A Spanish soccer club with historically poor attendance has found a strange new way to build up its fan base—by helping fans breed and repopulate the stadium.
A recently launched Tinder-style dating app is enabling fans of the club, Getafe CF, to meet at matches, hook up right then and there, and have lots of babies—“because if we breed amongst ourselves there’ll be more of us,” an online ad promoting the app points out.
The rather grim depiction of romance in the stadium—posted on Facebook by Getafe CF on Oct. 13—looks like a cross between an Pedro Almodóvar film and a public service announcement against sex trafficking. It shows fans, presumably singles, using the app at a Getafe match to find other supporters of Los Azulones nearby. It then descends with the strangers into bathroom stalls, utility closets, and stairwells of the stadium, where they proceed to have sex.
Called Getafinder, the app only works in the stands of and nearby the club’s home field, Coliseum Alfonso Pérez, according to the ad. “Let’s have children, together, here, on our home ground,” the announcer in the spot declares, before two couples sneak away.
Fans on the team’s Facebook page appear to have gotten a kick out of the marketing stunt—laughing it off and calling the app a great idea. Others on social media wondered why their favorite teams didn’t have dating apps.
It’s an odd premise, but not a huge stretch when you consider dating apps like Free Agent and Paranoid Fan, which find matches for serious sports fans based on their favorite teams.
The effort was created for the club by creative agency el Ruso de Rocky, and it appears to be part of a larger ploy to boost attendance at El Getafe matches, which have historically had among the poorest turnouts of the first division clubs in La Liga, the top Spanish league. A spokeswoman for el Ruso de Rocky said the club approved the final product.
The dating app hasn’t yet found widespread popularity among fans. Since debuting in the Google Play store on Sept. 30, the Getafinder app has been downloaded “hundreds” of times, according to Gigigo, the digital shop that designed and developed the app. Production house The Gang and Serena also collaborated on the project.
A spokeswoman for Getafe CF told Quartz that the club’s marketing department was involved in the app’s creation, but would not say to what extent. It was designed to be “fun” campaign, the spokesperson said. She declined to comment further, or make anyone in the marketing department available.
In years past, El Getafe has resorted to other unconventional advertising methods, like a suicidal koala bear mascot, to sell tickets.