Last Sunday the first FIFA Open Championship with the assistance of the Russian Cyberfootball Federation took place in Pattaya, Thailand. Oleg Sorokin and I organized this event with the help of Russian partners; it had a sports bar, a sports club and a travel agency.
Oleg as an experienced organizer of Russian FIFA championships suggested that we should try this out in Thailand. I supported him, and we started our work. We created a marketing plan and gave a lot of attention to prizes and advertising. It was pretty easy to negotiate with the partners about the prizes; they were happy to provide great prizes. The “Brave Lion” sports bar (where the event took place) provided a dinner for two for first place. For second place, a “Beargym” monthly club card was assigned. As for third place, an excursion voucher was provided by the “Wonderland” travel agency.
The advertising campaign started from the ads and flyers design. As a designer, I used all my experience (thanks to my clients!) and imagination to create cool designs. Finally, we got big posters in Russian and English as well as small flyers. Moreover, I designed social networks event pages on VKontakte and Facebook. After that, we posted ads on the largest Pattaya online communities and news websites. The championship was going to become famous!
On sunny Sunday 17th 27 FIFA players gathered together in the “Brave Lion” sports bar. There were guys from Kazan, Noviy Urengoy, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Oryol, and many other Russian cities. The youngest competitor was only 13 years old. Even a Thai guy (Nai) did not hesitate to join this Russian FIFA community — and he took second place! An experienced FIFA and football player Alexander took first place. The third finalist was another Alexander.
During the championship I was a cashier, photographer, consultant and a SMM specialist :)
All participants are glad with the results and looking forward to the next FIFA event in Pattaya.
I could not even imagine that it would be possible to organize such an amazing event in the Asian country and to gather so many FIFA fans. Impossible is nothing!
P.S. Below are the photos and full statistics.