By Mark Baber
April 9 – As the English Premier League and its clubs enjoy massive TV revenue and chunky sponsorship deals, even for training kits, the next levels down are struggling to find sponsors.
To date the English Football League (operator of the Championship and Leagues 1 and 2) has not announced a title sponsor for next season, after Npower announced it was dropping out, and the Football Conference, the next level, has also not found a replacement for Blue Square.
An article in UK trade title Marketing Magazine looks at why brands are cooling on lower league football sponsorship.
According to Andy Sutherden, global head of sports marketing and sponsorship, Hill and Knowlton, the sponsorship market, rather than football specifically, is suffering from an Olympic hangover and the economic downtown. With supply exceeding demand the Football League and Football Conference need an innovative approach as well as realistic pricing
According to Henry Chappell, chief executive of Pitch, sponsorship of the Football League offers value for brands targeting football fans so it would be surprising if a deal wasn’t in place by August. The sticking point may be price, with reduced levels of terrestrial TV coverage. Chappell sees the Blue Square deal as a one-off unlikely to be replicated.
Patrick Alexander, senior account manager Generate Sponsorship, emphasises the need for rigorous models to value properties as sponsoring companies need to be able to measure return on investment and return on objectives. He questions how a reported rise from £7m to £9m a year for the Football League can be justified with attendances falling.
Jon Wyatt, managing director, FastTrack, believes new sponsors are probably in the pipeline as football offers a good opportunity to engage with die-hard football fans. He praises Texaco for activating their sponsorship by connecting with their audience in a localised way through their online Texaco FC campaign.
Of course, the Olympics may have woken sponsors up to new opportunities in other sports, but perhaps, as Wyatt points out, it is just a matter that new sponsors for the Football League and Conference are hardly likely to be unveiled before the current deals have expired.
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