HSBC Canada
The Best League that Doesn’t Exist
The Brief
HSBC was looking to take the budget they put into their rugby sponsorship, and put that towards a different sport.
The Idea
Canada is the only FIFA top 10 ranked country without a pro women’s soccer league. Recent gold medalists, Canada’s women’s soccer players have nothing left to prove. Instead, we wanted to give fans a way to demonstrate their demand and excitement for a women’s soccer league by allowing Canadians to become fans of something that doesn’t exist yet.
Copywriter Kyle Carpenter
Creative Director Ari Elkouby
The Missing Crest
Creating a line of fan gear for a soccer team (including jerseys, scarves, and t-shirts) with one conspicuously missing piece: the team crest.
The missing crest becomes a visual shorthand for the core of the problem we’re spotlighting: even though Canada has the fans to support it in, the women’s pro teams that should be here are still missing. Instead of telling people what the problem is, we’re able to show them what the problem is, and make it part of everything we do.
Filling the Stadium
Fans will be able to choose and buy tickets online via a website that look and feels like a real site where you can select your own seats in a stadium.
Instead of a set price, each ticket will require a pay-what-you-can donation to support women’s soccer in Canada (e.g. a scholarship for university-level players, or a fund to help Canadian players pursue their careers abroad).
When we’ve filled a stadium of 30,000—based on Canada’s largest soccer stadium—we could either expand the seating or add in another stadium to release more tickets.
To spread awareness, we would generate custom e-tickets with the actual unique seat numbers for people to share online along with a link for others to “purchase” the free tickets to demonstrate demand.