SHOWTIME
The Vikings entered the 2021 season having gone 636 days since the last time fans filled the seats at U.S. Bank Stadium for a home game.
Here's how we broke every norm in the industry to build a "can't-miss" multi-media pregame show welcoming back our fans, while incorporating beloved team traditions, cinematic video, live entertainment, team history,
an original orchestral score, and the world's largest snow globe.
ONE STORY, FROM MANY PARTS
Unless you've taken part in Game Presentation, the 20-page, single-spaced "Production Format" which serves as the final game plan for a live NFL production might read like French. Every row denotes an individual element, planned for a specific moment in time, with the interwoven technical requirements from 100 different people at any given time to make it happen.
When analyzing the dozens of elements that make up a pregame show for an NFL team, our team came to a central, persistent insight: though the individual elements of many shows are well-conceived, beautifully shot, and skillfully delivered, they were very rarely planned along a narrative arch, tying each element to one another in a manner that compels the story forward.
Somewhere along the path of outsourcing individual elements to respective professionals, we felt our industry had (very literally) lost the plot.
With our "Showtime" project, our team set out to change that.
STORY
Fully owning the narrative arch meant bringing new intentionality to every moment of the production process. We brought our engineers, video creatives, live producers, marketers, and graphic designers to the same table from the first moment. We plotted key strategic punctuation marks from each area into a digital storyboard and worked together to find creative and technical connective tissues.
In an industry where the work is universally outsourced, we brought all video and graphic production in-house to keep an insistent focus on one story and a unified narrative.
PRODUCTION
With our storyboard in place, and all key players intrinsically tied into strategy and mission, we got busy producing.
Our internal team got scrappy and staged 5 production sets across 12 shoot days with 200+ on-camera talent including players, alumni, cheerleaders, and the Minnesota Orchestra.
All told, we delivered an 11 minute, multi-media pregame show to introduce the Vikings onto the field before each game. And by producing everything in-house, we did so for less than the cost of the typical :90 second outsourced intro video seen in 31 other NFL stadiums.
SHOWTIME
"Showtime" played before all eight home games for the 2021. The results were felt quickly, earning positive coverage across local media and national beat reporters. Commissioner Roger Goodell, the NFL executive team, expert reviewers, NFL observers, and peers identified the work as an NFL best practice.
At the IDEA Golden Matrix Awards, our Showtime project was named Best Show Open across all professional and collegiate sports. It also helped our team achieve the honor of Best Overall Production across all of sports, the highest honor for a Game Presentation group and a first in Vikings team history.
And most importantly, fans treated "Showtime" as the can't-miss-experience it was designed to deliver. A League-leading 90+% of fans filled their seats at least 15 minutes prior to kickoff, delivering one of the loudest home-field environments in football by opening kickoff.
And in a season where Covid concerns still lingered and future fan behavior hung in the balance, the team achieved an 100% season sell-out.