Sports direct's latest marketing campaign

Team captains were announced with a TikTok video of the host ‘Face Timing’ the captains. The captains included; Luke Vernon (1.8M followers), Jack Joseph (3.1M followers), George Clarke (1.4M followers), Max Balegde (2M followers), Grace Barry ( 2.4M followers), Moyo (2.1M followers), Nifè (2.3M followers) and Becky (120K followers). This means that the combined following of the team captains alone was 15.2 million followers.

The event was hosted by Calfreezy who is a YouTuber, Content Creator and Podcast Host with a following of over 1.6 million on Instagram and 4 million on YouTube and just under 1 million on TikTok.

Sports Direct announced the festival with a video on their social platforms that gained 1.5 million views and over 3 thousand likes on TikTok alone. 

The event was streamed live on TikTok with additional content being shared on the company’s profile throughout the day. Content included videos of the sporting events as well as the content creators recreating viral trends. Even jumping on the ‘Binley Mega Chippy’ trend, Sports Direct had a food van named ‘Sports Direct Mega Chippy’ at the event in which they shared a video with TikTok stars George Clarke, Max Balegde and Joe Baggs in the van with the theme song playing. 

Although the most viewed video of the day on Sports Direct only received sixty thousand views, content put out on the influencer’s pages received hundreds of thousands with videos from Joe and George Baggs (former Gogglebox stars) gaining over 160k views.

The hashtag that Sports Direct has linked to the event has had over 8.5 million views, not bad for a one-day event. 

It is becoming more apparent that brands are starting to see the huge benefits of hosting these in-person events with TikTok stars and influencers. This event follows the huge success of the Jack Wills ‘TikTok Ibiza House’ campaign earlier this year. Sports Direct is the parent company of Jack Wills since they purchased the company in 2019 so it is likely if both of these campaigns have done well that we will be seeing more like them in the future.