It's pretty big news in the soccer world when a player ditches the English Premier League in favor of Major League Soccer. When it was officially announced that Jermain Defoe would be leaving Tottenham for Toronto in February, it's safe to say some soccer fans in the U.K. were pretty surprised.
Toronto FC tried to capture these reactions in their new It's a Bloody Big Deal campaign.
Pretty good ad, even better slogan. It's not too often you see a team recognize how crazy a signing is, let alone build an ad campaign around it. It's also pretty accurate that fans abroad may have had a strong reaction seeing a well-known English player ditch the EPL for a league which used to be referred to as the "Mickey Mouse League" in some circles.
At the same time, I (as a soccer fan) long for the day where signings like these aren't shocking. Those days are coming as more and more big names jump ship. It may still be a long ways off, but these types of ads may not exist in the not so distant future.
