Prostate charity urges fans to ditch rivalry for new goal

Prostate Cancer UK is launching a new creative platform for its Prostate United fundraising campaign, designed to boost sign-ups and brand awareness among male sports fans, as the first step in a three-year strategy to build the activity across the UK.

“This Club Matters More” is the final work by the Elvis creative division before it switches to Wonderhood Studios ownership and is being fronted by a 30″ film. The platform is designed to drive 7,861 sign-ups to this October’s Prostate United challenge. The target is a benchmark set to significantly boost brand awareness.

Prostate United was founded in 2018 by Stephen Gilpin and Ross Burbeary after Stephen lost his grandfather to prostate cancer. Now in its eighth year, the challenge asks participants to walk or run every day throughout October to raise money and awareness for the disease. But with football more saturated, divided and chaotic than ever, cutting through to its core audience of football fans has become increasingly difficult.

Elvis’s strategic insight taps into fans’ appetite to unite over a common cause, offering the collective pride they are driven by, regardless of who they support on a Saturday.

The creative idea positions Prostate United as a real football club, complete with the noise, pride and rivalry of the game, but in service of a bigger goal. Every fan, whatever their allegiance, is united against one rival that matters more than any football club: prostate cancer.

The approach borrows directly from football’s banter culture, and the debates over which club is biggest, whose fans are loudest, whose away end matters more – using that instantly recognisable language as the hook for the campaign’s hero film.

The 30″ film opens on a series of quick cuts showing different men pulling on different team shirts, before we settle on the number 45. The scene cuts outside, where the same man is now running alongside another fan in a Prostate United shirt, building pace and a flash of friendly rivalry between them, before revealing the fact that the number 45 refers to the fact that every 45 minutes a man dies. It closes on the endline: Prostate United. This Club Matters More.

Alongside the film, Elvis has developed a set of creative guidelines to guide all future Prostate United communications, ensuring the platform stays football-native, consistent over the long term, and effective at driving fundraising.

The campaign runs across social media in the UK from 15 July, supported by wider Prostate Cancer UK brand activity, and builds towards the Prostate United challenge itself in October.

Prostate United asks participants to walk, run or cycle every day throughout October, choosing a daily distance to suit their fitness level – from a 3km walk to a 25km cycle – and fundraising via a JustGiving page linked to their chosen football club or team. It has grown into the UK’s biggest grassroots football fundraising challenge, uniting fans, players and staff from clubs across the football pyramid, from grassroots sides up to the Premier League, and has helped raise over £1m for Prostate Cancer UK, winning an award at the 2025 Football Business Awards along the way.

Prostate cancer affects 1 in 8 men in the UK and is now the most common cancer in the UK, with the risk rising to 1 in 4 for Black men. On average, one man dies from the disease every 45 minutes – the length of half a football match.

Prostate Cancer UK head of events and community fundraising Seren Evans said: “What started as a football-led movement eight years ago has grown into a powerful team effort, uniting people from every corner of the football community behind a shared goal of saving men’s lives.

“This Club Matters More captures exactly what Prostate United is about; rivalry set aside for a cause that matters more than any result on a Saturday. Every mile covered and every pound raised helps fund more ground-breaking research and work towards a screening programme, to catch prostate cancer early and save lives.”

Elvis chief strategy officer Matt Rhodes added: “Football fans understand rivalry, pride and loyalty better than almost anyone. We wanted Prostate United to speak that same language, not sit outside it. This Club Matters More gives the campaign a platform that feels genuinely part of football culture rather than a charity borrowing its imagery – and one that can grow with Prostate United over the next three years.”

Prostate charity urges fans to ditch rivalry for new goal

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