports organisations look the other way.

Homophobia has been a widespread problem in the world of football since its origins. In this context of hate and silence, a group of brands that make up the Heroes of today platform (LaLiga -the professional football league, the best football competition in the world-; Iberia; Bankia; EDP; Telepizza and Baviera) decided to reveal the intolerance that still exists in our society in an original way: creating cinematographic content set in the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York ( a period of brutal oppression against the LGBTI collective) but starring a modern day victim of homophobia: a footballer who was murdered in 2007 for coming out, who was digitally reconstructed to star in the film. A different and shocking way to show people that the homophobia of 1969 still exists in the sports world today. The surprise comes at the end of the film.

It’s estimated that there are around 120 homosexual footballers in every big professional league . However not one has dared come out. Due without any doubt to the terrible consequences they could suffer if they did so. Unfortunately it’s a taboo in the football world that almost nobody talks about (not the media, not the fans, not the players, nor the clubs). The Heroes of today platform created by a group of brands decided to raise awareness about this problem using a campaign format that would grab people’s attention (even those who wanted to look the other way).

The entertainment film is 5:01” long, and is set in the riots that took place in the Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969. In the film we see the violence and intolerance that homosexuals had to endure at that time. Our protagonist, one of the guys who is in the bar, suffers all kinds of intimidating harassment: he was beaten, insulted, abused and finally murdered by a shot to the head, just for being gay. The surprise comes at the end, when we discover that this crime didn’t happen in 1969, it actually happened in 2007: the protagonist is in reality a modern day homosexual footballer who was murdered after coming out and was digitally reconstructed to appear in the period film. A final surprising twist which shows that intolerance and homophobia are still a reality for elite athletes today.

The branded content obtained 226 million impacts, was acquired by entertainment platforms to be shown as cinematographic content, it was broadcast in its entirety as a news item on 5 of the 6 main national TV channels generating over 2,68 million Euros in earned media and shook up social media to the point that it generated a global debate about how it was possible that not one footballer has come out as gay and how we’ve had to wait so long for any organisation to do something about it.