Football rivalries create a highly emotional context in which antagonistic or comparative advertising is expected to increase attention and engagement. Consequently, such strategies are considered vital for brands seeking to stand out in saturated markets by appealing to deep-seated consumer identities. Despite the ongoing debate regarding the risks of these advertisements, they remain widely used in rivalry-driven contexts under the assumption that they deliver superior results compared to traditional forms. Our study examines whether creative antagonistic advertising increase click-through rates in a real-life setting. We conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 full factorial field experiment using Google Ads display campaigns targeting a 30-km radius around Kraków (Poland). Eight different static banner variants manipulated emotional tone (antagonistic vs. neutral), use of color (club-related shirt colors vs. grayscale), and format size (200 × 200 px vs. 250 × 250 px). Click-through rate (CTR) was selected as the primary dependent variable. The campaign generated a total of 9,550 impressions and 283 clicks (overall CTR = 2.96%) across all variants. The results were formally analyzed using a series of nonparametric tests. In general, the analysis revealed that factor-level contrasts were non-significant, with the exception of one pairwise comparison. Contrary to some previous studies, we found no evidence of a systematic CTR advantage for antagonizing messages or club colors in this football rivalry setting. These findings highlight the need for more in-depth local testing and caution against assuming that performance necessarily improves as a result of antagonization in sports advertising.