The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Hamburg restages the UEFA EURO 2024 draw in shipping containers for a global audience
While UEFA drew EURO 2024 teams inside the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg port workers rebuilt the draw with shipping containers, live-streamed worldwide.
Hamburg Marketing
What it had to solve
The official UEFA draws reach millions of viewers, but the broadcast never reveals where they are happening. Hamburg, hosting the EURO 2024 final draw, wanted that global attention to promote the city itself.
How it works
The official draws for UEFA's European football championships attract millions of viewers around the globe — yet the broadcast gives almost no sense of where the ceremony is happening. When Hamburg hosted the final draw for EURO 2024, the city's marketing body wanted that rare global moment to promote Hamburg itself.
Hamburg is home to one of the world's biggest container ports, sitting just opposite the Elbphilharmonie concert hall where UEFA held the draw. So the activation let the city's own industry perform the ceremony: as teams were drawn inside, port workers outside rebuilt the draw with shipping containers, making the working harbour the backdrop of the event.
The rebuilt draw was live-streamed into the world, giving millions of viewers an image that could only be Hamburg. The idea turned an anonymous sporting ritual into a live picture of the city and is preserved in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- The event already had the audience; restaging it in the city's own landscape made the place the story without interrupting the draw.
- An authentic working port rather than a set or graphic meant the promotion and the city were the same thing.
- Because the image was live, fans and media consumed the promotion as part of the news event itself.
- The staging used the venue's real surroundings instead of a fabricated set, so the spectacle borrowed a global audience at little extra cost.
What it did
A ceremony whose venue is normally invisible suddenly had an unmistakable backdrop — Hamburg's working container port — and that live image carried the moment around the world. The work is held in the D&AD awards archive.
What you can take
If your place has a signature landscape, restage the world's big media events inside it: the event's own audience then promotes the place while they watch.
Since then
The Bigger Draw was built for the minutes of the ceremony: a live image created while the world was already watching the draw. Its legacy is the proof that a city can borrow a global event's audience by staging the event inside its own identity — and the work remains in the D&AD awards archive.
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