Tom Savage sent Juventus their stripes from Nottingham. We put him back on the pitch the way a new generation actually plays, inside EA Sports FC. Fans built their own Tom at Notts County, any face, any look, then ran weekly shared challenges and posted the clips for prizes and status. 

Co-creation is why it sticks: people protect what they have made, and a game that already sells more than two million copies a year in the UK is a stadium you do not have to hire. Seventy-five percent of players in the franchise have followed new teams because of what they met on the virtual pitch. Each video carried the fashion house on the Magpie shirt and a 120-year-old name into the feed. Tom came back looking like whoever pressed create.