Hong Kong Tourism Board × GFN:
The Hong Kong Football Festival 2025
Football’s biggest fan voices at the EPL Pre-season. Asia’s most exciting new stadium.
One campaign that brought them together.
AFTV’s live watchalongs helped NordVPN reach millions through
authentic, high-energy fan moments.
When four of the world’s biggest football clubs — Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, and AC Milan — descended on Hong Kong’s brand-new Kai Tak Sports Park for the Hong Kong Football Festival 2025, part of their pre-season tours, the Hong Kong Tourism Board needed a media partner who could make the world’s football fans feel like they were there. GFN flew its flagship creator teams to Hong Kong, embedded them inside the event from training sessions to the final whistle, and produced a campaign that reached millions across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X, through creators those fans already trusted.
Hong Kong Tourism Board’s brief was not simply to promote fixtures. It was to use the Hong Kong Football Festival to position Hong Kong as a premium destination for world-class live events, spotlight Kai Tak Sports Park as a major new venue, and show the city’s cultural energy through football-led storytelling. GFN’s role was to create content across AFTV, DR Sports, KopTV, and Expressions Oozing that would feel native to football audiences while still delivering tourism and venue messaging.
Publicly, the festival itself gave that storytelling real weight: Kai Tak Sports Park hosted Liverpool vs AC Milan on 26 July 2025 and Arsenal vs Tottenham Hotspur on 31 July 2025, with the latter billed as the first overseas North London Derby. Official event materials also highlighted open training sessions and positioned the stadium as a new international stage for major sport.
The Activation
GFN’s production team arrived with three cameramen and a full presenter line-up. AFTV’s Robbie Lyle, Cecil Jee Thomas, Lee Judges, James Bayliss, and Turkish covered Arsenal v Tottenham from every angle, while Expressions Oozing, one of the most recognisable Spurs creators, brought high-energy rivalry storytelling to DR Sports and his own channels for the North London Derby. KopTV’s Alex Gildea Trott also represented the Liverpool fanbase across Liverpool v AC Milan.
Rather than create generic tourism content, the campaign placed Hong Kong inside the formats fans already watch: travel vlogs, fan cams, tour diaries, stadium previews, match-day reactions, rivalry shows, and short-form social edits. AFTV covered travel vlogs, Kai Tak Sports Park previews, fan cams, wrap-up videos, a UK-based Match Day Live format linked to the on-ground team, and a full short-form rollout. DR Sports and Expressions led Best of Enemies: Hong Kong Edition, while KopTV extended the campaign into Liverpool fan culture through tour vlogs, previews, and match-day POV content.
This approach aligned closely with the campaign objectives: promote the festival, showcase Kai Tak Sports Park as a world-class venue, and position Hong Kong as a city where sport, culture, and visitor experiences come together, with HKTB branding, CTAs, and links included throughout.
With GFN cameramen on the ground, content was shot to a high standard and turned around quickly, with same-day or next-day publishing across long-form and short-form. Best of Enemies: Hong Kong Edition reached 158K YouTube views within days, while the UK Match Day Live stream extended the campaign’s reach beyond Hong Kong. Short-form content performed especially strongly, with Instagram Reels and TikTok cutdowns becoming the campaign’s top-performing assets, including one match-day Reel that reached 991K views.
The Result
22.8M+ total video views across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.
1.6M+ total engagements across all platforms and channels.
2.82% average engagement rate across all content.
40.1M+ minutes of content watched.
244 branded posts published across the full campaign.
By channel:
AFTV: 2.66M YouTube views, 17.8M Social Shorts Views
DR Sports (and Expressions): ~639K YouTube views, 1.8M Social Shorts Views
KopTV: 82K YouTube Views, 815K Instagram Reel Views
why it worked
The campaign was not dependent on one creator or one post type. AFTV gave the campaign reach and consistency. DR Sports gave it narrative tension and flagship editorial value. KopTV ensured Liverpool fans were not treated as an afterthought. Expressions added creator personality and social virality. Together, that mix let GFN present Hong Kong not just as a backdrop, but as part of the story that made the tourism message more believable. Kai Tak Sports Park was not just shown; it was discussed, toured, previewed, and tied directly to the anticipation around the matches. The public festival positioning also reinforced KTSP as a new marquee venue for international sports in Asia.
All in all, the tour was a coordinated, multi-channel, on-ground production system with creators, editors, platform strategy, and rights-aware deliverables all working together. The partnership explicitly covered creator obligations, platform distribution, tour logistics, and content usage rights, which is exactly the kind of operational backbone that large destination partners need.
Hong Kong Tourism Board Winnie Poon Digital Content Lead “The team was easy to work with, quick on turnaround, and handled coordination with the hosts of the Hong Kong Football Festival really well.”
Want to create impact
like this?
Let’s build a fan-first partnership around your next moment.