Entrant Company
La Web / Buentipo
Entry Type
Media Brands, Companies, & Broadcasters
Medium
Experiential/Activation
Category
Social Good/Community
Pelotica de Goma is deeply embedded in Venezuelan culture as the street version of baseball, the raw entry point that raised MLB legends. However, years of violent crime, economic crisis, and lost public spaces pushed children indoors, causing the game to fade from everyday life. At the same time, younger generations began consuming sports digitally as content rather than participating physically. Vacílate Esto intervened by turning the street game into a professional league, and subsequently evolving it into "The Legacy": a structural platform built to guarantee its cultural and commercial continuity. Instead of relying on paid media in a highly constrained market, the strategy built a self-sustaining ecosystem across three pillars:
Physical Infrastructure & Access: Launching the Vacílate Esto Arena, a dedicated venue open 7 days a week via online booking, paired with free community youth academies and tryouts in vulnerable barrios.
Digital & Gaming Convergence: Integrating the league into Venezuela's largest eSports Expo (15,600+ attendees), launching a mobile gaming app, and streaming 384+ live hours across YouTube, Twitch, TV, and radio.
Institutionalization & Structural Inclusion: Declaring January 26 as official "Pelotica de Goma Day" and enforcing mandatory mixed-gender rosters (minimum two women per team) with female leadership, restoring the original inclusive nature of street play.
Impact:
The initiative reached 82% of the population, created paid contracts for +80 athletes, brought over 25 major brands (Pepsi, Gatorade, Maltín Polar, KFC) into an unpaid co-creation model, and established a scalable sports platform now entering its fourth competition cycle