NRL’s ‘Instabilia’ auction of Origin memorabilia still waiting for final bid surge
The NRL’s bid to engage fans in a real-time auction with memorabilia from the final State of Origin clash on Wednesday night still has a way to go before being deemed a success, with barely 200 bids placed on footballs, boots and mouthguards.
Launched with little pre-game hype by the NRL and agency VML, the idea of the promotion – which will benefit charity Lifeline – was to put significant items featuring in the game up for auction as the game progressed.
Items including the tryline corner post from the first try of the game, Sam Thaiday’s boots and Cameron Smith’s mouth guard – removed at one stage as he remonstrated with the referee – were put on sale seconds after they featured in the match.
Epic fail
Who wants memorabilia from a dead rubber match?
Concept is sound, execution was not.
Actually, I can’t see how this has been a fail at all.
It’s a clever idea, adds a fan experience element for fans both at the stadium and at home (although yes I found auctioning a players pants odd) and if you add up all of the bids (So what if 200? Thurston’s headgear is over $4000) which are legitimate then it’s over $11,000 raised for charity. That’s a huge win for the charity and I think some bids have already ended so possibly more money has been raised.
I can see other merch items being added to this and the list could be endless with patches of the turf where special moments occurred to game day notes/plays, mouth guards etc….it’s an interesting idea and to call that a fail is a bit of a uninformed comment.
Each to their own but I thought it was a unique idea for fans.