Premier League club's marketing appeal

The 2016/2017 Premier League football season is vastly approaching and many of our favourite teams have new commercial sponsors and partners. We decided to have a look at the colossal amount of money these global brands spend on such marketing activity.

Just last week Richard Branson’s Virgin Money teamed up with Manchester United as their UK Financial Services Partner, adding their name to the forever growing list of global brands associating themselves with premier league clubs.

These brands choose to spend their marketing millions every year on Premier League sponsorship packages. To put some figures in perspective, Chevrolet pay Manchester United £47m per year to sponsor their shirt and Adidas pay them £75m per year for the same luxury. Chelsea come a close second with Yokohama paying £40m per year and Arsenal are in third place, with Fly Emirates paying £30m per year. In fourth place is Liverpool receiving £25m from financial services giant, Standard Chartered, closely followed by Manchester City’s £20m from Etihad Airways. For the season 2015/2016, if we combine all twenty Premier League clubs’ shirt sponsorship deals we get £220m, this will be considerably more for the new season once new deals are finalised.

Is it money well spent?

The Premier League’s platform as a global event proves very appealing to sponsors, after all which marketer would not love to see their brand across the chest of world renowned football players. Brands can have a calculated shot at gaining a foothold in another international market, just as Chevrolet are doing in the UK. SportsPesa a Kenyan betting company have just yesterday announced a new shirt sponsorship deal with Premier League new boys, Hull City. It will be the first time SportsPesa have targeted the UK and you can’t argue it’s probably the strongest route to their target audience.

For some brands it’s very clear to see the long term success this advertising/marketing opportunity has proven to be. Carlsberg famously had their name printed on every Liverpool shirt for 18 years from 1992 to 2010, the effects of this are still paying dividends today. Sharp sponsored Manchester United’s shirt for the same length of time before Vodafone took over for another 6 years, both enjoying huge global coverage due to United’s success. Sega Dreamcast and mobile network provider, O2 dominated Arsenal’s shirt from 1999 to 2006 during their supremacy and benefited greatly.

So we have had a glance at how some global brands are jumping on to the back of sports teams. It’s very unlikely we’ll be marketing your business across a football strip, but we can find the right target audience for you that will impact your business for many years to come.

While we are on the topic. If you think you have what it takes to beat us at Fantasy Football, we welcome you to join the First Internet Premier League. To do so create a team before 13^th August using the official Barclays Premier League website. Link provided:

https://fantasy.premierleague.com/

Once you have created your team go to leagues, join private league and enter this code to join the First Internet Premier League 159184-51898. There will be a bottle of champagne for the winner!!

Good luck!