The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024
adidas makes a pitch feminine with two dots — Female Field wins Dubai Lynx Grand Prix
adidas paints the Arabic letter Ta'Marbuta — a circle with two dots — onto Onyx FC's pitch, making the field grammatically female.
adidas · Onyx FC
What it had to solve
Most Arabic sports nouns — ball, kick, goal, even sport itself — are feminine, ending in the Ta'Marbuta letter, yet girls are told sport is not for them. adidas needed to announce its sponsorship of Onyx FC in a way that stood for the team's ethos.
How it works
When adidas signed Onyx FC, the UAE's all-female-owned and operated football club, it had a simple brief: announce the sponsorship in a way that stands for the team's ethos rather than just logo placement. Havas Middle East found the answer in Arabic grammar itself.
In Arabic, most words tied to sport — ball, run, kick, jump, goal, shoot, pass, even the word sport — are grammatically feminine, ending in the letter Ta'Marbuta, written as a circle with two dots on top. The campaign painted those two dots above the centre circle of Onyx FC's home pitch, turning the field into the letter and giving the pitch a female gender.
The Female Field was launched in March 2024 and quickly spread: replicas appeared on basketball courts, beach football pitches and even an ice hockey rink across Dubai. At Dubai Lynx 2024 it won the Grand Prix in Glass: The Award for Change, and adidas was named Advertiser of the Year at Dubai Lynx 2025.
The idea worked because it refused to translate a Western empowerment slogan. It used a feature only Arabic speakers can fully feel — the grammar of their own language — to make the field itself say 'this is feminine'.
Why it lands
- The message is embedded in the medium: the pitch itself becomes a grammatical statement in Arabic, no copy needed.
- It flips a cultural obstacle into the creative engine — the same language that marks sport feminine becomes the proof that women belong.
- The execution is minimal and scalable: two dots of paint, so fans and other venues could copy it and spread it organically.
- It ties the brand act (sponsoring Onyx FC) to a tangible symbol that outlives the campaign.
What it did
The campaign won the Grand Prix in Glass: The Award for Change at Dubai Lynx 2024, and replicas of the Female Field spread across the UAE to basketball courts, beach pitches and ice rinks.
What you can take
When the culture's own language already encodes your message — Arabic grammar makes sport feminine — the bravest move is to say it literally and let the audience feel the contradiction.
Since then
The Female Field earned the Glass Grand Prix at Dubai Lynx 2024, and adidas's regional creative run — Ravi, Superstar Ravi, The Female Field — led to it being named Dubai Lynx Advertiser of the Year 2025. The pitch symbol continued to appear on courts and pitches across the UAE.
Sources
- Dubai Lynx names adidas as the 2025 Advertiser of the Year
- Havas Middle East & adidas: The world's first female football pitch
- Dubai Lynx Names adidas 2025 Advertiser of the Year
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