This summer, more people in the U.S. are watching soccer than before, but for many of them the language of the sport still remains unfamiliar territory. They know what fumble, fly ball or touchdown mean, but terms such as extra time, clean sheet or offside often need additional explanation.
That insight shaped the new campaign by Heineken, which translates soccer terms into the sports vocabulary American audiences already understand. The campaign was created by LePub NY and launched across digital OOH formats in selected host cities of the FIFA World Cup, including New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta.
The OOH part of the campaign includes digital spectaculars, street furniture formats near fan zones and stadiums, as well as liveboards in the New York subway. Instead of asking audiences to immediately adopt a new sports vocabulary, the campaign starts from what they already know. Strikers, clean sheet and offside are explained through references to American football, basketball and baseball, bringing soccer viewing closer to audiences who are only just entering the global fan culture.
The campaign is part of Heineken’s wider summer engagement around soccer in the U.S. In May, the brand introduced the Heineken Fan Volunteers project, which relies on unused Volunteer Time Off benefits in companies. The idea is simple: instead of fans hiding the fact that they are following matches during working hours or watching them on their work laptops at their desks, Heineken connects them with local volunteer opportunities that align with match times.
In this way, the campaign brings together fandom, paid time off for volunteering and work for the community. According to the campaign premise, more than half of American office workers admit they have lied to their employers or secretly streamed soccer matches during working hours, while almost half of summer matches are broadcast precisely during the time when people are at work.
The central part of the initiative is the Fan Volunteers platform, which helps fans find local volunteer organizations and non-profit groups connected with match times. The campaign is also accompanied by a humorous film in a corporate tone, distributed across Meta, TikTok and YouTube, in which fans are shown how to use a benefit that often remains unused.
In addition, Heineken introduced the Bar Finder tool, which directs fans to more than 400 bar experiences in markets such as NY/NJ, Miami, Dallas and Atlanta. In Boston, the brand also carried out the real-time Fan Rescue activation, delivering emergency beer supplies to Scotland fans after local bars ran out of stock.
The brand further expanded its soccer summer through a collaboration with HEINZ on a limited-edition six-pack combining five bottles of Heineken and one bottle of ketchup, under the idea “the match we’ve all been waiting for”. Special packaging is also coming to 12-packs, 24-packs and aluminum bottles, featuring a soccer pitch design and the “Official Beer of Soccer” mark.
All activities are connected to Heineken’s global platform “Fans Have More Friends”, which treats soccer not only as a sport, but as a reason for gathering, meeting people and sharing the fan experience.
