The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2024
2degrees airs the world's first fully vertical rugby final live on TikTok
With NZ women's rugby's Super Rugby Aupiki facing cancellation, sponsor 2degrees aired its final fully vertical on TikTok, with polls and comments on phones.
2degrees
What it had to solve
Super Rugby Aupiki, New Zealand's premier women's rugby competition, faced cancellation. Principal sponsor 2degrees chose not just to save it but to transform how the game could reach fans, partnering with Sky Sport and TikTok.
How it works
Super Rugby Aupiki, New Zealand's premier women's rugby competition, faced cancellation. Principal sponsor 2degrees decided the answer was not to save the final in its old broadcast shape but to transform it into something that had never been aired before.
Partnering with Sky Sport and TikTok, 2degrees pioneered the world's first live sports broadcast shot, produced and aired entirely in vertical format for mobile viewing. The phone was the primary screen, not a secondary one.
The broadcast integrated TikTok features like live polls and real-time comments, so watching the biggest game in NZ women's rugby became an interactive, scroll-native experience rather than a television feed squeezed into a small window.
In the archive's telling, the final reached a new legion of fans nationwide and reshaped live sports broadcasting possibilities. The D&AD page credits Eleven PR as entrant, with 2degrees as brand and client, and records no viewership figures.
Why it lands
- Vertical-only production meets fans where the final would actually be watched, on phones, instead of asking a television audience to change its habits.
- Live polls and real-time comments are native to TikTok, so engagement was designed into the broadcast rather than bolted on around it.
- A world first gave a smaller women's league a news story: the format itself announced that the competition mattered.
- The innovation belonged to the sponsor: 2degrees became the name attached to a historic first in live sport, a stronger claim than a logo in a broadcast.
- Proving a full final can live on TikTok opened a template other sports, leagues and sponsors could copy.
What it did
The broadcast carried the biggest game in New Zealand women's rugby to a new legion of fans nationwide and showed that a full live final can live natively on a phone-first platform, reshaping live sports broadcasting possibilities. The D&AD archive page records no viewership figures.
What you can take
When the event you sponsor is threatened, the rescue can be a format invention: rebuild the broadcast for the platform the audience already holds, instead of saving it in its old shape.
Since then
The D&AD awards archive lists the work as a media winner, crediting Eleven PR as entrant company with 2degrees as brand and client, and records no viewership figures. The page's own account is that the broadcast brought the biggest game in New Zealand women's rugby to a new legion of fans nationwide and reshaped live sports broadcasting possibilities, so the case stands on the format invention: a full live final shot, produced and aired in vertical for mobile, with TikTok's polls and comments woven into the experience.
Sources
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