Brazilian TV Network Band Boosts Viewer Ratings By Turning Soccer Fans into NBA Fans

In the country of soccer, Band is the only broadcast TV network with the rights to show NBA games. But instead of creating a rivalry with the national passion, the network decided to use that passion to its advantage. With an ingenious use of data, it developed the ‘Fans will be Fans’ strategy, aimed at turning soccer fans into NBA fans.

"We studied every NBA franchise in order to draw parallels with the soccer teams in Brazil, and then used those coincidences to reach the fans at an emotional level," says Denis Gavazzi, sports director at Band Network.

Created by FCB Brazil, in partnership with FCB/SIX, the data-driven targeting campaign let Brazilian soccer fans know that whatever was going on with their favourite team was also happening to a team in the NBA. And the agencies leveraged technology to do this: by extracting and analysing data from both sports, they were able to deliver contextual ads in real time. 

"We impacted fans individually with hyper-segmented ads related to the content they were consuming at that moment. We connected penalty conversion rates to free throw percentages, linked the league's top scorers to the season's point leaders, and found similarities even among long-distance shots, generating new ads at the end of each round," says Juliana Nascimento, managing director at FCB/SIX.