“We want to immerse the fans in the heart of the competition”, assures Laurent Solly, the vice-president of Southern Europe of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp). This Tuesday morning, the group presented in its premises in Paris its system to cover the 2023 Rugby World Cup, which will take place from September 8 to October 28 in France. The group is indeed the official supplier of the social networks of the competition. And he intends to mobilize the 50 million French people who use his applications each month to “gather around sport, whose competitions are also experienced on social platforms”, continues Laurent Solly.
Many Meta users would use the group’s social networks to communicate about upcoming matches. According to an Odoxa survey carried out for the company and unveiled that same day, 61% of French people intend to use Facebook to discuss the competition and 34% Instagram. For the 15-24 age group alone, 80% of respondents even plan to use Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to share their feelings about the competition. Interaction is at the heart of Meta’s strategy to promote the tournament. The group has established a partnership with thirty “influencer-ambassadors”, who communicate regularly on Instagram and Facebook, about the World Cup.
In this panel, we find French content creators such as Valouzz (1.7 million subscribers on Instagram), Dobbyelfe (788,000 subscribers on Instagram) or Camisandra_off (296,000 subscribers on Instagram). Their mission is to offer photos and videos, from today and throughout the competition, where they interact with the official virtual mascots designed by Meta for the event.
The mascots in question, called “Superfans”, bear the effigy of the symbols of the countries from which the twenty teams that compete come from. For example, that of France takes, unsurprisingly, the shape of a rooster, while that of Ireland looks like a clover.
They materialize in the form of avatars but also stickers and filters that supporters can use to illustrate their photos and videos when they watch a match alone or with friends and share moments of it on Meta’s social networks.
The aim is also to encourage fans to bring the mascots to life in the places where the competition is held. Thus, Meta will have its own space in the Rugby Village of Paris, installed place de la Concorde from September 8th. “On site, we will have photo and video booths to allow supporters to create their own content, live, with the superfan of their choice,” explains Katie Ilharreborde, marketing and consumer manager for Meta.
By collaborating with the TF1 channel and the media l’Équipe, Meta also intends to relay news about the Rugby World Cup. TF1, for example, will launch a special program called “Fan Zone”, broadcast live and exclusively on Facebook and Instagram. “It will be filmed at the Village Rugby and broadcast before each of the matches scheduled on the channel”, explains François Pellissier, general manager business and sports at the TF1 group. The first is scheduled for September 8, before the meeting between the France team and New Zealand.
The channel also plans to regularly publish Reels (or short videos) of the strongest actions of the tournament in a format called “The action of the day”. These videos, like other news about the competition, will be relayed by TF1 on an Instagram discussion channel, created especially for the Rugby World Cup and which 50,000 people have already joined since it opened last June.
For its part, the Team will also offer a short new thirty-minute program entitled “Tous en mélée”. Presented by sports journalist Anne-Sophie Benardi and moderated by consultants such as Hugo Bonneval and Kevin Gourdon, it will be broadcast on Meta’s social networks and the Team’s website, “every Monday and Thursday from September 7 at 2 p.m. ”, underlines the general manager of the media, Laurent Prud’homme. The show will offer decryptions and analyzes of the matches.
The Team plans to make the highlights in short videos. “Our objective is to inform but also to entertain and to make this competition a popular success”, concludes Laurent Prud’homme. An ambition shared by the TF1 channel and the Meta group, which rely on the XV of France to mobilize the French. According to the Odoxa poll, 60% of rugby fans are predicting a first world title for the France team.