Costa Rica's National Amputee Soccer Team and Havas Tribu launched My Spare Boot in March 2019, selling players' unused boots to fund their historic Amputee
ARCHIVEHow Costa Rica's Amputee Soccer Team Turned Spare Boots Into World Cup Funding
My Spare Boot is a March 2019 digital fundraising campaign created by Havas Tribu for the Costa Rican National Amputee Soccer Team, designed to sell players' unused soccer boots to finance the team's participation in the Adsoftheworld.clapboard.com/archive/national-lottery-corner-kick-sports">Amputee World Cup following the country's first-ever qualification for the tournament.
Costa Rica's National Amputee Soccer Team qualified for the Amputee World Cup for the first time in the country's history, according to Ads of the World. That milestone carried a financial burden the team could not meet through conventional sponsorship or government support alone. The squad lacked the economic resources required to attend the competition, a reality that threatened to strand a historic achievement before it reached the international stage. Havas Tribu, operating from San José, Costa Rica, identified a solution rooted in the players' own physical condition: because each athlete competes as an amputee, they use only one boot per match, leaving the second boot permanently unworn.
The campaign mechanism was direct and elegant. Players donated their spare, unused boots — footwear that would otherwise sit idle — to be sold as a fundraising product. The act of purchase became a gesture of solidarity, converting an ordinary sporting good into a symbol of inclusion and resilience. Published in Costa Rica in March 2019 per Ads of the World, the campaign operated as a digital-first initiative, comprising a single core media asset that communicated the concept with precision. Havas Tribu positioned the Costa Rican National Amputee Soccer Team not as a charity case but as a competitive national squad deserving the same pathway to international competition as any other. The campaign carried a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
Havas Tribu anchored the My Spare Boot campaign in an insight that was simultaneously practical and profound, according to LinkedIn. Every amputee soccer player owns a boot they will never use. That physical truth — unremarkable in isolation — became the entire strategic engine of the campaign once reframed as an asset rather than an absence.
Costa Rica's National Amputee Soccer Team operated within what Ads of the World and AdRuby both describe as a nonprofit-oriented adaptive-sport ecosystem, competing not for commercial market share but for sponsorship attention, donor goodwill, and tournament funding. In Costa Rica, adaptive sports organisations rarely command the media infrastructure or corporate backing available to mainstream football bodies, making unconventional fundraising methods a practical necessity rather than a creative luxury, according to Presidencia Gobiernocarlosalvarado Cr. The campaign's design acknowledged this reality directly: rather than appealing for donations in abstract terms, it gave supporters a tangible transaction — a product with a story, a price, and a purpose.
The competitive landscape for fundraising attention in Central American adaptive sport is crowded with cause-marketing efforts that rely on emotional imagery without a clear call to action. By contrast, My Spare Boot gave potential supporters something to buy, transforming passive sympathy into active participation. The European Amputee Football Federation, according to thornico.com, ran its inaugural Champions League in May 2019 with six clubs across Turkey, Russia, and other markets, illustrating that amputee football was gaining organisational momentum globally at precisely the moment Costa Rica needed to assert its place on that world stage. Havas Tribu's strategy ensured the Costa Rican National Amputee Soccer Team could meet that moment. The timing of the campaign's March 2019 publication, as reported by AdRuby, preceded the Cannes Lions submission cycle, suggesting the agency understood the work had resonance beyond the local fundraising objective.
Javier Urbaneja served as Chief Creative Officer on My Spare Boot, leading the Havas Tribu team responsible for translating a logistical reality into a culturally resonant creative idea. Additional creative direction was provided by Joshua Rueda Mego and Oscar Carrera, with Mauricio Mejía among the team's contributors, as documented in the campaign's production credits per clapboard.com.
The creative execution for the Costa Rica campaign rested on restraint. A single media asset carried the full weight of the concept, a structural choice that reflected confidence in the idea's inherent clarity. In a category where cause-marketing campaigns frequently over-explain their emotional logic, My Spare Boot allowed the product — the boot itself — to function as both the message and the mechanism. The spare boot is not a metaphor layered onto the campaign; it is the campaign. That compression of idea and object is the work's defining creative achievement.
Havas Tribu's production approach aligned with the realities of a nonprofit client operating in Costa Rica's advertising market. The digital format allowed the campaign to reach potential supporters without the production costs associated with broadcast or out-of-home execution. The single-asset structure also gave the idea a focused distribution footprint, ensuring that every exposure carried the full concept rather than fragmenting it across multiple formats. The decision to publish in March 2019, as listed on Best Ads on TV per clapboard.com, positioned the campaign ahead of the international award season, and the creative team's economy of means proved to be a strength rather than a constraint when the work reached international juries.
ARCHIVEMy Spare Boot earned a Clio Sports Silver award in 2019 in the Public Relations and Social Good category, as reported by clapboard.com. The same campaign achieved a Cannes Lions Direct shortlist in June 2019, also per clapboard.com — two independent validations from the advertising industry's most scrutinised award bodies, confirming the work's standing beyond the Costa Rican market.
No verified fundraising totals or digital engagement metrics for the My Spare Boot campaign are publicly available from named sources. The absence of disclosed revenue figures is consistent with the campaign's nonprofit context: the Costa Rican National Amputee Soccer Team and Havas Tribu prioritised participation over performance reporting. What the structural evidence does confirm is that the campaign succeeded in its primary objective. The team qualified for the Amputee World Cup for the first time in the country's history, according to Ads of the World, and the campaign was explicitly created to fund that attendance. The creative mechanism — selling unused boots through a digital channel — required minimal infrastructure and generated a product-based revenue stream independent of traditional donor fatigue dynamics.
The Clio Sports Silver and Cannes Lions shortlist together represent a meaningful international footprint for a single-asset campaign produced in Costa Rica for a nonprofit client with limited resources. Havas Tribu's My Spare Boot demonstrates that structural effectiveness — a tight insight, a clear product, a direct ask — can generate award-level resonance without scale. The campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
My Spare Boot was a March 2019 digital fundraising campaign by Havas Tribu for the Costa Rican National Amputee Soccer Team. It sold players' unused soccer boots — unworn because amputee players only need one — to raise funds for the team's historic first appearance at the Amputee World Cup, as documented by Ads of the World.
Havas Tribu, based in San José, Costa Rica, created the My Spare Boot campaign. Chief Creative Officer Javier Urbaneja led the team, with creative directors Joshua Rueda Mego and Oscar Carrera and contributor Mauricio Mejía, per clapboard.com. The campaign was published in March 2019 as a single digital media asset.
My Spare Boot received a Clio Sports Silver award in the Public Relations and Social Good category in May 2019 and earned a Cannes Lions Direct shortlist in June 2019, both reported by clapboard.com. These recognitions established the Costa Rica campaign as a notable international entry from a nonprofit adaptive-sport client.
Costa Rica's National Amputee Soccer Team qualified for the Amputee World Cup for the first time in the country's history but lacked the economic resources to attend, according to Ads of the World. The My Spare Boot campaign was created specifically to bridge that funding gap through the direct sale of players' unused boots.
Havas Tribu identified that amputee soccer players use only one boot per match, leaving the second permanently unworn. The My Spare Boot campaign converted that spare boot into a sellable fundraising product, turning a physical reality of the players' condition into both the campaign's core insight and its primary revenue mechanism, per clapboard.com.
My Spare Boot is the only campaign listed in the Costa Rican National Amputee Soccer Team's available brand portfolio on Ads of the World, as noted by clapboard.com. No prior documented campaigns for the team appear in publicly indexed advertising records, making the 2019 Havas Tribu work the team's sole verified advertising entry.
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