LEINSTER RUGBY
A SEASON LIKE
NO OTHER
THE BRIEF
Leinster Rugby faced into a unique 2024/25 season, with their traditional home ground at the RDS moving temporarily to the Aviva Stadium. Like any club, season tickets are a core revenue driver for Leinster Rugby so it was key to develop a campaign to drive awareness, clearly communicate the new offering and optimise season ticket sales.
STRATEGY
As a result of the RDS regeneration, Leinster would be temporarily moving their home matches to the Aviva stadium. Through the lens of selling season tickets, this presented an opportunity but also a big challenge for Leinster.
Season ticket holders play a crucial role in any club’s financial well-being and Leinster Rugby is no different. The RDS brings a community feeling, whilst the Aviva Stadium was in the press at the time for poor atmosphere and there had been some ‘Aviva fatigue’ for Leinster fans. Numbers fell off somewhat as they marched through the knockout stages in the season gone by.
We worked together to develop a season ticket campaign that would achieve the following objectives:
Drive awareness of the Season Ticket and new home for the 2024/25 season
Create cut-through with new audiences, given the capacity of the Aviva
Deepen the connection with existing fanbase (focus on retention)
Clearly communicate a value proposition for the new season
Maximise season ticket sales
With this in mind, it was crucial to find the balance between building a wide reach and targeting specific audience profiles. When building a cohesive strategy and plan, it was firstly important to understand some of the key positive considerations of the Aviva as a new home for the upcoming season.
To do this, 53Six spoke with Leinster fans, both season ticket holders and non. Some of the themes that emerged were;
The Aviva is box office: big stadium, great facilities, bright lights of big games
Magical memories there from knockout fixtures over the years
It’s a much improved viewing experience compared to the old RDS
EXECUTION
Through an insight-led approach, the creative platform was developed: A Season Like No Other. This would be the anchor message to launch the campaign and roll-out across the 24/25 Leinster rugby season.
This platform was stress tested and the results were immediately positive. The concept used plain and clear language that fans would instantly understand. It simultaneously cut to the core about what was special about the unique upcoming season to build excitement.
The platform also gave great creative flexibility. To bring people into the experience, the hero imagery showcased Leinster playing in the Aviva under floodlights and was used as the lead creative of the campaign. This gave a feel of something unique, box office and big ticket.
To compliment the lead creative, production was carried out at the Leinster v Leicester Tigers game at the Aviva. This approach enabled the team to get rich footage around the Aviva Stadium for a video asset to connect with people in a more dynamic way.
A high-quality photographer was also employed on the day to get stills of these fans, which could be used in more tactical elements of the campaign. Each creative output needed to feel dynamic, authentic, and emotionally moving to encourage positive engagement, leading to an increase in season ticket sales.
RESULTS
The overall campaign and strategy has delivered a 25% increase on last season to date.. This represents a record number of season ticket holders for Leinster Rugby in any given season.
Renewals represent over 80% of the season tickets sold for next season thus far, which is a great achievement given the move to the Aviva stadium for the upcoming season. The strategy of maintaining our existing season ticket holders proved successful and first-time or returning season ticket holder numbers have also increased significantly.
Retargeting of specific segments (audiences) and behaviour (e.g. landed on Ticketmaster but did not purchase) meant the campaign used the media budget effectively and efficiently.
In terms of measurable media outcomes of paid media, the campaign delivered:
Return on investment of 10x versus the investment.
The family focused segments have driven the biggest return, driving 41% of conversions to date
The majority of conversions have come from the 45-54 age with females accounting for 45% of these conversions
Creative & messaging tailored to specific cohorts was the driving force for converting these audiences
Surpassed industry benchmarks across CPM , CPC (30c) and CTR (1.2%):
Our video assets delivered high quality impact with the below results:
Across all channels, there was a blended video completion rate of 23%, meaning that nearly a quarter of all those who watched the video completed it