By Samindra Kunti
September 24 – Brazilian club Corinthians have entered into a new partnership with social media network Twitter. At the same time Corinthians are set to break the one million fan attendance mark this season.
Corinthians are arguably Brazil’s biggest club, together with Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo, but they have struggled recently with delayed payments of salaries, rumblings in the boardroom and disappointing results in the Copa Libertadores. Another headache remains the financing of the club’s new stadium.
But Corinthians are aiming to increase their profile further through a new partnership with Twitter. The club from Sao Paulo will introduce small advertisements on their club content via Twitter’s video advertising product Twitter Amplify. Corinthians, with 3.5 million Twitter followers, become the first South American club to partner with Twitter and the second globally after FC Barcelona, who partnered with the platform as part of plans to expand their international online presence earlier this month.
The social media giant has similar agreements in place with the UEFA Champions League, the National Football League and Major League Baseball.
“Besides the possibility to generate additional revenue for the club, we will be able to add value to the brand in a single platform and reach even more people with our communications,” said the Corinthians marketing director Marcelo Passos.
The club are also enjoying higher gates at home games thanks to their state-of-the-art Arena Corinthians, which hosted six games during the 2014 World Cup, including the opener between Brazil and Croatia and the Argentina vs Holland semi-final. Corinthians previously played at Sao Paulo’s municipal stadium, the Pacaembu. The bill for the stadium’s construction bloated from a provisional $356 million to $513 million.
Corinthians have attracted 32,592 fans on average to their 29 matches this season and will break the one million mark of fans at the end of October when they host Flamengo. The club wants to increase attendance to 35,000 per game in the short term.
The ticketing revenue is a welcome source of income for Corinthians as they seek to pay off their stadium. At present, the club disburse $1.2 million to Brazilian bank BNDES on a monthly basis. Next season, this figure will rise to $2.4 million. In total Corinthians need to cough up $180 million for their stadium over a period of 12 years.
The city of Sao Paulo offered a tax incentive, a development incentive certificate for the construction of the specific stadium, to help finance the stadium. Town hall promised a tax incentive of €147million, but in March only €133 million had been released, to the dismay of Corinthians.
The club is also looking for a deal with naming rights, but so far negotiations with potential partners have stalled over Corinthians’s high asking price of $96 million for the right to explore the arena over the next 20 years.
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