Two months ahead of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, US broadcaster Fox Sports kicked-off its tournament marketing with a flagship promo focusing on the US Women’s National Team (USWNT) titled ‘Team USA v Everyone’.
With the USWNT seeking an unprecedented third consecutive title, the creative idea is that the American players know the rest of the world is out to get them: fans and players across the planet want them dethroned.
The promo asks the simple question: ‘What will it take to stop the US team?’
The anchor 90-second spot stars current players Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Rose Lavelle, Crystal Dunn and Naomi Girma and former player-turned-analyst Carli Lloyd in a cameo alongside Fox Sports hosts Rob Stone and Aly Wagner. Each player steps up to the rest of the world’s challenge: Lavelle knocks down a drone, Dunn breaks a simulation and Rapinoe beats a Terminator-like time travel plot to stop her from ever playing soccer.
The commercial debuted on air during Fox Sports’ 10 June coverage of The Belmont Stakes before also running during the same day’s MLB ‘Red Sox v Yankees’ and ‘Cubs v Giants’ broadcasts.
It also dropped online from 9 June across the media giant’s own social platforms.
The kick-off promo marks the start of a major Fox Sports marketing campaign around the tournament and is followed by individual promos featuring storylines with Dunn, Rapinoe and Morgan.
The promo was conceived and created in-house by Fox Sports Marketing where the team was led by Creative Director and Director Gary Van Dzura, Executive Producer Matt Van Buren and Director Of Photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw.
“Van Dzura worked very closely with our in-house creative team to execute it and produce it, but we didn’t do it with an agency. It was a bit of a roll of the dice to not do it with an agency,” admitted Fox Sports President Of Marketing Robert Gottlieb. “This is a worldwide event that should command your attention. There’s going to be a moment this summer when the world is going to focus on these athletes from all over the country, and at the red-hot centre of that is the US team.”
According to Gottlieb, Fox believes that there’s “passion and pride” around Team USA and the growth of women’s sports in general and Team USA in particular. As for the USWNT’s chances, Gottlieb believes it will be tough as the rest of the world has been catching up in the last four years.
“The rest of the world has really ramped up, and this is going to be a really special tournament. It’s going to be defining for a generation of athletes around the world” added Gottlieb. “At Fox Sports we made a very conscious decision that we saw this as a crown jewel event that maybe hadn’t received the commitment, resources and attention in the past that we envisioned it should have.”
Comment
No women’s team has ever won three consecutive world titles: a task that won’t be easy for the USWNT which took the bronze in the last Olympics.
Fox Sports, which began broadcasting the tournament in 2015, has the exclusive English-language rights to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup: a tournament held in Australia and New Zealand which begins on 20 July and culminates with the final on 20 August. The US media giant will show all 64 matches on Fox and FS1, while all matches stream live on the Fox Sports app.
The 2019 final averaged 16.9m viewers across Fox and Telemundo: 15.57m on Fox alone, while the 2015 final against Japan, which was broadcast during primetime, drew 24.5m average viewers.
“We look back to 2015 where we put a stake in the ground and said, ‘This is much bigger than what it’s been before, and it deserves a much bigger platform,” added Gottlieb.
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