Adidas & Dubai’s Onyx FC Create ‘The Female Field’: The World’s First Football Pitch To Have A Gender

To combat the fact that most girls in the Middle East grow up believing that sport isn’t for women and in the UAE most girls give up sports by the age of 14, Adidas teamed up with Onyx FC (the UAE’s first and only all-female owned and operated football team) and Havas Middle East to leverage the fact that many sporting words in Arabic are actually female gendered to turn the club’s home ground from an ‘it’ to a ‘she’ to transform it into a place where every girl or woman feels like she belongs.

Objective

The goal of this initiative was to activate the German sportswear giant’s new sponsorship of the club and bring to life and embody the team’s ethos: empowering girls to pursue their sports dreams and giving them the confidence to step onto the field.

In the Arab world, many young Arab girls from conventional families grow up believing that sports are not for them. This belief stems from the notion in traditional Middle Eastern society that sports are more suitable for boys and men. Sadly, this mindset has led to a startling statistic: an average of 73% of young Arab girls give up playing sports by the age of 14.

To challenge this status quo and raise awareness about the transformative impact of sports on women and girls,

Activation

Adidas teamed up with agency Havas Middle East and with Onyx FC (the UAE’s first and only owned and operated football team) to create the world’s first ‘Female Field’.

This innovative concept stems from a fundamental insight: in the Arabic language, most words associated with sports are female in gender.

For instance, words like ‘ball’, ‘run’, ‘kick’, ‘jump’, ‘goal’, ‘shoot’, ‘pass’, and even the word ‘sport’ are all feminine gender words due to the ending letter – called the ‘Ta’Marbuta’. This letter, written as a circle with two dots on top, imparts feminine gender to Arabic words.

So, drawing inspiration from this language gender feature, Adidas and Havas incorporated the ‘Ta’Marbuta’ into the design of a football pitch. Just as the letter gives gender to words, it also gave gender to the pitch – making it distinctly female.

Simply by adding two dots above the centre circle – traditionally found not just on football pitches but on sports fields of various types all around the world – adidas created a visible reminder that women belong in the world of sports just as much as men.

A digital-first campaign then promoted the initiative. It began with the release of a series of social media teasers highlighting the fact that sports-related words in Arabic all have a female gender.

These were followed by a spot showing the addition of the two dots to the Onyx FC home pitch – a film shot by the skipper of the team herself.

Finally, the marketers rolled out a series of content pieces shot at this new Female Field heroing various Onyx FC players and further reinforcing the message.

This helped generate conversations about the importance of supporting women in sports.

Outcome

With this small addition, Adidas started a movement that grew organically out of one single guerilla activation.

Soon enough, replica Female Fields began appearing across Dubai: not just on football fields, but also on basketball courts, beach football pitches and even an ice hockey rink.

Indeed, since the campaign launched 27 organic, unofficial Female Fields have been spotted in the UAE.

The campaign, which was won and was shortlisted for several awards including at Dubai Lynx and Cannes Lions, led to a 165% increase in team sign-ups and also generated 16,000 online searches for Onyx FC within one week of launch.