Kate Lynham, Hannah Neil, Zoe Diakaki, Xuhao Yuan

Meta: Rugby World Cup Experience 2023

‘The Superfans have taken centre stage throughout the development of this project, from a development, time, worry POV, but to see them shining as they do now, they’re right where they need to be.’

Kate Lynham, Creative Director, UNIT9

‘We gave rugby fans the chance to show support for their team in a series of Meta Spark effects. Each Superfan had a unique ability that fans could play with and share.’

Hannah Neil, Creative Director, UNIT9

The background

As the main sponsor of the Rugby World Cup 2023, Meta created a series of memorable digital experiences that deeply connected fans with their favourite teams. To continue the excitement in the lead up to the tournament, we took fan engagement from local activations to global digital experiences.

The execution

The Rugby World Cup Experience lets fans create short videos for Instagram Reels of themselves cheering, dancing, celebrating, and supporting their teams to win. The execution centered around the Superfans representing each of the participating nations in the Rugby World Cup.

Fans could share their team spirit with their country’s Superfan through a series of Meta Spark effects. At the start of the tournament, we released the first evolution of the Superfan, where fans could practice their rugby passes and take selfies with their favourite Superfan. Later in the tournament, the Superfans evolved and became more powerful. Fans could cheer to charge their Superfans’ superpowers in selfie camera mode, then flip to the rear camera to see the unique superpower released.

To wrap up the Rugby World Cup we also launched an experiential projection show across the Parisian skyline to celebrate fans’ favourite moments from the tournament.

Using a Hologauze canvas, we were able to project Meta’s rugby Superfans onto the Eiffel Tower, sliding down the iconic landmark to interact with fan messages gathered from Meta’s social platforms. The projection show was introduced by TF1 presenter Jeremy Angelier and streamed to the Paris Fan Village, as well as online on Facebook & Instagram before the final between South Africa and New Zealand.

In total, our team designed, animated, and delivered 20 3D Superfan characters. We also created 11 Meta Spark AR effects with both front and back camera user interaction. From using move.ai for motion capture to using Unity for creating 3D content, our team juggled a lot of tech at once.

The results

Launched in September and building on the excitement of previous pre-tournament activations, this one made the biggest splash yet on a global scale. This was another connected end-to-end experience, continuing the shared creative direction and art direction previously established, and demonstrating the effectiveness of personalised metaverse experiences.