THE BRIEF
As title sponsor of all four home nations football teams, EE has made a commitment to make the beautiful game, a game for all. For the 2022/2023 season we turned our focus to fan accessibility.
THE IDEA
Despite the face that nearly 12 million people in the UK are Deaf or have hearing loss, mainstream football broadcast does not include BSL first commentary…until now. So we launched New Signing – a search for the UK’s first Deaf football pundits.
THE EXECUTION
A campaign kicked off with a silent call to action video, featuring England Men’s players, Jack Grealish, Ben Chilwell and Marc Guehi signing alongside England Deaf Men’s players, Joe Dixon and Will Palmer. We saw over 100 applicants fight for the spot of ‘BT Sport BSL Pundit’, a role taken by Rolf Choutan and Damaris Cooke.
What followed was a 6 episode mini docu-series, broadcast on BT Sport and across EE’s YouTube channel, charting Rolf and Damaris’s journey from that casting day, all the way through to the UEFA Champions League Final.