Two months of planning. An estimated 7,500 total pieces. Untold hours of work. All of it has turned out to be worth it this summer for HOF Builder founder Scott Brown.
A lifelong Lego fan and collector that specializes in custom builds has created his biggest internet breaking build to date, a World Cup Tournament tracker in Lego form. The massive three-section display features the results from the group stage, a working television screen to track games and a section featuring the knockout bracket.
Each section features custom built Lego flags representing each country competing in the tournament and also incorporates the six official Lego World Cup sets made for the tournament this summer.
Watch Ohio High School Sports Live on NFHS Network all year
“I’m doing Lego stuff full time now” said Brown, a former Canton Repository editor. “I’m always keeping an eye out for what might be popular or what might catch the eye coming up. I knew the World Cup was coming up and I had done something similar for the NCAA basketball tournament in the past so I went for it.”
Browns instincts were correct. While the NCAA Lego tournament brackets did well, making a bracket for the world’s most popular sport has taken recognition of his work to new heights.
“The reaction has been insane,” Brown said. “The videos for this build have really taken off. I do a quick little video after each game that is about 60 seconds long recapping the most recent game and updating the bracket and I had one of those reach one million views (last week).”
Brown has gained more than 100,000 followers on Instagram since the start of the World Cup and now has over 230,000 followers on the platform total. He has also picked up 75,000 followers on TikTok. His fame has spread quickly among the Lego community as evidenced by a recent trip to Chicago to show his latest build at a Lego Convention.
“People recognized me from the videos,” Brown said. “I had multiple requests for my autograph in Chicago. Around town, I am starting to be recognized as the Lego guy from the videos in addition to my time at the Repository.”
It’s hard not to be impressed by the complexity, detail and ability of Brown to improvise on the fly. Nowhere is that more on display than in his work creating some of the flags for each country.
“Mexico has a green snake on its flag,” Brown said. “I eventually settled on painting a Lego hot dog green and incorporating it into the flag to make it stand in for the snake. Lego does not make a green star. The official Lego star only comes in a couple of colors. I ended up just grabbing a can of green spray paint and painting a gold star to make it work.”
It all adds up to one of the most wholesome follows on the internet.
Brown’s work can be seen at @hofbuilder on Instagram and TikTok and Hall of Fame Builder on YouTube.
For the latest World Cup news, visit https://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/world-cup/
Reach Cliff at cliff.hickman@cantonrep.com
On X: @chickmanREP
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Scott Brown’s Lego World Cup tracker becomes a social media winner
Reporting by Cliff Hickman, Canton Repository / The Repository
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Cliff Hickman, Canton Repository | USA TODAY Network
