The Festival of Champions
Orchard’s UEFA Champions League journey began in 2017 when the final visited our hometown of Cardiff. Cut to two years later and Orchard was tasked by UEFA to plan and produce a four-day festival across three sites in Madrid.
Running alongside the UEFA Champions League Final, the UEFA Champions Festival plays a key role in fan engagement, taking the brand beyond its traditional audience and enhancing the experience for supporters.
A host of football activities, interactive commercial displays, competitions, live music, and sporting and cultural events engage the local and regional community and enrich the travelling fans’ experience.
Event Management
Video Content and Production
Artist Management
Graphic Design
Orchard was tasked with managing the production of the four-day festival, which included site design and management, stage production, design and branding management, security, production and artist booking.
Alongside the production of the event, we were also challenged with procuring suitable offices, volunteer spaces and catering options for the large project team, which required interaction with local agencies and businesses across central Madrid.
One of the most important elements to deliver was the management of Commercial Partners (Mastercard, Pepsi, Heineken, Expedia, Nissan, Sony PlayStation, Gazprom and Santander), who would be activating their brands at the festival.
Having been involved in producing the stage content for the UEFA Champions Festival in Cardiff (2017) and Kyiv (2018), we were fortunate to have a good understanding of the event prior to making the step up to full event management.
Through partnerships with the City and Community of Madrid, local and national police and the local organising committee, we secured spaces at Casa de la Panaderia and Real Casa de Correos. With space at a premium, we also decided to construct a bespoke structure over a historic fountain on Puerta del Sol. This provided an elevated platform on which to place the Champions League Trophy Display – the festival’s most popular attraction.
Another highlight of the festival was the Ultimate Champions Tournament, where legends of the game such as Roberto Carlos, Luis Figo and a host of other former stars battled it out on the Ultimate Champions Pitch. We produced a bespoke 5-a-side football arena upon the historic Plaza Mayor, working with Spanish, Portuguese and Ukrainian suppliers to build the structure, playing surface and tribune seating.
Working with Pepsi, we used our background as music promoters to contract global superstar duo Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and undertook the production planning for the rest of the Main Stage artists including Columbian superstars Sebastian Yatra and Carlos Vives.
“The UEFA Champions Festival 2019 was the most successful edition in its 10-year history, with police estimating a staggering 700,000 visitors passing through the event over four days.”
Using UEFA’s Madrid 2019 brand identity we produced branding for the site, including two finalist club crests upon the façade of Real Casa de Correos and a bespoke cut-out trophy display backdrop which utilised silhouettes of Madrid-centric imagery.
The Orchard production team were onsite to capture all the excitement, producing daily highlight films for UEFA’s social media channels and official website.
The UEFA Champions Festival 2019 was the most successful edition in its 10-year history, with police estimating a staggering 700,000 visitors passing through the event over four days.
We were able to showcase our expertise and experience across a wide range of services, from event and exhibition management to branding design, film production, talent booking and entertainment programming.