The Spanish soccer league is one of the most important in the world, named for years as the League of the Stars. The broadcasting rights have historically been in the hands of Movistar+, but in 2002, the English sports streaming platform DAZN acquired the broadcasting rights for the first time, liberalizing a market that had been a monopoly until then. How to position DAZN in this market? How to gain visibility in the market by explaining your commitment to a sport that promotes human values? How to get subscribers without entering a price war? The objective of this action was to demonstrate that DAZN came to Spanish football not only to broadcast it, but to narrate it from a new perspective, a human one. And in 2022, the Spanish soccer league was facing a human problem, a historic problem of racism, against which no media was officially taking a stance.

The creative idea is as simple as having the courage to take a stand against racism, violence, and hatred in football, using the same techniques and medium used by the aggressor. The only change is two elements: replacing the word "hate" with "love" and the image of a hanging dummy with a real photo of players from both teams hugging. This conceptual simplicity achieved an impact and credibility towards DAZN's stance on violence in football, avoiding the usual plain vanilla messages and adopting a position from a paid sports medium that depends on fan subscriptions.

DAZN is a platform that targets sports enthusiasts. This action was aimed at fans and potential subscribers of the new football league package (mainly men between 28 and 40 years old). The goal was to gain relevance within this target audience with a discourse that would build brand values and help position the brand in the Spanish market. The strategy in this case was the choice of medium and context and the surgical planning to replicate the previous action by changing the minimal but key elements to shift the message's meaning (from hate to love).

The implementation of the action was carefully planned to amplify the impact. The banner was placed on the same bridge, located in front of the Real Madrid sports city, chosen for that reason by the hooligans in the previous banner, at the same time, to achieve similar lighting to the original photo and maintain secrecy but for a good cause. The actual installation of the banner was recorded and became the presentation video of the action, which was launched the next day, Friday, at 9 a.m. to start the conversation on the day before the Madrid derby (the racist banner was placed just a month before, coinciding with the previous Madrid derby).

Photo:

1.3 million impressions and 45,000 interactions on Twitter

300,000 people reached and 18,000 likes on Instagram

Video:

490,000 people reached and 19,200 likes on Instagram

PRESS IMPACT

115 media impacts

Cumulative potential reach of 931,963,000 monthly unique users

Impacts in 17 countries

BRAND KPI INCREASE IN THE QUARTER

+5% Spontaneous brand awareness

+2% Assisted brand awareness

+2% consideration

+4% top of mind awareness

+5% brand preference vs competitors

DAZN become the 10th most-watched streaming video service in Spain for the first time. Excluding social media services, DAZN is actually the fifth most-watched service in Spain, behind only the three leading SVOD services and Movistar’s TV Everywhere service (and marginally ahead of national broadcaster RTVE’s free-to-access streaming service). The achievement is particularly noteworthy considering that DAZN is pay-to-access and a sport-specialist platform, which naturally limits its breadth of appeal compared to services that offer wider entertainment content.