NRL’s ‘Instabilia’ auction of Origin memorabilia still waiting for final bid surge
The NRL’s bid to engage fans in a real-time auction with memorabilia from the final State of Origin clash on Wednesday night still has a way to go before being deemed a success, with barely 200 bids placed on footballs, boots and mouthguards.
Launched with little pre-game hype by the NRL and agency VML, the idea of the promotion – which will benefit charity Lifeline – was to put significant items featuring in the game up for auction as the game progressed.
Items including the tryline corner post from the first try of the game, Sam Thaiday’s boots and Cameron Smith’s mouth guard – removed at one stage as he remonstrated with the referee – were put on sale seconds after they featured in the match.
The NRL used its social media feeds to announce that the auctions had opened as each item went on sale, with fans urged to get online and bid before the game ended.
With three days to go until the live auctions end, just 214 bids had been lodged for 12 items totalling just over $10,000. The headgear worn by Queensland legend Johnathan Thurston is leading the bidding, with 36 bids driving the price to $3,650.
The auction was plugged as “an Australian sporting first”.
VML managing director and executive creative director Aden Hepburn said the scale of the undertaking was “huge”. However, the effort was not promoted by the code until just hours before the match because there was nothing they were able to point fans to until the start of the match.
He said although there had just been a couple of hundred bids, the level of bids for things like Thurston’s headgear suggested that bid numbers would grow substantially in the final hours near the end of the auction.
He also noted that current offer for the headgear – an item the star regularly throws to kids at the end of games – was 10 times what bidding currently was for someone selling a signed version.
“Everything starts pretty slow on eBay and happens at the last minute as people wait to see what is being bid,” Hepburn said.
“We are unlocking a new type of memorabilia, something that was actually worn in a game.”
He said the idea had been a bit of test for the agency and the NRL, but could be scaled up significantly for the finals series, creating a new way for the sport to raise money for its charity partners.
“It’s a test of a concept as the NRL wants to give more back to community groups like Lifeline.”
“It’s a huge undertaking and exercise in collaboration with the NRL, QLD and NSW teams, the players, VML and Ebay, all facilitated through NRL’s social media control room where designers, copywriters, editors and motion graphics artists are creating and publishing ‘Instabilia’ pieces with auction videos just minutes after the moments happen”.
An Ebay “trendwatcher” and spokesperson, Melissa English, said of the auction in the press release: “We’re expecting a huge response from the Ebay community to Instabilia. NRL fans put their money where their mouth is with more than $8 million worth of merchandise purchased on Ebay in the last 12 months.”
While rising to a thrilling finale with NSW snatching victory at the final siren, the match also failed to set TV audiences alight with the dead rubber drawing the smallest Origin audience for Nine in six years, with 2.111m metro viewers tuning in.
Epic fail
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Who wants memorabilia from a dead rubber match?
Concept is sound, execution was not.
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Actually, I can’t see how this has been a fail at all.
It’s a clever idea, adds a fan experience element for fans both at the stadium and at home (although yes I found auctioning a players pants odd) and if you add up all of the bids (So what if 200? Thurston’s headgear is over $4000) which are legitimate then it’s over $11,000 raised for charity. That’s a huge win for the charity and I think some bids have already ended so possibly more money has been raised.
I can see other merch items being added to this and the list could be endless with patches of the turf where special moments occurred to game day notes/plays, mouth guards etc….it’s an interesting idea and to call that a fail is a bit of a uninformed comment.
Each to their own but I thought it was a unique idea for fans.
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