Korfball features in prime-time Sony commercial

With close to 150,000 views on Youtube within a week of its release, this will easily become the most watched korfball-video ever produced: A commercial for the Sony experia in Hong Kong airs on major television channels across the territory, and in the entire subway system on the trains’ video screens.

The video illustrates the Hong Kong spirit by telling the story of the Hong Kong U23 national team that had qualified for the 2012 World Championship but did not have the funding to travel. The team took their fate in their own hand and started a fund raising campaign on facebook: “A court for every dollar” where the team took up the challenge to run around a korfball court for every dollar donated. The campaing attracted attention of local newspapers and other media at the time, who started to pressure the sports ministry who eventually came in with financial help for the team, to supplement the funding raised by the campaign.

Kwok Kuen Ham, captain of the team (who also became topscorer at the World Championship U23) was one of the initiators of the campaign, and was approached by Sony earlier this year when they were developing the promotion campaign for the launch of the new Experia camera: “Sony contacted me on Facebook to find out whether we would be interested in working with them to make their new commercial advertisement, since they really believed we represented the Hong Kong spirit. Our story became the story of the new commercial.” The shooting took place earlier this year with an extensive production crew. Later, an additional day of shooting was done with korfball being played on one of the piers in Hong Kong. This should become the footing for a longer documentary on the story of Hong Kong’s U23 team: Korfball Everywhere.