From clicks to kickoff: How Vancouver Whitecaps FC scored big with War Room
In professional sports, a strong fan base fuels everything—
from team morale and the game-day atmosphere to the
business itself.
“We needed to be agile for the speed of sport and culture. Games went on sale fast, and our media needed to move just as fast.”
— JEFF AYLEN, HEAD OF MARKETING,
VANCOUVER WHITECAPS FC
When the Vancouver Whitecaps FC prepared to kick off the 2025 season, they wanted to do more than fill seats. They wanted to grow a new generation of fans, but also knew they had their work cut out for them. The previous year’s high demand matches
had flooded the market with one-time buyers, leaving a lasting dent in fan engagement and trust. Add tight sales windows and fierce local competition, and every campaign became a race against time.
+150%
Brand Awareness
+331%
Ticket Revenue
+200%
Conversions
Partnering with War Room, the Whitecaps re-engineered their paid media playbook to not only keep up
with the fast-moving industry but also drive stronger results across fan recognition, ticket revenue,
ROAS, and conversions.
With a tailored strategy and AI-powered optimization, they turned performance goals into measurable
wins. The highlight? LAFC MLS Cup semifinals on November 22 drew the highest single-game
attendance in club history.
Top-of-mind
awareness grew
from 4% to 10%
ROAS rose 103%
year over year
Revenue from
single-game
sales up 227%
More than
18,000
conversions!
Huddle up: Here’s how we did it
Objectives:
Creating a game plan
Winning campaigns start with alignment.
Before the season kicked off, we sat
down with the Whitecaps marketing
team to define what growth would look
like and how to get there. Together, we
set out to:
Recruit a more diverse generation of fans—
focusing on younger audiences and sports
enthusiasts across the Lower Mainland, not
just Vancouver.
Deepen fandom and loyalty among existing
supporter base by guiding them toward
more content, email engagement, and
future matches.
Hit single game sales targets by tier
while improving ROAS and net revenue.
Build durable lists for efficient lookalike
modeling and retargeting after high-demand
matches.
The Inter Miami effect: A flood of one-time
buyers and secondary market pricing swings
distorted key metrics, making year-over-year
performance hard to gauge.
Speed of sport: Tournament schedules and
compressed sale windows demanded quick
go-to-market agility.
Privacy constraints: Evolving regulations
made it harder to reach key cultural
segments at scale.
Creative underutilization: Limited video
assets and underused Performance Max
creative restricted campaign reach and
impact.
Challenges:
Reading the field
We entered the 2025 season with big
goals but we also had to build a strategy
that accounted for a challenging
landscape. Here’s what we were up against:
Strategy: Executing the play
Audience
Strategy
War Room and the Whitecaps built their audience strategy around intent and purchase potential. They focused on high-propensity buyers—like lapsed attendees and first-time purchasers—while expanding upper funnel reach, improving lookalike audiences, and matching budgets to each game’s revenue opportunity.
Creative and Format Upgrades
To stand out in a crowded market, the team shifted to player-first storytelling that highlighted star talent, like newly signed Thomas Müller, and roster narratives fans could connect with. Always-on campaigns used more video to boost engagement and conversions, and A/B testing confirmed that player-led creative consistently outperformed lifestyle and fan imagery.
Channel
Execution
With the creative playbook in place, War Room fully activated Performance Max (a Google Ads goal-based campaign type) with a broader creative set to capture more inventory and intent signals. Ongoing programmatic video and display ads kept audiences engaged between matches, while rapid campaign launches for tournaments and marquee games capitalized on real-time demand.
AI-Powered Tracking and Optimization
Everything ran through Kedet, War Room’s AI-powered platform for live insights and faster optimization. The team tracked pacing, creative performance, and audience trends in real time, ran monthly audits to separate marquee match noise from true growth, and integrated Ipsos brand health insights to keep targeting grounded in real fan behavior.
“We love Kedet. The
self-serve visibility
makes it easy to pull
insights and act on
them with our
War Room team.”
— JEFF AYLEN, HEAD OF MARKETING,
VANCOUVER WHITECAPS FC
WHAT WE LEARNED
Key
takeaways
As paid media experts, it’s crucial to not
only track performance, but understand
which strategies move the needle. Here’s
what we found:
Player-first video creative lifted engagement, expanded remarketing pools, and boosted match conversions in always-on campaigns.
Performance Max with a broader creative set captured incremental demand and extended reach across Google’s ecosystem.
Rapid campaign launches for tournament on-sales kept pace with the schedule and quickly converted momentum into revenue.
Retargeting first-time buyers from the Miami match fueled future league and playoff sales, building long-term fan value. (And thankfully this time, Messi made it!)
War Room’s Kedet dashboard aligned both teams on pacing and performance, enabling faster adjustments and smarter budget shifts by match tier.