Get Shirty – Football Sponsorship Rides The Recession
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This season sees a lot of new faces in the Premier League, with the likes of Blackpool making their first appearance in the top flight for nearly 40 years. Manchester City have introduced a number of world class players to the delights of English football, and Roberto Di Matteo gets a chance to cut his teeth in management at the highest level for the first time. There are also several new sponsors on the front of Premier League shirts as a number of brands are making their debuts as football shirt sponsors on the ever expanding commercial side of the game.
The onset of the recession saw the sponsorship industry change as brands concentrated on leveraging existing sponsorships and deriving maximum value from minimum investment. Some high profile brands dropped out of sponsorship altogether (AIG / Manchester United), while a number scaled back their activity to reduce costs (Vodafone, Carlsberg etc). However, even during a buyers’ market, the prestige rights holders could still find sponsors who paid a premium. You only need to look at this season’s Premier League shirt deals to see an example of this.
Liverpool lost their long-standing shirt sponsor Carlsberg for the beginning of the 2010/11 season and not qualifying for the Champions League could have seriously hampered their search for a lucrative new deal. This was not the case as Standard Chartered stepped in with an offer that more than doubled the fee received from Carlsberg (around £7.5million). Insurance giants Aon have taken on the Manchester United sponsorship after the collapse of AIG making it one of the biggest shirt sponsorships in the history of the game. The fee is widely reported to be as much as £20million per season for the most desirable property in world football.
These clubs may be the cream of English football and can justify such astronomical sums of money for sponsorship, however a little further down the table some of the more “unfashionable” sides have also seen their sponsorship revenues increase. After a successful run in the Europa League last season, Fulham have benefitted with a shirt sponsorship fee increase of a third on 2009/10 as FX Pro pay around £4million a season. Meanwhile, following promotion from The Championship in May, Blackpool’s deal with Wonga is worth about £500,000 a year, more than twice as much as last season’s partnership with Carbrini.
This just goes to show the value for brands involved in The Premier League, and how the premium rights holders in football have not been affected by the recession.
OB