SiriusXM Canada has launched “Rock the Grey Cup,” an online fan-voting competition that will give one Canadian band the chance to perform live at the 100th Grey Cup Festival, which kicks off on Nov. 17  in Toronto.

The satelite radio station has been involved with the CFL’s Grey Cup for the past several years, but this year’s contest is its biggest activation for the sporting event yet, says Greg Cormier, director of marketing, SiriusXM Canada.

He adds that the brand previously had on-site activations and stadium advertising as well as small contests largely targeted to its subscribers for its sponsorship of the event (in 2007 and 2010). He expects this year’s sponsor activation to reach a larger audience of sports fans and music lovers, with a slight male skew.

“We wanted to take advantage of the 100th Grey Cup because there would be a lot more fan interest across the country,” he says. “We thought it would be a great opportunity to get the SiriusXM brand associated with this event and to further the relationship we’ve already established with the CFL over the past years, while making a bigger splash.”

Bands from each CFL city performed an original set during a regular season game last month, and the broadcaster recently uploaded videos of each performance to its microsite. Until Oct. 12, fans can view the videos and vote for their favourite band to play at the festival and the Grey Cup itself. Consumers who vote are entered in the second layer of the contest for the chance to win a VIP package to the fest which includes accommodation, airfare and two tickets to the sold-out event.

The campaign promoting the contest is primarily digital, and includes pre-roll video, display ads and homepage takeovers on CFL league and team websites as well as on TSN.ca.  Media placement was handled by S&E Sponsorship Group and creative was done in-house by SiriusXM in conjunction with TSN.

“For this [contest] we have representation across a range of CFL cities, we have deep integration of social media and it makes extensive use of video which is a real driver for social media sites in terms of interest and engagement for fans,” says Cormier. “It’s a much bigger presence than what we’ve had in previous years.”