In August 2021, FOX Sports’ digital and social team launched the third annual Ultimate Fan Bracket: NFL Edition via Twitter to determine the league’s best fan base, turning the unbridled enthusiasm of NFL fans into an authentic and engaging multimedia campaign. The winning team received a trophy and a celebratory billboard near its rival team’s stadium.
The inaugural fan bracket event in 2019 was such a success that FOX Sports digital saw the opportunity to replicate the campaign across other properties. The Ultimate Fan Bracket: College Basketball edition launched in April 2020, with North Carolina defeating BYU, earning a billboard in Durham, N.C., the backyard of archrival Duke.
While fans waited to see their favorite teams take the field to kick off the 2021 season, fans had the opportunity to gear up and represent their squad with Ultimate Fan Bracket: NFL Edition! Fans had the chance to vote for any of the 32 teams before the bracket was narrowed to the Sweet 16, followed by the Elite Eight, the Final Four and the final round.
FOX Sports created polls on Twitter that allows fans of NFL teams to go head-to-head to determine the best fan base. The team that has more votes at the end of the poll is declared the winner. The team then moves on to the next round to go head-to-head with another fan base until the bracket is complete and a champion is crowned. All voting occurs on the NFLonFOX Twitter account. The winning fanbase gets a FOX Sports trophy named “Best Fans In The NFL” and a billboard proclaiming their dominance in the hometown of their biggest rivals.
Seeds were designated by the number of Twitter followers. The more Twitter followers a team has, the higher the seed.
All voting occurred via the @NFLonFOX Twitter account and was promoted across FOX Sports digital platforms.
Voting started on and ran for three weeks with the winner announced on September 9, the day before the 2021 NFL season kicked off.
Bills Mafia secured back-to-back championships by defeating the Cleveland Browns 55.2% to 44.8% after over 177,000 votes were cast. In just 17 days, the Ultimate Fan Bracket garnerd over 1.2 million total votes over the course of the bracket. In 2021, our tweets received 77 million impressions and 390,000 likes during the span of the bracket. The Final poll received 177,000 total votes and the tweet of the poll had about 7,500 retweets and 3 million impressions which, for context, did better overall impressions and engagements than our "NFL is Back" graphic.
The winner's post received over 2,000 RT, 7,000 likes on twitter and we once again planted a billboard of the Bills winning in Foxborough, just a couple miles away from the Patriots stadium. In 2020, Bills Mafia put the billboard in Foxborough, Massachusetts, four minutes from Gillette Stadium -- home to the New England Patriots. FOX Sports encouraged fans to use the hashtag #FOXFanBracket when taking photos in front of the billboard.
