While Bud­weis­er and its pup­py may have a stran­gle­hold on the Amer­i­can foot­ball mar­ket, Dutch beer brand Heineken is tar­get­ing a small­er sub­set of U.S. foot­ball fans – or, more specif­i­cal­ly, Amer­i­can fans of Euro­pean foot­ball. Accord­ing to Heineken’s fig­ures, there are 90 mil­lion such fans in the U.S. The brand has kicked off its 2015 #Cham­pi­onThe­Match UEFA Cham­pi­ons League cam­paign in order to bring those fans “clos­er to the sport they love.”

Heineken under­stands how chal­leng­ing it is to be a fan of soc­cer in the U.S. – par­tic­u­lar­ly a fan of UEFA Cham­pi­ons League because the games are nor­mal­ly played on week­days dur­ing work hours. So the brand is find­ing ways to get U.S. fans clos­er to the game in new and excit­ing ways, said Quinn Kil­bury, senior direc­tor of mar­ket­ing at Heineken.

“We know that soc­cer is a sport that has been grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty here in the U.S. But we also know that many Amer­i­can fans feel left out when it comes to being able to watch the biggest Euro­pean games on the biggest stages,” Kil­bury said. “We con­duct­ed a sur­vey that showed that half of Amer­i­cans under the age of 35 would be big­ger fans of soc­cer if it was eas­i­er to watch. So as a result, we want­ed to cre­ate a cam­paign that would con­nect Amer­i­can soc­cer fans to the great­est soc­cer tour­na­ment in Europe, the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League.”

Heineken’s cam­paign includes a ded­i­cat­ed soc­cer site, which it says is “a new source for exclu­sive con­tent, expert insights from UEFA leg­ends, fan Q&As and more.” It also includes video con­tent.

Fans Prove Their Passion

To see how far Amer­i­can fans would go to get their UCL fix, Heineken says it con­duct­ed anoth­er one of its social exper­i­ments, in which it filmed “unsus­pect­ing fans” in a New York bode­ga dur­ing lunch hour and “offered them a choice to go back to work or drop every­thing and imme­di­ate­ly fly to Barcelona to watch a UCL match live.”

How­ev­er, in order to par­tic­i­pate, they had to bring their boss­es with them.

Heineken has been a spon­sor of the Cham­pi­ons League since 2005 and shares fans’ pas­sion for soc­cer. Fur­ther, the spur-of-the-momen­t/bring-your-boss caveat forced fans to “prove their pas­sion on the spot,” he said.

The result­ing YouTube video has about 64,000 views as of Feb­ru­ary 19.

Challenge Consumers To Step Out Of Their Comfort Zones

This isn’t the first time Heineken has pulled a spur-of-the-moment video stunt like this. Its 2013 Depar­ture Roulette video, in which it asked pas­sen­gers at JFK to change their itin­er­aries at the last minute, has more than 3 mil­lion views to date.

Anoth­er social exper­i­ment, The Pay­phone, tapped come­di­an Fred Armisen to anony­mous­ly call a pay­phone across the street from a com­e­dy club in New York and reward con­sumers “who were brave enough to answer the call and walk into the unknown…with a unique expe­ri­ence.” It has near­ly 14 mil­lion views since it post­ed in July 2014.

“Heineken has always main­tained a belief that you can live a leg­endary and more excit­ing life when you step out of your com­fort zone and try some­thing new,” Kil­bury said. “Our social exper­i­ments are about pos­ing a chal­lenge to con­sumers to ‘cross their bor­ders,’ step out of their com­fort zones and receive a once in a life­time expe­ri­ence, like get­ting to watch a live UCL match in Barcelona that same day, that only Heineken can pro­vide.”

‘Champion The Match’

In addi­tion to the ded­i­cat­ed site and videos, Heineken invites fans 21 and over to fol­low @HeinekenSoccer and the hash­tag #Cham­pi­onThe­Match, where the brand says they can receive real-time access and live com­men­tary from for­mer play­ers, such as for­mer Cham­pi­ons League cham­pi­on and cur­rent Major League Soc­cer star David Vil­la and “Dutch leg­end” Ruud Gul­lit, as well as “unex­pect­ed guests, and sur­prise Heineken twists dur­ing mar­quee match­es through­out the tour­na­ment.”

@HeinekenSoccer has about 6,000 fol­low­ers as of Feb­ru­ary 19; per Top­sy, #Cham­pi­onThe­Match has been used about 15,000 times in the past week.

“Much of the cam­paign involves these stars show­ing how you can ‘cham­pi­on the match’ from wher­ev­er you are in the world,” Kil­bury said. “Some­times that means from a remote chalet in the Swiss Alps or in a New York City office.”

The Heineken soc­cer site will also house infor­ma­tion about upcom­ing events includ­ing addi­tion­al Twit­ter han­dle takeovers, plus details on the arrival of the Cham­pi­ons League tro­phy and its tour across the U.S., in which fans can take pho­tos with the tro­phy, see Cham­pi­ons League mem­o­ra­bil­ia and meet soc­cer leg­ends and UCL win­ners in New York, Dal­las and Los Ange­les. Per the UEFA, the 2014–2015 Cham­pi­ons League began in June 2014 and will end with a final in Berlin on June 6.

Creating Loyal Fans For Life

“If Heineken is tar­get­ing Amer­i­can fans of Euro­pean foot­ball, then I can only assume that they have some research which shows that Amer­i­cans who fol­low the UEFA Cham­pi­ons League are more like­ly to drink beer from a Dutch brew­ing com­pa­ny,” said Greg Jar­boe, pres­i­dent of inter­net mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm SEO-PR. “That may not seem like a large mar­ket seg­ment, but Heineken’s cur­rent mar­ket share is around 2 per­cent, so tar­get­ing niche mar­ket seg­ments on this side of the pond makes sense.”

While the num­ber of U.S.-based fans of Euro­pean foot­ball may not be huge, Thom Craver, vice pres­i­dent of devel­op­ment and IT at mar­ket­ing and SEO ser­vices com­pa­ny Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Nin­jas, says the ones who do know the game are quite pas­sion­ate.

“You can go to any MLS sta­di­um and find a good per­cent­age of peo­ple who are tru­ly fans,” he said.

If Heineken is look­ing for viral video suc­cess, he said the mar­ket­ing bud­get to fly con­sumers to Barcelona is like­ly cheap­er than com­pa­ra­ble mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives and has the added advan­tage of cement­ing incred­i­bly loy­al fans.

“Soc­cer fans are quite pas­sion­ate, so if [Heineken] can get behind that and [enable] fans to see their favorite team across the pond and get them to drink beer, too, [they’ll cre­ate loy­al fans for life],” Craver said.

Craver even likens Heineken’s so-called social exper­i­ments to Bud Light’s #Upfor­What­ev­er cam­paign.

“It’s those kind of stunts [that prove] viral mar­ket­ing is work­ing and it’s on par if not cheap­er [than oth­er mar­ket­ing efforts] and can make fans for life,” Craver said. “This is [Heineken] try­ing to go into new mar­kets and real­ly hand­pick their tar­get audi­ence with mes­sag­ing they know will work.”

What do you think of Heineken’s efforts to attract U.S.-based UCL fans?