UEFA Champions League

Amplify + PlayStation bring gaming
 and football together in a fan-focused double header...

Challenge

For the past nine years, Amplify have been challenged by PlayStation Europe to design, produce and manage their UEFA Champions League Festival experience. Working alongside their partners (such as Konami, Nissan and Sony Mobile), the annual event forms part of PlayStation’s long-standing sponsorship rights with UEFA.

Insight + Strategy

Each year the festival is hosted in the previous year’s UEFA Champions League Winners’ city. Unlike other PlayStation events, the audiences who attend the PlayStation X UEFA installations aren’t diehard gamers. They’re more likely to be fans of the beautiful game, families and casual players, meaning that sampling can often be boosted by football-led incentives – like tickets to big matches and behind-the-scenes access to players.

Our strategy led us to create an immersive, engaging brand space that encourages visitors to sample PlayStation’s latest consumer offerings. Bring to life the PlayStation F.C. creative, embellished with an assortment of PlayStation’s latest PS4 gaming catalogue available to demo. Boost engagement by developing and managing a number of competitions, tournaments and other engagement mechanics through two avenues: physically at the festival, to engage stand visitors, and online to provide awareness about PlayStation’s UEFA sponsorship and allow non-attendees to be in with the chance of winning exciting PlayStation prizes.

Solution

PlayStation X UEFA Champions Festival

Putting PlayStation's casual fans into the foreground - helping to immerse them in the newest, sharpest offerings from the company.

Bringing PlayStation’s casual fans to the foreground

In 2015, Amplify worked with PlayStation and Nissan in Berlin to host a Gran Turismo time trial tournament, which was also the German-qualifier event for the Nissan GT Race Camp in Abu Dhabi. We also ran a social media competition to win a limited edition PlayStation 20th Anniversary Edition console, reaching over 9,600 RTs across the four-day festival, making it the biggest single tweet in PlayStation Europe history.

In 2016, we helped showcase the power of VR through a specialised tournament for fans. Visitors to the stand could try to beat the high score in the PSVR football-heading game, Headmaster. The prize tapped into millennials’ preference for instant gratification, with the winner receiving two tickets to the UEFA Champions League Final match held that very evening.