The Rugby League Ashes is a three-match series between England and Australia taking place at Wembley, Everton and Headingly in the Autumn of 2025. The first series to be hosted on English soil for over 22 years, making it a historic and important moment for the sport of International Rugby League.
The Challenge
Our objective was to drive awareness of this historic test match series and generate ticket sales across the three fixtures.
The campaign comprised of a presale registration phase and a general sale, with the ultimate aim of selling a minimum of 110,000 tickets.
The challenge was to drive sales amongst the country’s core contingent of rugby league fans in the north whilst also generating a significant buzz across the rest of the nation, especially amongst English and Australian sports fans in London.
The Solution
We implemented a three-phased strategy. Firstly, upon the announcement of the series, we launched a presale sign-up campaign driving leads through Meta and Google Search, alongside a YouTube video campaign to heighten awareness.
Across Meta and YouTube we targeted rugby league and sports fans in and around key northern cities and sports enthusiasts across London and the south of England. This enabled us to prime audiences and amass a large volume of priority-window sign-ups ahead of the general sale.
Once the general sale opened, we activated a ticket sale campaign on Meta alongside another high-impact burst of YouTube activity targeting sports fans in Liverpool, Leeds and London.
We activated a third phase in June, focused on driving Wembley ticket sales. As we gradually ramped up digital spend in the lead-up to October’s first fixture, we also activated a talkSPORT radio burst and launched a London-based OOH campaign in September, targeting high-footfall stations across the city as well as key locations known to have a high concentration of Australians, such as Clapham, Wandsworth and Balham.
Results
- The presale phase achieved 50k+ sign-ups.
- Two Stadiums sold out within a week (Headingly Stadium & Everton’s 50k seater stadium)
- 125K+ ticket sales (and counting) across the three fixtures.
