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What is sport marketing ?

Sport today represents an economy in its own right. Nowadays, the sport generates many consumer opportunities. The advent of sports marketing is marked above all by a craze for sport. Sport marketing is the set of marketing principles and strategies applied to the field of sport. It concerns products, services and organizations. Associating a brand, a product, with a sporting event or a sporting personality. Sport brings together many values and benefits from a very large audience, which is why many brands are looking to be visible.

Sports marketing encompasses several types of action. Football is the best example to show that marketing is omnipresent in the sports world. A club has an equipment manufacturer, sponsors, contracts with players (who themselves have contracts with brands, Cristiano Ronaldo with Nike)…

To illustrate this, in football, Real Madrid receives almost 70 million euros a year for the sponsor on the jersey. With their reputation, the clubs then manage to sell millions of jerseys around the world. The Chinese, who have little interest in football, do not hesitate to buy the latest PSG or Manchester United shirts. It’s called that the merchandising.

Sponsorship and merchandising are not the only revenues for sports clubs. TV rights are very important nowadays. It is in particular thanks to the TV rights that the Premier League clubs have long dominated other European clubs.

Coronavirus: When the Belarusian championship resists…

1st April and it’s no joke, European football is at a standstill (see article 4). All championships? No, not all of them. In Belarus, life and football go on. For Alexander Lukashenko, whom many consider to be the last European dictator, this health crisis is just a « psychosis », so there are no valid reasons to stop the country’s football championship, called the Vycheïchaïa Liha (Upper League).

This championship, unknown to the general public, is therefore the only way today for football fans to see football on television, and Belarusian clubs and authorities are well aware of this. This health and economic crisis is not going to affect the Vycheïchaïa Liha, quite the contrary. Indeed, never before has the Belarusian championship attracted so much attention in Europe, or even in the world. Television channels from all over the world have even just acquired the TV rights to the championship, in order to offer live football on television . Over there, while some inhabitants are aware of the seriousness of the situation, many continue to live without worrying, as their president advised: « better to die with dignity than to live on your knees »… The stadiums of the different clubs in the championship are not empty, less full than usual, but they are not deserted and this allows the clubs to earn ticketing revenues, which is not negligible.

It goes even further, sports bettors around the world no longer have the option of betting on the NBA or the Premier League, as eyes are now riveted on the 25th European Championship at UEFA club coefficients. Clubs are seeing their visibility increase. Many football fans are familiar with BATE Borisov or the capital club, Dinamo Minsk, but few purists know of other clubs in this great country between Poland, Ukraine and Russia.

So yes, for us, French or Irish, it may seem shocking, but Belarusian sport will not have suffered from this crisis, the better they will have acquired TV rights and a certain visibility, unimaginable before this pandemic.

Coronavirus: the economy of sport deregulated…

French and world sport has come to a standstill with the pandemic affecting the planet. Postponements and cancellations will have significant economic consequences for professional and amateur structures.

Last week, the various European football federations (the Italian federation being the first) all decided to suspend the various football competitions because of the coronavirus pandemic. If COVID-19 is a major health crisis, the economic consequences will be disastrous.

Clubs (professionals and amateurs) are sometimes forced to put employees out of work, this is the case for many clubs in France, even big clubs like Olympique de Marseille. The championships have just been interrupted, but will they resume? When will they resume? And under what conditions? At the moment, the clubs no longer receive important revenues as TV rights, ticketing… At the beginning of the week, football fans learned the logic information, the European Football Championship (#Euro2020), is postponed for a year. Moreover, this will even force UEFA to change certain rules such as Financial Fair Play. European football is going to be totally deregulated and this is unprecedented.

The whole economy of sport is suffering and will suffer because of COVID-19. The scheme is valid for all other sports as well. Will the Tokyo Olympic Games take place? If not, how much will Japan lose? One thing is certain, there is uncertainty…

Football shirts: which clubs have the biggest sponsorship contracts?

If the clubs have their transfer deals with the players, they also raise the stakes with the sponsors. At a time when the financial stakes are more and more important for football clubs, jersey sponsors play a key role in development.

For clubs like Wolfsburg, the history with the jersey sponsor is the result of a common past with the Wolfswagen brand. The majority of Europe’s big clubs are constantly looking for new partners in order to increase their annual income and thus be able to recruit great players on the transfer market.

To illustrate the importance of contracts with brands, clubs such as FC Barcelona have often turned down jersey sponsorships, preferring to highlight the Unicef association. Policy changes for clubs. Few teams today have a blank sponsor jersey.

Real Madrid with Fly Emirates: 70 million € per season
Manchester United with Chevrolet: 61 million € per season
Paris Saint-Germain with ALL : 60 million € per season
FC Barcelona with Rakuten: 55 million € per season
Chelsea with Yokohama Tyres: 50 million € per season
Manchester City with Etihad: 48 million € per season
Arsenal with Fly Emirates: 45 million € per season
Liverpool with Standard Chartered: 40 million € per season
Tottenham with AIA: 38 million € per season
Bayern Munich with Deutsche Telekom: 35 million € per season

Find above the ten largest sponsorship contracts currently. Astronomical sums of money and not negligible, even in today’s football.

TV rights: Premier League, way ahead.

Last season’s Premier League marketing and TV rights revenues were revealed, and unsurprisingly, Liverpool is at the top of the table. It’s no surprise either, the Premier League is a league that generates huge revenues. It is the biggest league in the world.

If Liverpool collect 173 million euros, Manchester City, champions of England last season is second in this ranking with 171 million euros. The surprise is that Manchester United, one of the biggest names in world football, is 5th in this ranking behind Chelsea, Tottenhan. The poor results of the Reds Devils are having a financial and marketing impact on the Manchester club.

The revenues demonstrate the financial power of the TV rights in the Premier League. For example, Huddersfield, bottom of the English Premier League the last year, earned twice as much as Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1. The French club earned 56.7 million euros, compared to 109.6 million euros, for the relegated English club at the end of the season. The gap is abysmal.

This year, Jürgen Klopp’s men are making history. No defeats and only one draw in the league so far. There is no doubt that the Reds will keep their top place until the end of the season and remain top of the TV rights chart for the 2019-2020 season.

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