Ad of the Day | Back Market Swaps Shirts for Phones in World Cup Fan Campaign

Jun. 29, 2026

As the world goes increasingly football crazy, Back Market and Bundesliga legends FC St. Pauli have flipped one of football's most famous after-match rituals on its head - by giving supporters the chance to own the actual phones of Bundesliga stars Joel Fujita and Connor Metcalfe. rather than just their shirts. 

From grassroots grounds to the World Cup stage, fans asking players for their jerseys once the final whistle has blown has become a tradition over the past couple of decades, following on from the custom of opposing teams swapping shirts at the end of games. 

But now instead of shirts, Back Market, the world's largest pure-play premium refurbished tech marketplace, has teamed up with cult Hamburg club FC St. Pauli to launch The Players' Drop - a campaign that gives fans the chance to win the actual smartphones used by first-team players Fujita and Metcalfe.

After all, while match shirts have long been treasured pieces of football memorabilia, our phones are even more precious and never leave our sides, containing our entire lives and memories in their shiny casings. So Back Market decided to give football shirt gifting a modern twist with The Players’ Drop and pose the question: could a player’s phone become the next great fan collectable?

To help launch the campaign last month, Back Market enlisted German football influencer @gianna_fs, who hosted a film which showed two ‘secret agents’ set out to collect the players' devices, secure their signatures and hand the phones over for refurbishment. By giving each phone its own story, the film turned the devices into fan memorabilia.

Gianna then asked fans to craft their own placards asking for the phones of the players, and post photos of their signs at the team’s Millerntor Stadium at a match - or from home if they weren’t local. Gianna later reviewed and selected the winning placards.

The Players’ Drop campaign, created by Back Market and creative agency INNOCEAN Berlin, has already become a football fan phenomenon, generating 9.9 million hits across YouTube, and Instagram to date, with numbers still growing. 

Alexandra Brandt, Head of Marketing EU at Back Market, explained:

"Refurbished tech should not feel like a compromise. It should feel desirable in its own right. With The Players' Drop, we found a way to make that idea tangible by turning a player's phone into something fans would genuinely want to own."