Hey folks - welcome to edition 126 of The SEG3 Report!

Before I dive in, there’s some SEG3 LA speaker news that we’ve been dying to share (that everyone else but you has to wait until tomorrow to know!).

The CMO’s of both LA28 & LA Galaxy will grace the stage in Beverly Hills, alongside Universal Pictures, Block, and US Olympic and Paralympic Properties, to talk about marketing the world’s biggest show, the evolution of film launch strategy, growing and retaining fans, and more.

Check out the agenda here, and grab your pass if you’d like to join.

(As a subscriber, you get an extra 10% off our Super Early Bird pricing, which ends October 30 at midnight).

Back to the newsletter, where it’s sports (again, again!), but with a hint of games. This week I’m looking at Red Bull’s Wings Cup launch with EA Sports FC 27, and how its strategy moves beyond your standard tie-in.

Plus, our speed reads:

I told you we were in sports mode this week.

Play ball! (Okay, I’m done.)

Red Bull’s Wings Cup is a global EA Sports FC 27 promotion that puts a redeemable code inside a physical product which brings you in-game points. Simple on its surface and not entirely dissimilar to Coca-Cola’s ‘The Club’, launched with the Premier League, which I wrote about a few weeks back.

Limited-edition Red Bull cans launched in the UK on 1 September carry a QR code and an 8-digit code under the tab. You scan it, log into an EA account via the official redemption site, and you're granted 250 Season Points, a Red Bull Wings Cup kit, and a loan pick from five Red Bull-sponsored players, usable for seven games. This would be an easy enough place to stop; it encourages EA players to buy a product, and then turn the purchase of that product into in-game rewards. Win win!

But the QR code and the points are just the entry point. 

From 18 September, redeemers are invited into a "Competitive Phase": ten FUT Squad Battles matches, played in the Wings Cup kit, ranked by country. Whoever scores the most goals by 30 November wins a fully covered VIP trip to the Wings Cup World Final at Inter Miami's stadium in January 2027, worth up to £7,000. Red Bull says the tournament spans 80 countries and 160 finalists in total.

Behind it sits a proper media push: paid activity across PlayStation, WebTV, social and out-of-home, plus in-store point-of-sale, fronted in the UK by EA Sports FC esports pro Tekkz and content creator Angry Ginge. Red Bull's own campaign materials put in-game visibility at 880 million impressions between September and December, though that's the brand's projection rather than an independently verified figure.

This is the same three-layer shape we explored when Discord and Sony ran their Resident Evil activation back in edition 120: a physical purchase hands off to a digital mechanic, which hands off to something you can only get by actually turning up. 

The can is the product layer, the redemption and the leaderboard are the digital layer, and getting to go to Miami is the life layer.

Like I said, it would have been easier - and probably cheaper - for Red Bull to print "free Season Points" on a can and stop at that. Instead, they built a skill-based ladder, a second season's worth of engagement, and a full tournament infrastructure around one energy drink promotion. 

As I covered two weeks ago, Bain’s Gaming Report 2026 argues the "average gamer" no longer exists: the top 20% of players by engagement account for roughly 60% of all playing time and 73% of total spend, while chasing the average player is now the costliest mistake a gaming strategy can make.

Wings Cup isn't built for the casual FC player who just wants a free pack. It's built for the player willing to play ten ranked Squad Battles matches for a shot at a leaderboard place, exactly the small, high-value cohort Bain's report says the category should be chasing. And, as I wrote about in the same edition about the adidas x Toca Boca partnership, a vague ambition to "show up in gaming" only pays off once you know exactly who you're trying to engage. Like Adidas, Red Bull does.

To borrow BBC Studios’ Shelley Macintyre’s phrasing, there’s also a “permission" element here too. The way she put it, speaking to us for The Speakeasy, it’s about where or what an IP, or brand, has “permission” to do - how far it can stretch. This kind of tournament only works if the brand has some standing with the audience it's asking to compete. And Red Bull does: it's an official partner of Riot Games' global League of Legends events, sponsors teams including G2 and BIG, and, per YouGov's fan-profile data, consistently scores higher on purchase consideration among esports fans than among the general population. In short, Red Bull isn't parachuting into a game it hasn’t earned the right to be in.

I mentioned Coca-Cola's Premier League loyalty scheme at the start as being similar. And it is, to a certain extent. However, The Club is built to outlast a single season: points don't expire until August 2027, tiers decay on a rolling 90-day cycle, and the daily pin-code cap nudges small, repeat purchases rather than one big stockpiling trip. It’s a home a fan can return to, and is inspired to engage with, as long as they remain a fan; hopefully, indefinitely.

Wings Cup, by comparison, is a campaign with a clear start and end. The Competitive Phase closes on 30 November, and each country's winner is confirmed by 7 December. After that, there’s nothing specifically built to bring the fans back.

But in reality, this isn’t automatically a flaw. Not every activation needs to be a permanent loyalty scheme, and a deadline does create an urgency that an evergreen points balance doesn't. 

The two campaigns are solving different problems, too. Coca-Cola is capturing a fan's habit, whereas Red Bull is capturing a few months of a fan's competitive attention and a fairly broad license over what they post about it along the way.

So, remember: before trying to adapt this strategy, work out whether you're building a long-term habit or attention for a season.

Back in 2019, Red Bull ran a similar activation inside League of Legends: an amateur tournament called Red Bull Player One, where the winner earned a wildcard slot to actually compete at Riot's official All-Star Event, alongside professionals. Wings Cup's leaderboard winner gets to attend the World Final as a "VIP, non-competitive" spectator. It's a similar "ordinary fan earns their way onto the biggest stage" win.

There's also a smaller, closer precedent. Earlier this year, EA Sports FC 26 carried a lighter-touch Red Bull "Mystery Ball" objectives set, granting kits, stadium themes and Evolutions but with no competitive or physical layer attached. Wings Cup is founded on a similar strategy, but much bigger.

Both of these activations show how Red Bull built its strategy towards the Wings Cup, based not just on hypothesis but on actual, successful campaigns.

There’s a few questions that this activation made me think were the most important for folks considering a similar tie-in:

1. Are you building on a relationship you've already tested?

2. Does your activation reward your most engaged fans specifically?

3. Once the campaign window closes, what do you want left behind?

Questions one and two have, basically, a right and wrong answer (or, at least, an answer that shows more understanding of the kinds of activations that pay off).

A campaign having an end isn’t a bad thing, but it’s knowing what your goal is, whether it’s to keep that fan relationship going, or if it’s a one-off in a series of varying, different-fan-targeted campaigns, that matters.

The TikTok series spans 17 short-form episodes

TL;DR

Sports teams making content isn't new, but what's different here is the ownership model: Cubs Productions wrote, cast and directed this in-house, rather than licensing the story out or partnering with a streamer. The team owns the IP outright, which means it also owns whatever comes after: sequels, spin-off characters, and merch tied to the series.

That matters because it changes what a franchise's content operation is actually for. Original scripted IP is competing for attention against actual entertainment studios, not just other teams' social accounts.

The structure is also clever. The story is told over nine innings in 17 short-form episodes. The format doesn't just fit TikTok's runtime; it mirrors the pacing of the exact experience it's selling. A fan watching between innings at a real game is the same person this show is built for, so the content format and the occasion reinforce each other and feel natural to the fan/viewer.

Another thing we talk a lot about in this newsletter is authenticity and storytelling: the Cubs aren't inventing a random rom-com and attaching their logo to it. They're scripting something that's already happening organically in the bleachers and turning it into distributable IP. This aligns more with the strategy Carlotta Rossi Spencer, formerly of Banjiay Branded Entertainment, discussed on The Speakeasy: the brand and the content have to sit naturally together. And, crucially, the show has to be of interest whether a brand is involved or not. Nine Innings to Love ticks that box, definitely for Cubs fans and probably for baseball fans more broadly.

However, it’ll be interesting to see if Nine Innings to Love has reach beyond. If rom-com fans watch it as a story first and a Cubs product second, and if it travels past its own fanbase, then the Cubs have a hit. The takeaway for folks outside baseball, and outside sports, will be to ask yourself what unscripted moments are already happening in your own stands, arenas, cinemas, and shopping malls that are sitting there unscripted, waiting for someone to option them.

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!

That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!