By Mark Baber
April 28 – The Spanish Football League (LFP) has continued its journey into China to sign sponsorship partners with the announcement of a deal with Snow Beer, China’s biggest beer brand, which will allow the Chinese brand to incorporate LFP branding and player images in its advertising in Asia.
Snow Beer is owned by China Resources Enterprises and London-based SabMiller and has rapidly become China’s biggest beer brand through the purchase of local breweries, with a long term strategy of turning its beer into a premium brand. The Chinese reportedly drank 16.5bn pints of Snow last year.
China Resources Enterprises earlier this month sold off its non-beer assets, including supermarkets and coffee chain Pacific Coffee, to its parent company China Resources Holdings in an initially successful bid to improve its fortunes.
Whilst alcohol advertising is strictly controlled in Europe and the US especially regarding responsible drinking and avoiding access to promotional websites by children, the situation is different in China where Snow uses Beijing’s 2022 Olympic bid and other winter sports promotions to the full on its public-facing website.
The latest deal follows a similar one, struck earlier in the month, with Kingdomway a company which produces coenzyme Q10. That launch was accompanied with advertising claims such as “helping athletes achieve excellent performance in the Primera Liga”, which would probably land the company in hot water in the US, where Walmart is currently facing a false advertising class action suit over claims of the efficacy of its coenzyme Q10 product.
The recent deals struck by the LFP’s senior executives President Javier Tebas and marketing director Adolfo Bara, are unlikely to be the last with Chinese companies as agreement has already been reached with CCTV5 to increase the visibility of La Liga coverage in China.
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