Hungary issued hostile laws against the local LGBTQIA+ during the 2021 UEFA European Championships, raising protests everywhere. These where fuelled even more by the cowardly decision by UEFA to prevent the lighting of The Allianz Arena in Munich in rainbow colours.

The Danish LGBTQIA+ organisation Copenhagen Pride exists to make sure everyone can be who they want to be, no matter gender and sexuality – also in the world of sports. That's why they felt the need to react when UEFA banned the rainbow flag.

To raise their flag, they wanted to build a digital protest tool that allows user to express themselves and apply pressure to UEFA.

The Proud Pitch by Copenhagen Pride is an idea that was created as a direct response to the 2021 UEFA European Championships taking place this summer. UEFA's decision to ban the rainbow flag on the Munich stadium caused a ton of reactions across news media of the world – and Copenhagen Pride saw an opportunity to respond with a digital activist tool. 48 hours later they succeeded with creating and Instagram filter that inspired people to take measurable action by sharing their support and take a stand against UEFA, through one of the biggest social media platforms in the world.

Denmark is one of the most progressive nations in the world for LGBTQ+ equality: Decriminalising homosexuality in 1933 and legalising same-sex partnerships 1989. So it's with pride that Copenhagen Pride has equality and human rights in their DNA.

But not all countries are fortunate to have such a progressive and open-minded history. Copenhagen Pride fights for a world where everyone in considered equal and when they saw injustice was happening in the world of football, they wanted to push their brand purpose outside of Danish borders and onto the global stage.

Using a technique called keying, we turned every football pitch during EURO ‘21 into a green screen – allowing viewers at home to digitally transform it into a pride flag.

All they had to do was to search for PROUD PITCH in the filter gallery on Instagram, record a live story from a football match, place the rainbow flag on the pitch - then share it with the world.

Using Spark AR, this hack utilized a complex live tracking technology to place the flag on every screen or green surface, regardless of texture and colour complexity.

In less than 48 hours after UEFA's banning of the rainbow flag we responded with the Proud Pitch filter – just in time for the next round of games. The filter can still be found on Instagram and use to raise a flag whenever injustice takes place in the world of soccer.

Launching when all eyes were on the biggest sporting event in the world resulted in a huge increase in traffic to the Copenhagen Pride website and interaction on social channels. Almost 40.000 stories were shared on Instagram, tagging UEFA, 1.3 million people were exposed to the campaign in news media, all for $0 media spend.

Stories were shared across all nordic nations, even reaching the UK and US. And quite fittingly, the gender split was almost equal - 50% male, 48% female and 2% undefined. Proving that no matter the score, or your sexuality, #LoveAlwaysWins.