MLS team Vancouver Whitecaps use Pokemon Go to announce two new signings
Canadian soccer team Vancouver Whitecaps has illustrated one of the savviest examples of football clubs evolving with digital to engage fans after leveraged the gargantuan popularity of Pokemon Go to reveal new signings.
Vancouver Whitecaps Pokemon Go
The MLS franchise borrowed from Nintendo’s new smartphone app to unveil two new signings in Marcel De Jong and David Edgar.
The club mocked up the Pokemon Go interface of the app to show poke balls capturing the new players rather than creatures from the game.
de Jong and Edgar: captured ✔️ #VWFC #PokemonGo pic.twitter.com/QbZKxwPOJC
— Vancouver Whitecaps (@WhitecapsFC) July 13, 2016
Alongisde the caption 'de Jong and Edgar: captured', the video shows both players being zapped into separate poke balls and concludes with the message "Welcome to the club."
The popularity of the anime game shows no sign of slowing according to the latest download figures, which reveal that the viral app is now almost as big as Snapchat and Google Maps with an expectation that it will overtake both on current trends within a week.
Its 11 million daily active users mean it already dwarfs Twitter’s 6 million daily user base.