The NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in Australia was always going to be a landmark moment. But when more than 100,000 fans packed the MCG, it became something even bigger.
The game drew 100,021 fans, making it the seventh-highest attended regular-season NFL game in history. Across the country, the NFL reached 2.19 million Australians, with an average national television audience of 938,000 across Seven and 7plus.
For Bastion, it was the culmination of an enormous body of work.
Long before the first touchdown was scored at the MCG, teams across Bastion were working to build the commercial partnerships, brand experiences, creative, content and earned attention surrounding the NFL’s historic arrival.
From securing a suite of major sponsorships for the NFL, including several multi-year partnerships, to delivering an integrated campaign that put TAB at the heart of NFL fever, Bastion played a major role in turning a history-making game into a much bigger cultural moment.
It was Bastion at its most integrated, combining the agility of an independent with the scale and capability of a global network to deliver across every stage of the opportunity.
And we are only getting started.
Building the commercial platform behind the NFL in Australia
Bastion’s involvement in the NFL’s Australian story began well before game week.
Bastion’s Head of Strategic Partnerships, Alex O’Shaughnessy has worked closely with the NFL to build a powerful portfolio of commercial partners around the NFL’s growing Australian presence.
The result was a huge line-up.
Bastion facilitated partnerships with Dan Murphy’s, La Trobe Financial, Hellmann’s, Asahi, and Toyota.
It was a major commercial result, but more importantly, it created a strong platform for the NFL to continue building its presence in Australia beyond its first game.
That future is already taking shape. Flag football is now reaching more than 500 Australian schools, introducing the sport to a new generation of fans, while the NFL is positioning itself as a global property with a national platform and year-round opportunities for brands in Australia.
By connecting the NFL with major brands committed to its future in Australia, Bastion has put the league in a position of strength as it enters its next phase of growth here.
With the commercial foundations in place, attention turned to making its arrival impossible to miss.
Taking TAB from the sidelines to the centre of NFL fever
For TAB, the opportunity was bigger than putting a brand alongside a historic sporting event.
The challenge was to make TAB part of how Australians experienced it.
So rather than treating creative, social, retail activation and PR as separate pieces of work, Bastion brought them together as one connected solution, designed to gather momentum as the NFL got closer to Melbourne.
It started by taking the unmistakable drama of American football and giving it an Australian twist.
TAB’s Any Given Friday campaign, inspired by the iconic film Any Given Sunday, brought the intensity of a NFL locker room to the very Australian ritual of Friday lunch. Created by Bastion Advertising, a suite of 15-second films built anticipation for the NFL season while encouraging audiences to get out, get together and experience NFL games in TAB venues across the country every Friday throughout the season.
It established the campaign’s bigger ambition: to turn the NFL from something you watch alone on a small screen into something you experience live together.
Then, as game week arrived, Bastion took that energy off-screen and into Melbourne.
At the NFL Leaders & Legends Lunch, presented by TAB, the Green Carpet became its own media event. Bastion PR brought media and some of sport’s biggest personalities together, coordinating interviews and capturing content before proactively pushing hero imagery, talent interviews and event highlights out to media.
The result was another layer of momentum. The NFL conversation was no longer just about what was coming on game day. It was happening all around Melbourne.
And then we put the fans into the action themselves.
Developed by Bastion Advertising, Last Hand Standing challenged NFL fans to keep their grip on a giant inflatable football, with tickets to the historic NFL Melbourne game up for grabs.
AFL legend and Four time Premiership player, Luke Hodge joined the action, trying to tempt the fans to take their hand off the ball and took part in interviews for the content piece. Bastion then took what happened on the ground and pushed it much further, driving earned amplification that saw Hodgey and Last Hand Standing featured on Channel 7’s The Brightside and across Seven’s social channels.
Together, they created one connected journey from awareness to participation to game day, helpng to put TAB in a position of strength at the centre of one of the biggest sporting and cultural events to hit Australia this year.
And then everything led to one place.
100,021 fans. One history-making game.
Game day arrived at a packed MCG, and Bastion was there on the sidelines.
After months of work behind the scenes and a campaign that had moved from screens, to venues, to media, to live experiences across Melbourne, the scale of the moment was impossible to miss.
100,021 people were inside the MCG. 2.19 million Australians were reached nationally. And one of the biggest sporting properties in the world had officially arrived in Australia.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the Australian response had exceeded expectations, while NFL Australia & New Zealand General Manager Charlotte Offord pointed to the passion and energy of Australian fans, partners and the community as evidence of how strongly the NFL resonates here.
For Bastion, it was a huge moment too.
This was our integrated model in action. Commercial partnerships, sponsorship, strategy, creative, social, experiential, talent and earned media all working towards the same opportunity.
We didn’t just show up for game day. Bastion was working behind the scenes from the beginning, securing the partnerships helping build the NFL’s future in Australia and creating the work that put TAB at the heart of the excitement surrounding it.
And there’s plenty more to play for.
With the NFL’s multi year commitment to Melboourne, a new generation already picking up the sport and major brands committed for the journey ahead, the first game wasn’t the finish line – it was kick-off.
