The campaign’s target audience was as broad as America itself, but especially focused on young (18-35) individuals who enjoy sports and have an interest and/or curiosity about pro-soccer as an emerging sport in the United States. U.S. Soccer saw the 2014 FIFA World Cup as an opportunity to heighten individual engagement through live events that would inspire and unite people around the team and sport and ignite a new spirit among Americans for their team as it faced daunting competition in Brazil. The events worked as a giant rally for fans and the U.S. Men’s team.

The U.S. Soccer Federation’s “One Nation. One Team.” set out to get Americans rooting for its U.S. Men’s Team to win at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. For a nation in which professional soccer is still a relatively nascent sport, lighting a fire of national support and unity behind the team and its Brazil games demanded engagement that only could be achieved through events and experiences that put fans in direct contact with their team and other fans. In the lead-up to Brazil, U.S. Soccer held a Send-off Series of matches in major cities along with fan activation events that gave established and emerging fans a live, front-row preview of their team. In New York Times Square, a Fan Appreciation Day broadcast live on top sports television network ESPN put Americans and their team together one-on-one. During the World Cup, we held massive live viewing events at landmark locales Soldier Field and Grant Park in Chicago that inspired watch parties across the nation.

“One Nation. One Team.” was an creative platform built to accomplish something that had not been done before – unite and rally Americans to look at soccer in a new nationalistic way … to get their heads and hearts into the game as Americans instead of New Yorkers, Chicagoans or Bostonians.

“This is the World Cup!” became the mantra, a figurative palms-in-the-air for every person in every walk of U.S. life to get behind the team and our country on this world stage.

To take this call-to-action directly to Americans, U.S. Soccer staged a series of competitive matches as a send-off for the team, then planned fan activations that coincided with these. The events sparked broad national attention and set the stage for even bigger watch events during the World Cups itself. They also helped ignite a rich social media response.

Live events were the fuel for victory in U.S. Soccer’s game plan to excite and engage Americans.

103,483 attended the three-market Send-off Series and activations, and more than 75,000 attended U.S. Soccer-hosted outdoor viewing parties in Chicago alone, helping achieve front-page stories in 1,523 U.S. newspapers during the World Cup. U.S. Soccer social posts led to 14.2 million engagements, 264 million Twitter impressions and 2.7 billion Facebook impressions. Hashtags resulted in 3.1+ million tweets and 8.5 billion impressions, beating #WorldSeries and rivaling #SuperBowl.

A YouTube series - 23 Players - drew 690,168 unique views.

Engagement catapulted. The 2014 World Cup was the most-viewed soccer tournament ever in the U.S., outperforming the previous World Series (baseball) and pro-basketball finals as the U.S. advanced to the Round-of-16. Post-2014 World Cup and compared to the previous 2010 Cup, Nielsen reported major soccer match attendance nearly doubled.

Americans have a thing about winning. They like it. They also like following their local or favorite teams and all the rivalries that are part of our home-grown sports. While soccer has been gaining here, reaching popularity on the scale of other nations has been deeply challenging. The 2014 FIFA World Cup was U.S. Soccer’s chance to reach new levels of engagement with Americans - to seize attention and show each person what soccer on a world stage is all about - a sweeping spirit of nationalism intrinsic to the sport.