Booking.com / UEFA EURO 2020: Rivals Reunited

Many people see Europe as a continent divided. When a major football competition like UEFA EURO 2020 rolls around, tensions can run high and historical rivalries come to the forefront. However, while there's always a high level of enthusiastic banter among European football supporters , those rivalries stay on the pitch. But while any brand can make that statement, only Booking.com can prove it. How? With their data. As the Official Accommodation Partner of UEFA EURO 2020, the Booking.com team wanted to prove that travel opens minds and changes preconceived notions surrounding other nations, even those who we consider rivals. And what better scenario to put this theory to the test than the biggest sports competition between European nations, and the first UEFA EURO tournament in history to take place in 11 different venues across the continent.
Agency: Officer & Gentleman

In collaboration with creative agency Officer & Gentleman, the team studied the data regarding all the competing nations and analysed the relationships between them when it comes to travel by looking at the number of trips, scores, reviews and endorsements that travellers from each one of the countries left on the site after their trips within Europe. The results were surprising, because they revealed that the countries that are considered the biggest “rivals” are, in many cases, actually each other’s biggest fans - demonstrating that something as rational as data can reveal powerful emotional insights which, when put into context, shed a new light on rivalry between football fans from different European nations.