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Euro 2008 sponsors left out in the cold

Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Arif Durrani, Latest reporters' blogs June 6th, 2008 by Arif Durrani

This year’s sponsors of Euro 2008 have so-far failed to score with football fans across the continent, according to two independent surveys published this week.

On the eve of arguably the second biggest football tournament in the world, participating leading international brands will be forgiven for questioning their current event marketing strategies, accounting for hundreds of thousand of euros in 2008.

Almost half of fans in Europe have no idea who is sponsoring this year’s Euro 2008 Championship, and that’s before you even get to the UK, where England’s failure to qualify has left awareness levels flat-lining.

A study by Survey Sampling International found 41 per cent of self-proclaimed football fans could not name any of the tournament’s main official partners, namely Adidas, Canon, Carlsberg, Castrol, Coca-Cola, Continental, Kia, JVC, MasterCard and McDonald’s.

Drawing from a panel of nearly 2,000 French, German, Spanish and British consumers, brand recognition was highest in Germany (72 per cent), but then quickly trailed off in Spain (58 per cent) and France (45 per cent), before a lacklustre England (23 per cent).

This general UK malaise was also identified by an Ipsos Mori survey, which reported that less than five per cent of 600 respondents associated Coca-Cola with the event, down from 14.5 per cent for Euro 2004.

Similar falls in recognition were found in Carlsberg, moving from 5.5 per cent in 2004 to just 1.5 per cent in 2008. The lager brand has already calculated UK sales will be about £15 million shy following the Steve McClaren-led incompetence of the English side.

McDonald’s awareness levels have also slumped, from 4.3 per cent to 0.8 per cent this year.

In fact, according to Ipsos, of all the official sponsors, only Adidas posted any improvement on its Euro 2004 recognition to-date, rising from 1.8 per cent to 3.3 per cent. 

Of equal concern will be news that several rival non-sponsor brands, including Nike, Heineken and O2, were all thought to have ties to the event: talk about rubbing salt into wounds.

Of course, it’s early days, and the sponsors will be hoping for significant pick-up from Saturday onwards, as events in Austria and Switzerland get under way.

But Volker Andresen, European marketing manager at SSI, is still surprised by the poor results, and suggest sponsors should look to reviewing their marketing strategies to ensure maximum bang for their bucks.

“Expect Emotions” cries UEFA’s Euro 2008 strapline; the sponsors are left banking on it.

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