Sport
Working with UEFA: Preparing for the Euros 2024
We were honoured to work on the world’s biggest sporting events, including the UEFA 2024 European Championships.
We’d previously brought our expertise to two Euros, the Women’s Euros, the UEFA Champions League, and various other UEFA competitions and events, including the qualifying and play-off campaigns for this year’s tournament. But in terms of scale, scope and exposure, the Euros 2024 was on another level.
With the eyes of the sporting world on the competition and UEFA, they needed to know that everything was executed perfectly.
We ensured it was by bringing our rigorous processes, meticulous preparation and passion for elevating the game.
The team talk – Understanding expectations
Our relationship with UEFA stretches back to the 2020 Euros, so the dialogue and understanding that’s critical to any project was already there.
They had a vision to create content that brought the tournament to the world; to create a truly global, accessible event with the help of multilingual teams all over the planet. We already knew their brand and content creation standards and guidelines inside-out and ensured that what we delivered enabled those teams to produce consistent content in their own regions.
Getting the tactics right – The importance of planning
Planning began almost a year out from the tournament. Weekly meetings soon became daily catch-ups as UEFA set out the timeline and milestones to hit. It was during this phase where the responsibilities were divided between their in-house team – who created the majority of the social content templates – and what would fall within our remit to deliver and support on. This included us creating graphics for pre-event campaigns and getting a head start creating content for the wider tournament.
A clear plan also helped us put our resources and team structure in place around the event. An organisation of UEFA’s size has numerous partners to consider and integrate with, and we were able to ensure their content requirements were factored in and met.
Playing to our strengths - Supporting UEFA’s full content game
UEFA saw the potential of Azzuu to not only handle their social content but to be pivotal to their complete digital strategy. They used it as a tool to design on-brand yet versatile templates that were easily adaptable for web, email, paid media, marketing, video and animation applications.
Alongside artworking and resizing the templates created by UEFA – then automating the creation of assets to ensure consistency, reduce time and remove the risk of human error while working at speed – much of our work was to create wider campaign assets, including in-stadia big screen graphics, ad campaign concepts and animations. This also included a raft of event communication graphics, such as no smoking and stadium parking signs, all produced at scale and in multiple languages.
Finalising our data gameplan – Data mapping and integrations
We know better than most the vital role that data plays in any project’s success. During the planning process we covered every possible event to identify the data types needed, such as player stats, match schedules and in-event live data for automated goal alerts. We asked UEFA what stats they might want to show at half and full-time, then ensured they were pre-loaded into the system in eight languages.
We then mapped the templates to the data sources in a way that was intuitive for everyone to use when generating assets. Completing this well in advance, and in constant dialogue with the UEFA team, we had the process ready and signed off early so they could familiarise themselves, their teams and partners with the system long before the first ball was kicked.
Our data mapping and integration work was underpinned by the aim of building as much automation into the system as possible. Take goal alerts as an example. When the data in the system triggered an event, an animated goal alert asset was generated in multiple languages and posted to the social platforms in around 20 seconds. Humans couldn’t do it any quicker. This was then pushed out to UEFA’s social channels and uploaded into their stories without anyone having to do a thing.
The warm-up and the kick-off – Ready for launch
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, the level of testing was intense. Having worked with UEFA previously, we had the luxury of using data from other competitions, such as the UEFA Champions League, which was as close to the real thing as it was possible to get. From triple checking that time zones were correct down to the formatting of how the scorer graphics were presented, every aspect was tested rigorously before being passed to the UEFA team for review, revision and sign off.
Then it was over to our dev team who ensured that the system capacity was where it needed to be to handle the huge surge in use, and that the data flowed as it should. With over 9,000 assets produced over the course of the competition — 5,229 automated and 3,872 regular assets — the demand on the system was intense.
You come to realise that you don’t just work on a project of this scale, you live and breathe it every minute of every day. The whole team was in constant contact through multiple chat groups, spotting and making tiny adjustments where needed and ready to jump on any small issue that popped up – until the final whistle and beyond.
The post-match interview – What we learned
This project has reaffirmed what we already knew. Sport means more when you’ve got skin in the game, and that’s what brings out the best in everyone.
One thing that’ll never get old is the buzz that comes with knowing billions of eyes around the world are on the content we’ve created, and that it’s helped make the experience unforgettable for supporters. We’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to play our part in bringing more of the beautiful game to more people worldwide.
Then there’s the inescapable fact that preparation is everything. UEFA share our obsession with striving to control the controllables wherever possible, but as much as you can plan for almost every eventuality, we all love the beautiful unpredictability of sport. With that in mind, always build a project team that’s as comfortable working proactively as it is being reactive - one that can take the unexpected in their stride.
And lastly, this project has shown that with a challenge this huge, social content is just one part of the game. Having a tool that generates digital content, repurposable for various applications, automates the process for timely delivery, and relays action in multiple languages simultaneously, is invaluable for a competition of the Euros' scale.
