Liverpool FC turns 24-city Christmas push into fan thank-you
See how Liverpool's Nice One campaign uses players, fan content and 24-city distribution to turn Christmas into a community message.
Being a Liverpool supporter does not require a seat at Anfield. A familiar scarf, a local supporters' club and the ritual of watching a match far from Merseyside can all make a football club feel close to home. That is the community Liverpool FC is addressing in its 2026 Christmas campaign, which trades the usual festive gift pitch for a message of thanks.
Called Nice One, the campaign features a player-led film, Dear Reds, and a distribution plan designed to reach official fan communities well beyond the UK. Captain Virgil van Dijk and his teammates appear on screen, but the people they are speaking to are the real subject. Rather than asking supporters to admire a star, the creative asks them to recognize their own part in the club's identity.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- Inside the Dear Reds fan thank-you
- Why 24 cities matter to a football community
- How Liverpool links gratitude to real fan moments
- What marketers can learn from fan-first Christmas
Inside the Dear Reds fan thank-you
The central film comes in 60-second and 30-second versions. Van Dijk is joined by Alexis Mac Allister, Alisson Becker and Florian Wirtz as the players speak directly to supporters. The message is straightforward: the people who follow the club, whether at Anfield or elsewhere, help define what Liverpool means.
The film closes with the players saying the club does not belong to them alone, then thanking those who represent it with their support. It is a useful reversal of the usual sports advertising hierarchy. The footballers are still the recognizable faces, but their job is to acknowledge the audience rather than take all the attention.
Van Dijk, speaking in the club's announcement, described representing supporters as both an honor and a privilege. "Putting them front and centre of our Christmas campaign is a fantastic way to thank them for being there, through the good times and the challenges," he said.
The club also includes imagery and video created by fans in the campaign. This detail matters because it turns supporter culture into part of the work itself. A campaign about community could have relied entirely on polished footage of players. Fan-made material gives the message another perspective, one grounded in the people being thanked.
Why 24 cities matter to a football community
For an international fan, a Christmas campaign filmed only at a home stadium can feel distant. Liverpool is trying a different route by taking the message to places where its supporter communities already gather.
24 cities in 16 countries across five continents. That is the planned reach of the club's out-of-home supporter-club campaign, according to Liverpool FC.
The destinations include Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo, alongside cities in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia. Liverpool says this is the most extensive campaign in the club's 134-year history. The planned media mix includes out-of-home placements, digital distribution and social content, with further supporter-oriented activity running during the Christmas period.
This is not the same as saying the campaign has reached everyone in those markets. The city and country counts describe Liverpool's planned footprint, not independently measured ad impressions or attendance. The distinction is important for marketers looking for a real performance signal rather than an impressive-sounding launch number.
The club describes a global base of more than 450 million supporters and more than 227 million social media followers. Those are Liverpool's own audience claims, not measured results from Nice One. Still, they help explain the challenge the creative team faces: a message about belonging has to make sense to people whose connection to the club is mediated by different languages, time zones and local routines.
How Liverpool links gratitude to real fan moments
The campaign stretches beyond film and billboards. Liverpool says partners including PayPal, Carlsberg and Expedia will support additional fan-facing activities during the festive season, with more details still to be announced. It is a promise of follow-through, not evidence that those initiatives have already happened.
Supporters can also access a free visit to the Liverpool FC Museum during November with an advance booking and the campaign code Nice One, subject to the club's stated terms. The campaign sits alongside the LFC Foundation's Christmas Magic work in the Liverpool City Region, which is focused on helping local families during the holiday period.
These elements bring different meanings of community into the same campaign. There is the global audience reached through media, the local fan who can visit a club museum and the families supported by the club's charitable work. None is identical, and the campaign does not need to pretend they are.
There is also a useful contrast with other football Christmas work. Arsenal's 2026 film 'Twas the Season uses actor Colin Firth and the club's own people to revisit the feeling of a historic title-winning season, as described in campaign reporting. Liverpool's work is more explicitly built around thanking far-flung supporter communities and placing fan imagery inside the creative.
The two approaches reflect different ways football clubs can use the holidays without treating fandom as little more than a merchandise audience. One looks back at a shared sporting memory. The other turns the relationship between a team and the people who follow it into the main story.
What marketers can learn from fan-first Christmas
For marketers outside sport, the transferable idea is not that every brand needs a football-style fan base. It is that a community-focused campaign becomes more convincing when the people it celebrates can see a recognizable part of themselves in it.
- Give the audience a meaningful role. Liverpool's use of supporter-created imagery supports its thank-you message. For a different brand, that role could be customer stories or participation in an existing community ritual, provided the material is genuinely representative.
- Make geography part of the creative plan. The 24-city distribution focuses on established supporter-club locations. It is more specific than an undifferentiated claim to reach a global audience, and it gives local groups a reason to recognize the campaign.
- Let famous faces point outward. Well-known players attract attention, but their lines are about the people watching. Celebrity talent can help a campaign feel personal when the story does not stop at the celebrity.
- Separate planned scale from proven response. Liverpool's reported audience totals and rollout footprint explain the ambition. They do not establish whether people watched the film, visited a museum or changed their buying behavior because of it. Marketers should assess those outcomes separately.
The stakes are different for a football club and a retail brand. Liverpool inherits decades of attachment, songs, memories and supporter groups. Most consumer companies have to earn a much smaller kind of familiarity through useful products and consistent experiences.
But the creative question is similar: does the audience feel like an extra in a brand's story, or does the brand acknowledge the audience's own story? Nice One answers by directing the holiday spotlight back toward the people who make following Liverpool an everyday habit.
