NEWS
How Burger King and Stevenage FC cooked up a winning combo
September 2020
Reading time: 2 minute(s).
With a potential worldwide audience of 4.7 billion people, it’s no surprise the biggest brands pay millions of pounds a year to appear on the kits of teams playing in the Premier League.
So, it was something of a surprise when fast-food giant Burger King opted to link up with Stevenage FC.
While many were left scratching their heads at the time, the move now looks like a work of marketing genius, all thanks to the popular EA Sports video game FIFA 20.
Burger King paid a reported £50,000 to have their branding on Stevenage’s home and away shirts for the 2019/20 season, a deal which has now been extended for the new campaign. However, it was access to the massive gaming audience where the fast-food brand saw the real value to the deal.
This collaboration wasn’t about Burger King aiming to increase sales of Bacon Double Cheeseburgers within the Stevenage area, the focus was to harness the popularity of the FIFA series.
While on the pitch, the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool are on a different level entirely to the likes of Stevenage, in the world of FIFA they can realistically be rivals.
Watch the campaign
So, by sponsoring a club unknown to many around the world, Burger King knew their branding would also feature in a video game series that has, to date, sold over 282 million copies worldwide and is played by millions on a regular basis.
The grand marketing strategy wasn’t finished there, though.
Burger King then launched a campaign across social media where fans were challenged to play as the fourth division side on FIFA, submitting clips of goals, skills or special moments from games in exchange for prizes.
Dubbed #TheStevenageChallenge, the campaign saw users receive a prize for scoring a goal with Stevenage and posting it on social media with the relevant hashtag.
Unsurprisingly, the move went down better than a Double Whopper among football fans all around the world, with thousands playing the game as Stevenage and gaining a new love for a club they’d never heard of a week ago. As well as more than 25,000 goals being shared online, Stevenage saw their shirt sales go through the roof as orders came in from across the globe.
So, if you ever find yourself on the subway in Tokyo or a beach in the Bahamas, look out for someone wearing a Stevenage FC kit.
