Last weekend’s Bundesliga game between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund (broadcast in 209 countries around the world) saw a unique usage of Snapchat that was a first for the top German soccer league.
A “Global Life Story” of the game was broadcast to all Snapchat users. Typically, Global Life Stories for soccer games cover one event in one physical location so all content added by Snapchat users is pulled from that location. This is done by geofencing all of the Snapchat content in one location. Global Life Stories are used often by Digital Marketers of teams and leagues to promote specific events and by Snapchat to pull all content from a specific location into one place. In this instance the location was Allianz Arena, Bayern Munich’s stadium. Snapchat content that was created in this location was included in the Bayern vs Dortmund Global Life Story along with a few interesting twists…
What the Bayern digital team did in working with Snapchat was to geofence 6 bars in the US (New York, Chicago, LA, DC & Atlanta) so fans there could add their snaps to the Bayern vs Dortmund Global Story as well and be part of the experience. This created a really unique mesh of fan snaps and videos from the US and from Allianz that really can’t be done on other platforms.
The Global Story created by fans from the six US bars and Allianz Arena was broadcast live for 24 hours to all Snapchat users around the world to view.
To promote the story further and encourage participation, FC Bayern made it part of their matchday experience at the stadium. The live story as well as the club’s own Snapchat account ‘fcbayernsnaps” was prominently displayed on the match screen and advertising boards before and during the game.
The idea of this whole operation was to extend the excitement and passion surrounding this game not only to those in Munich and at the stadium but also thousands of miles away for fans who can’t go to the stadium.
Here are some images from the Bayern Snapchat broadcast:
