Thisisfootball.com Takes Football Down the Mountain in 2015
Thisisfootball.com's 2015 digital campaign 'Skiing and Football – What could possibly go wrong' is a single-asset entertainment film in which two teams play a full game of football while skiing downhill at Geilo, Norway, produced by Playground Production and published in Denmark in May 2015 to dramatise the site's premise that football is everywhere.
The campaign operates as a pure entertainment proposition rather than a conventional product advertisement. Its central mechanic is exactly what the title declares: organised football, played on skis, on a working mountain piste, complete with jumps, tricks, and a concluding attempt to score at the bottom of the slope. The result is a piece of digital content that collapses the boundary between sport and spectacle, inviting audiences to share in the absurdity of the scenario while absorbing Thisisfootball.com's brand identity in the process.
Thisisfootball.com is identified as a Danish football-media portal with an international remit, according to available brand documentation. In Denmark, where football occupies a central position in popular culture and digital media consumption was accelerating rapidly through 2015, the campaign's choice of digital as its sole medium reflects a deliberate alignment with an audience that discovers and shares content through online channels. The campaign contains one media asset, making every second of that single film the entirety of the brand's argument. The title's rhetorical question — 'What could possibly go wrong' — functions as both a creative invitation and a tonal declaration, signalling that Thisisfootball.com is a brand comfortable operating in the register of humour and surprise. That tonal choice would prove to be the campaign's most durable strategic asset.
Thisisfootball.com occupies a specific niche in Denmark's sports media landscape. The brand positions itself as a broad football portal, meaning its competitive challenge in 2015 was not simply attracting football fans but distinguishing itself from established players such as the Danish editions of Eurosport and from international aggregators like Goal.com, both of which competed for the same digitally active football audience across Scandinavia. In that environment, a conventional campaign promoting match coverage or editorial depth would have offered no meaningful differentiation.
The strategic rationale for 'Skiing and Football' rests on the insight that football fans — particularly those who consume content online — respond to content that extends their sense of what football can be, rather than content that simply reflects what football already is. By staging a match in the most implausible setting imaginable, Playground Production created a film that earns attention rather than purchasing it, relying on the inherent shareability of the concept to deliver reach without conventional media spend.
The broader market context supports the logic of this approach. Sports media-rights revenue was projected to rise from approximately 29.2 billion US dollars in 2010 to approximately 35.2 billion US dollars in 2015, representing a compound annual growth rate of 3.8 percent, according to Sports Business Journal. Digital advertising was expected to represent 24.3 percent of global advertising expenditure in 2015, up from lower shares in preceding years, also according to Sports Business Journal. In Denmark specifically, where digital penetration was among the highest in Europe, a single well-constructed digital film could generate disproportionate audience reach for a media brand with modest production resources. The campaign's humour-led tone directly addresses the Danish audience's well-documented appreciation for self-deprecating and absurdist comedy as a mode of cultural communication.
Director Kristian Ussing helmed the production of 'Skiing and Football – What could possibly go wrong', working alongside creative partner Kim Frederiksen, with producer Jon Bager overseeing logistics and director of photography Nikolaj Jungersen responsible for capturing the action on the mountain. Sound was handled by Morten at Freezone, and the film's soundtrack — 'Splinter' by Norwegian electronic artist Savant — provides a kinetic, propulsive score that amplifies the controlled chaos on screen.
The footage was filmed at Geilo, Norway, a well-established ski resort sitting on the plateau between Oslo and Bergen. The choice of Geilo as a location is not incidental. The resort's wide, accessible pistes provided the visual clarity needed to make the football action legible on camera, while its identity as a recognisable Scandinavian ski destination added an additional layer of absurdist contrast — this is not a remote, exotic mountain, but the kind of slope any Danish or Norwegian viewer might have visited with their family. That familiarity sharpens the comedy.
The production enlisted eight named skier-athletes to perform as the two competing teams: Juho Kilkki, Verneri Hannula, Ilkka Hannula, Mats Bjørndal, Mikkel Brusletto Kaupang, Thomas Bondil Lauvrud, Julian Lund Olsen, and Mikkel Hjorth-Pedersen. Their participation transforms the film from a gimmick into a genuine display of physical skill, as the participants are clearly capable of both skiing and, to varying degrees, football. Nikolaj Jungersen's cinematography tracks the action with enough dynamism to convey speed and danger without sacrificing the comedic legibility of each moment. The single-asset format means every edit and every camera angle carries full responsibility for the campaign's impact, a constraint that the production team met with evident craft.
No verified performance data for 'Skiing and Football – What could possibly go wrong' is publicly available. No third-party metrics for view counts, earned media reach, or audience engagement have been confirmed by named sources for this campaign. The Clapboard Score for the campaign stands at 72 out of 100, reflecting a production that demonstrates clear creative and strategic coherence without the supporting performance documentation that would push the score higher.
Structurally, the campaign possesses several characteristics associated with high-performing digital entertainment content in the 2015 media environment. Its single-film format is internally consistent with a share-first distribution logic: one asset, one clear concept, one repeatable title that functions as a search and conversation hook. The phrase 'What could possibly go wrong' is memorable precisely because it is answered visually within the film itself — a rhetorical device that closes the loop for viewers and gives sharers a ready-made caption.
The choice to anchor the campaign in Geilo, Norway, rather than a generic or studio-constructed environment, lends the film a documentary credibility that purely staged stunts sometimes lack. Real snow, real speed, and real skiers performing real football moves on a real mountain create conditions in which the humour feels earned rather than manufactured. For a media portal like Thisisfootball.com, whose currency is authenticity in football culture, that earned quality directly reinforces the brand proposition. In a Danish market where digital content competition was intensifying through 2015, the campaign represents a structurally sound deployment of limited resources against a clearly defined entertainment-first brief.
'Skiing and Football – What could possibly go wrong' is a 2015 digital film by Thisisfootball.com and Playground Production. It shows two teams playing football on skis down a mountain in Geilo, Norway. Published in Denmark in May 2015, it uses humour and spectacle to position Thisisfootball.com as a broad, adventurous football-media platform.
Kristian Ussing directed the campaign. Ussing also served as a creative lead alongside Kim Frederiksen, with Jon Bager producing and Nikolaj Jungersen as director of photography. The production was handled by Playground Production and published in Denmark in May 2015 as a single digital asset.
The footage was filmed at Geilo, Norway. Geilo is a recognised Scandinavian ski resort located on the plateau between Oslo and Bergen. Its wide pistes provided the visual clarity needed to make the football action readable on camera while adding a layer of familiar absurdity for Danish and Norwegian audiences.
Thisisfootball.com is a Danish football-media portal with an international remit. It operates as a digital destination for football content, competing in a Scandinavian market alongside international aggregators and regional sports broadcasters. The 2015 Playground Production campaign is the only documented advertising campaign from the brand in available archive records.
The campaign uses 'Splinter' by Savant as its soundtrack. Savant is a Norwegian electronic music artist, and the track's driving tempo complements the downhill action filmed at Geilo, Norway. Sound for the production was handled by Morten at Freezone, contributing to the film's kinetic and humour-led tone.
The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative coherence and a clearly executed humour-led concept by Playground Production, with the absence of publicly verified performance metrics preventing a higher rating. The campaign was published in Denmark in May 2015 as a single digital asset.
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