FOOTBALL MAX LEVEL
FIFA WORLD CUP ‘26 x LENOVO
As the official technology partner of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Lenovo gave us the ambitious task of unifying the worlds of gaming and football.
How do you bring together two of the largest cultural communities on the planet? By getting weird with it.
Stretching across YouTube, Shorts, and IG, FOOTBALL MAX LEVEL is a creator-led branded entertainment program that invents an entirely new sport by combining live football with real-time gameplay.
Brand(s)
FIFA World Cup 2026 & Lenovo Legion
AGENCY
Portal-A
Talent
@MatthewBeem, @SV2, @WinterFNT, @MaddyNF
Role
Creative Lead, Scriptwriter
Results
10M+ Campaign Views in first 10 days
*Highest-Performing Video on Lenovo Legion YT Page
The
Challenge
Create a program that naturally highlights the shared DNA between gaming & football (i.e. passionate fandoms, heated rivalries, competition, spectacle, etc.) - all while naturally positioning Lenovo as the natural catalyst to bridge these two worlds.
The
Approach
As Creative Lead, I designed the program’s core concept and narrative, overseeing execution from pitch through delivery.
FOOTBALL MAX LEVEL brought top creators, footballers, and gamers to a massive UK stadium for a first-of-its-kind competition where laptop gameplay directly impacted what happens on the pitch.
Build something that genuinely brings gaming and football together, rather than treating them as adjacent worlds.
Give Lenovo Legion a meaningful role in the experience, not just a visible one.
Create a concept that feels timely to the FIFA World Cup 2026 without simply mirroring traditional football content.
Deliver a creator-led entertainment format that is premium, easy to grasp, and culturally relevant, while feeling native to multiple creator channels and audiences.
How It
worked
The competition was structured around a series of custom “halves” built to dramatize the connection between gameplay and football.
Popular video game mechanics such as tower defense, zombies, and a final “boss battle” are translated into oversized live-action challenges on the pitch, turning the event into something that feels part match, part game mode, and part live spectacle.
Creator captains lead two teams from the worlds of football and gaming. Each team consists of both footballers on the pitch and gaming operators on their Lenovo Legion laptops.
The gamer’s actions in Fortnite trigger real-world effects on the field (Ex. activating obstacles, spawning zombies, etc.), altering the flow of play for the footballers on the pitch.
View the VideoS
