Sports Direct ads are always pleasingly off-the-wall: think cameos from famous sportspeople, crazy camera angles and zooms that make people’s faces look as though they’re being pulled through a black hole.
The company's latest Christmas ad delivers more of the same, and honestly, it looks great – as you might expect from LOOSE, the woman behind the ad, otherwise known as the creative director to left-field electronic music star Fred Again..
Whereas Fred Again..’s videos usually show him cycling around Hyde Park on a Lime Bike (and an obscene amount of vertical iPhone footage), here we see a little girl (‘Little Legend Macy’) constructing her Christmas list in front of the telly. Her top wish? To become the best sports star in the world.
Lo and behold, the TV flickers, and before we know it, we’re in some sort of alternative Sports Direct Winter Wonderland populated with more athletic stars than your average Olympics.
In front of our eyes, this kid proceeds to outbox Conor Benn in the ring, outsprint Zarnel Hughes on some kind of cosmic racetrack, and play against Lauren Hemp, Mason Mount and other footie stars in what looks like a match for the ages. There’s a Christmas band featuring Eberechi Eze, Alessia Russo, James Maddison and Eddie Nketiah, of course. And who’s that delivering the Sports Direct package when the doorbell rings in the real world? Why, it looks rather like Brazilian footballer Gabriel Jesus.
Basically, it’s pure wish fulfilment for an eleven-year-old girl (and probably 54 year old boys, and everyone in between who ever wanted to get picked for the team), and it’s all soundtracked by Tears for Fears’ absolute banger Everybody Wants to Rule the World – except that some fool has rewritten it to Everybody Loves This Time of Year, when the original would actually work perfectly well. Please, for the love of God, Christmas ads, stop messing with the good stuff.
Gripes about the song choice aside, it’s all rather sweet, and the quickfire direction makes this an ad with that rarest of traits: rewatchability. Even though, of course, it could never happen in the real world. But wait, what’s that? The doorbell’s ringing…
