Real Salt Lake & Utah Royals: Find the Mascot

#6264

𝐀 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝-𝐭𝐡𝐞-𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐭 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞.

Leo the Lion, the mascot for Real Salt Lake.
Cleo the Lioness, the mascot for the Utah Royals.
The best way to meet them? In the Utah Soccer app.

Last December, the two mascots dressed up as elves (digital, of course) and hid in plain sight, inside the Utah Soccer app.

From December 8-12, each digital elf popped up somewhere new in the app. Five Leos to find in RSL mode. Five Cleos to find in Utah Royals mode. And a different hiding spot every day: a title bar one day, a fan profile page another day, a roster carousel, and yes, even in a Know Before You Go icon. Uncover five elves, and you could earn a shot at a holiday gift pack.

For fans, page scrolls and button taps became a daily treasure hunt, driving increased views, clicks, logins, and segmentation.

👑 Single Sign-On tied every tap to a real fan.
👑 Segmentation grouped fans by how far they’d made it.
👑 Notifications saved their progress, and found the winners at the end.

The best fan engagement doesn't feel like engagement.
It feels like pure, irresistible childhood fun.

👏 𝖪𝖴𝖣𝖮𝖲. Justin Dennon Jr., Mandi Hildt, your team was the first to come up with this clever and creative digital treasure-hunt concept, and it's now a widespread best practice in our platform. This is how you deliver joy, engagement, and pure fun to the fans, and we're absolutely thrilled with how it turned out. Thank you for coming to us with this innovative idea. This is all you.

🎬 𝖢𝖱𝖤𝖣𝖨𝖳𝖲. George Oakley, Alexis Giobbi, and Nathaniel Shi for building out the concept. Ana Baskinger for the 𝘚𝘩𝘪𝘱 𝘏𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴 graphic.