Next 11

In 2018, Pepsi had been a sponsor of Gheorghe Hagi’s football academy for 6 years. While Romanians love football, they are disappointed with the current state of this sport in Romania. They mostly watch big competitions and pay little to no attention to the teams in the Junior League, although they are bringing in excellent results. Therefore, Under-18 football teams are left with a very small fanbase, made up mostly of their friends and family, and their matches are usually played in an empty arena. Our challenge was to build a fan community around U21 football in general and the players from the Hagi Academy in particular, by bringing football fans together and offering them a deeper understanding of the passion and skill a game at this level entails.

We created an interactive video experience by filming a football match between Academy players. Users could watch the match by switching between point-of-view angle footage of each player on the field. To prepare for this experience, we organized a 6 on 6 match between Next 11 players that had been preselected by the academy coaches. Each player had a video camera mounted on their head, to record video from a subjective angle. We then synchronized all footage and uploaded it to a custom programmed platform which allowed switching between cameras at any moment and seamlessly continuing the match, from a different vantage point. This way, users could view the match from an objective angle, like any ordinary broadcast, or go deeper by choosing to watch from the perspective of the players.