A new football season has kicked off and, for a moment at least, optimism is all around as every club and every fan starts the new campaign with dreams of glory. At the same time, a host of sponsors – some familiar, but many of them new to football this season – begin their journeys too. So, in the time-honoured manner of early season previews, let’s take a look at some of the sponsorships, sponsors and trends to look out for.

England – this space for sale.

The England team has of course started the season without a team sponsor, the FA having so far failed to find a replacement for Nationwide in the wake of England’s disastrous World Cup. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the FA to fill the gap and which company comes on board to partner a team, manager and organisation with, for the time being at least, a lot of on- and off- field baggage.

England 2018?

Everybody remembers where they were when London won the IOC vote to stage the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Will we all look back on 2 December 2010 in the same way? That is of course the day when we’ll find out whether the dream scenario of a 2018 World Cup in England will follow London 2012 and RWC 2015. Whichever way the FIFA vote goes, it will have a defining effect on the zeitgeist of this season – and many seasons to come if it goes the right way. Let’s hope it does.

Rise of the New Red Corporates

Manchester United and Liverpool start this season with new shirt sponsors, Aon and Standard Chartered respectively. Both are primarily corporate sponsorships focused on driving awareness, in particular among the clubs’ Far East fan bases. But both will need to do more than use the sponsorships as ‘walking billboards’ (as the CEO of one was quoted the other day) to drive credibility and relevance in the UK, particularly – being financial brands – against the background of the two clubs’ debt issues. To compare in parallel how Aon and Standard Chartered approach the challenge, particularly in the first, critical year, will be well worth watching.

Energy Wars

Another one to watch is the energy category. One year ago e.on announced that it was not renewing its FA Cup sponsorship. Then npower took over the Football League title sponsorship as well as signing up as a partner of England’s 2018 Bid. Following which, in an unusual and surprising move, e.on did an about-turn and announced a 1-year extension to the FA Cup deal. And so, for one more year at least, battle is re-joined in football between the two brands, npower having previously used its Wembley partnership to regularly ambush e.on, particularly around the FA Cup Final.

Will Barclays find a football point of view?

This season will be Barclays’ seventh as Premiership title sponsors, and I’ll be interested to see how their positioning evolves. Against the background of the banking category’s image problems and the less desirable financial elements of the Premiership – debt and runaway wages – this is a tough job. But to me Barclays’ ‘bringing fans closer to football’ positioning looks increasingly generic and much in need of a more differentiating and resonant point of view.

Spurs – one becomes two

Spurs’ new strategy of having two shirt sponsors – one for Premiership matches, and one for Cup games – has been the big early season sponsorship story, with many observers hailing it as a positive move. I’m not so sure. Whilst there’s no doubt it’s worked for Spurs’ balance sheet – getting them to the financial number they needed, but couldn’t find, from one sponsor – for sponsors and sponsorship I believe it’s a backward step, because it takes sponsorship back to being all about media-led visibility rather than experience-led engagement. And the jury is still very much out as to how Spurs fans will react to another shirt with another sponsor. Watch this space.

Social Football

The 2009/10 domestic football season was the first in which social media really started to make an impact on the football brand landscape, and this trend continued around the World Cup, with even FIFA President Sepp Blatter getting into the act in person on Twitter. Although, sadly, I doubt that we’ll see other top figures from English football officialdom following suit anytime soon, the continuing and inexorable rise of social media to the top table of football marketing strategy is the trend to watch this season, and if you’re a brand in football without a social media strategy and presence, you need one – fast.

This article was first published in the July/August 2010 edition of Platform

By Tim Crow on August 31st, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, FA Cup, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Social Media, Sponsorship

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With the Premier League season just a matter of days away, fans such as myself start to feel excited towards football again (no burn out here Galer!) After being let down as an England fan (again) this summer in South Africa, until Monday the thought of a good season for my club (Aston Villa) was an exciting prospect.

Last season I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Spurs pip Man City to fourth spot and it was hugely satisfying, as a Villa fan, to see Gareth Barry miss out on Champions League football. The 2010/2011 campaign should be another fantastic Premier League season as a host of clubs continue to close the gap on the so called “big four”, in fact I’d say with the depth of Man City’s pockets we really should be referring to it as a “big five” and, in fact, the odds at Betfair agree. For the first time in Premier League history five teams (Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City, Arsenal and Liverpool) are all 15/1 or shorter to win the Premier League title, suggesting that the title is most definitely a five horse race.

This Premier League first led to a fantastic Betfair event at Kempton Park on Thursday 5th August 2010 when five legends from the aforementioned clubs took part in the Betfair Five Horse Race. Yes, five ex-footballers agreed to jump on horses and race each other over one furlong and what a race it was! The ex-players vying to be first past the post were Ray Parlour, a Premier League and FA Cup winner with Arsenal, Chelsea’s second all-time leading goalscorer Kerry Dixon, ex-Liverpool hard-man Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock, Steve Lomas, the combative midfielder formerly of Manchester City, and David May, a Champions League winner with Manchester United.

Prior to the event Neil Ruddock weighed in at a worrying weight and Ray Parlour was introduced to his horse, cheekily named after the current Gunners boss, Arsene Wenger. The Synergy and Betfair teams were met at Kempton Racecourse by glorious sunshine after a morning of training for the legends that saw David May flung to the floor and Steve Lomas emerge as the early favourite. Kitted out in club colours and full riding clobber the former stars took to riding like ducks to water and the race was eventually won by… well you can watch below.

By George Woffenden on August 11th, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Betfair, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Viral Marketing

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Following a recent brainstorm here at Synergy, I asked myself a quick, but thought-provoking question:

Are the football fans of England suffering from ‘burnout’?

Burnout, for those who don’t know is: ‘a psychological term for the experience of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest.’ More common in younger sportsmen and women, burnout will occur if excessively high expectations are placed on an athlete by teammates or coaches and if the athlete in question is pushed too hard too quickly.

It was obvious, in my humble opinion, that this could well have been the case with the England Football team in South Africa. People can say what they like about their ridiculous salaries and the fact these young men are paid to train and play, but, ‘at the end of the day’ (sorry) these guys are only human and they need a break from work, just like the rest of us.

But is it now the football fans themselves who are starting to suffer from this physical, mental and emotional exhaustion?

The 2009/2010 season gave us a number of warning signs: half empty grounds in the Premiership, extortionate ticket prices, teams such as Palace and Pompey falling close to the precipice where Chester City now lurk, and if all this wasn’t bad enough, we then had to put up with what can only be described as a comedy show, as our National team flopped out of the World Cup with ease.

And 2010/2011 doesn’t seem to be getting better, with a number of top clubs still trying to flog season tickets to their once loyal fan base.

So my question is; ‘Is the football-loving UK now suffering from ‘burnout’ following the sheer amount of football we’ve had to endure every day of the summer – and ultimately the depression that followed our hyped up World Cup campaign?’

Well, I guess we’ll find out soon, when the new season starts on August 14th…

By Jonathan Gale on August 10th, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, World Cup

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With the clock ticking ever closer to 14th August and the first day of the 2010/11 Premier League season, a scan through BBC Sport, then a quick glance at Sky Sports News and there’s still no transfer update for Spurs, or pretty much anyone else for that matter. I somewhat naively didn’t expect it to be as quiet as this; I’d envisaged my team Tottenham Hotspur, fresh from securing their place in the Top Four – along with the rest of the Premier League – to be pursuing anyone who managed a five-yard pass in South Africa, or any player whose name could be heard over the vuvuzela howl.

The reality has been much different.  Manchester City, who have embarked on a spending spree a convention of WAGs would have been proud of, have been the exception. The remaining clubs (even Chelsea whose £17 million on Ramires is a comparable drop in the ocean versus summers gone) have exercised a lot more caution with the threat of the recession still ringing in their ears; and a look to the south coast at Portsmouth’s predicament leaves little room for imagination when it comes to the dangers of reckless spending.

The Manchester City piggy bank has been busy

From little Blackpool, preparing themselves to dine with English football’s elite for the very first time, arguably weaker now than when they first secured promotion on a sunny May afternoon at Wembley, right through to Manchester United whose acquisition of a couple of starlets (Smalling and Hernandez) will hardly send tremors around the football world.  Reality has well and truly hit home and things are very different. Where once heart ruled the mind in pursuit of “living the dream” (the words of former Leeds chairman Peter Risdale), nearly bankrupting many a club, now it is first and foremost a case of thrift and caution.

Whilst the new squad rules (25 players must be named, including eight home-grown players) mean clubs like Manchester City will have to offload players the calibre of Craig Bellamy, or risk them not even being granted a squad number, and in spite of James Milner’s possible transfer to City pumping £20+ million back into the market, the carefree cheque-signing culture for the vast majority is a distant memory.

Modern day football for once has been humbled.

By David on August 6th, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Football

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The King of the World is dead, long live the King of the World.

You have to hand it to James Cameron: at $1.88billion in takings to date, his 3D epic Avatar is officially the biggest box office ticket of all time. And having taken only six weeks to eclipse the record set by Titanic, JC’s last feature film, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, the world and his wife (and their three children, plus extended circle of friends) have queued up at cinemas to see Avatar: whilst it’s not perhaps a film for everybody, it has nonetheless garnered some strong reviews, and, 3D effects aside, features some of the best CGI ever used in medium. The spectacle in 3D, however, elevates Avatar beyond movie to experience, drawing the audience into Cameron’s alien world of Pandora without simply resorting to the customary “oh, that was the 3D bit” camera pans. Not all 3D films can claim to do the same.

Avatar is a 3D success because the extra something this technology brings makes us believe it more, enriching the immersion and further suspending disbelief. The question is, how to monetise this on a more regular basis, as opposed to only once every 15 years, when Mr Cameron decides to take us one step beyond?

Naturally, the answer came in the form of the ever-inventive Sky, with Sky Sports’ first foray into 3D programming the live coverage of Arsenal vs Manchester United last weekend. For those lucky enough to be in one of the nine bars across the UK to feature 3D screens – well, if you’d call ‘lucky’ being reciprocally filmed by Sky Sports looking like the rejects from a Buddy Holly casting session – the experience was mixed. The customary Sky Sports graphics, player line-ups (where a sense of depth and perspective is inherent to the camera view) and wide angle shots from behind goal were suitably impressive; however, the third dimension was not the totally eye-popping revolution many were imagining.

To be fair, Sky does spoil the viewer: with up to 20 cameras tracking the game in regular Ds and lovely High Definition crispness for those willing to pay an extra tenner a month – it’s hard to say whether the final spectacle of 3D could ever match up to our expectations. It’s no massive surprise that this was basically a glorified experiment by the broadcaster – football may not be the ultimate sport to benefit from an extra dimension, versus, say boxing, rugby, or even golf – but the fanfare of such a world’s first certainly captured the public’s imagination, leaving viewers hungry, or at least peckish, for more.

Whatever the future holds for in-home 3D, it’s clear that from a sporting perspective, as James Cameron understands, the extra dimension needs to add something to our experience, to give something back, with Sunday’s experiment representing a small step in furthering Sky’s opinion on exactly how it plans to achieve this.

By Jonathan Izzard on February 2nd, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Branded content, Broadcast sponsorship, Experiential marketing, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Media, Sport, Television, Television audiences

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Wigan Athletic showed ample amounts of generosity on two fronts over the past few days.  After gifting Spurs nine goals in their disastrous defeat at White Hart Lane, the Wigan players felt sufficiently embarrassed to offer refunds to all of their travelling fans.

This goes some way to contradicting stereotypical views of footballers and their selfish ways.  Hopefully, this will encourage other players to think more about their committed fans rather than the size of their bank balances.

However, to put things in perspective, the Spurs fans at the match were chanting to the travelling Wigan fans “What time’s your mini-bus?”, thus suggesting a minimal amount of travelling fans will need to be reinbursed by the players.

It will be interesting to see if the Wigan team put together a better display at home against Sunderland this weekend – and, if there’s any repeat of the Spurs debacle this season, whether the players refund the fans again.

By Simon Roche on November 25th, 2009

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Football

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With AIG, shirt sponsors of Manchester United, now having followed Northern Rock, shirt sponsors of Newcastle United, into nationalisation, it occurred to me that the sponsors’ lounge at the next Toon versus Reds match could bring a whole new meaning to the term Premier League. Because, of course, the effective heads of the teams’ two sponsors are now the Premiers of the US and UK.

But who’ll be in those respective hot seats come next March? Over there, will it be John McCain or Barack Obama. Over here, will Gordon Brown still be around? And whoever it is, will they use the occasion for a pow-wow at St James’ on Wednesday March 4? Lovely thought, but somehow I doubt it.

Maybe Gordon could send noted Toon Army member Tony Blair – remember him? – to deputise…

By Tim Crow on September 18th, 2008

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Brand marketing, Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Public relations, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants

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Whilst the Olympic Games kicked off in style in the Far East, this weekend also saw the start of the 2008-09 football season.

Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely have a strong interest in sport. I work in the industry, I read the back pages on a daily basis and will more often than not choose to watch live sports coverage over the nightly ritual that is EastEnders or Coronation Street.  But even I was taken to another level this weekend.  In danger of being a football widow, I not only found myself joining my other half at one live match of the opening weekend – but two!

First up was a trip to Charlton, my adopted ‘local’ team in SE London, where The Valley welcomed the newly-promoted ‘boys from the valleys’ – Swansea City.  Nicknamed ‘The Real League’, it really is true-grit football.  Sitting in the stands with 21,000 others, in the pouring rain that defines August in this country, I was again hit by the dedication and passion of all the fans that follow their team, week-in, week-out.  It is something that astounds me everytime I go to a match. However many times I experience it, it never fails to amaze me.

This was the first match of the season and it was a true portrayal of the optimism that every club has at the start of a new year.  Charlton, vying for a place in the Play-Offs at the end of last season, were back to an even playing ground.  Forgotten was the disappointment of the spring months, when they realised that getting back up into the Premiership was not going to happen this year. Fans and players alike are back with high hopes for the next ten months.  This optimism is even reflected in the early-bird discount for season tickets ‘Buy your season ticket before the first weekend, and if we get into the Premiership next year you’ll pay the same price for your ticket’.

Next up was a trip to Wembley Stadium for what is traditionally known as the curtain-raiser of the football season – the Community Shield. A showpiece match, this was altogether a different picture – well apart from the rain, which followed me all weekend but what else would you expect! 

Wembley, the national stadium, was hosting the reigning European club team, Manchester United, and the proud victors of the legendary FA Cup, Portsmouth.  However, whilst there may have been four times as many people, numerous footballing legends in situe (Geoff Hurst represented McDonald’s, the FA’s Presenting Partner), and inflated prices at the concession stands, the underlying themes amongst the fans were still the same as the day before. Passion, pride, commitment, belief.  This was demonstrated to me as we were leaving.  Following a penalty shoot out, Manchester United were victorious once again.  As we were heading down the stairwells, I overheard a voice of a young boy telling his dad, “It doesn’t matter that we lost.  We were the better team”.  This just about summed up my experience over the weekend. 

The Greatest Show on Earth may be taking place in Beijing. But for the hundreds and thousands of football fans who turn out of their homes on a weekly basis to follow the highs and lows of their team, one thing is absolutely certain.  Football in this country really is ‘the beautiful game’, and it is refusing to be overshadowed by the Olympics.

By Sara Wilson on August 12th, 2008

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Beijing 2008, Football, Olympics

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By Tim Crow on June 18th, 2008

Tags: Ashes, Barclays Premier League, Cricket, ECB, ICC World Twenty20, Indian Premier League, New Product Development, Stanford Twenty20 for 20, UEFA Champions League

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