By Matt Scott
April 27 – The most unusual Premier League season in the competition’s 23-year history has made the commercial messaging markedly easier for executives selling sponsorship inventory around the world’s most popular domestic football competition.
Speaking at a launch event for a new Official Timekeeper partnership with Tag Heuer, the Premier League’s managing director, Richard Masters, discussed plans to sell seven new sponsorship categories in place of what been an all-encompassing title partnership with Barclays.
One of the key sales points is the unpredictability of outcome in the Premier League, something few other sports properties can trade on. “The Premier League and the clubs all tell different stories to brands,” explained Masters.
“For us, from the Premier League’s point of view, it has been a great season in order to be able to talk about what I think is one of the great assets of the Premier League, which is the fact that you don’t know what’s going to happen.
“You simply do not know what is going to happen – although I’m an Aston Villa supporter so maybe I did! And that can’t be said of all other European leagues, let alone sporting competitions. That’s what makes it great. So it’s been good from that respect.
“It has to start and finish with the football. We have an amazing football competition. That is still front and centre the primary objective of the Premier League clubs, to put on the most fantastic, competitive and compelling football competition we can, and what an amazing season it’s been.”
Appropriately Claudio Ranieri, the much-admired manager of the Premier League champions elect, Leicester City, was at the launch event and spoke of his own astonishment that his club, relegation favourites 14 months ago, were on the brink of being crowned champions. “Never in my mind [did I think I might win the Premier League this year],” said Ranieri.
“It is unbelievable what has happened. This season started with the goal to save the team [from relegation]. But slowly, slowly the players are getting better and we can believe in something special and try to compete with the big teams. Now we want to fight until the end.”
Tag Heuer’s chief executive, Jean-Claude Biver, is certainly a fan – he spoke of his personal delight that Tottenham Hotspur had dropped two points at home to West Bromwich Albion on Monday night, slipping to a seven-point deficit to Leicester with three matches of the season still to play.
And so it seems the unpredictability of the Premier League resonates with sponsors. Masters now hopes to fill the remaining three partnerships available, out of a seven-sector roster on offer. With four already taken up, Masters anticipates a fifth category will soon be signed.
He says it is validation for the decision to switch from a single title sponsor to seven sub-categories of segmental partnership. “The strategy is to rebrand the competition, to call it the Premier League and do it a different way,” said Masters.
“It has allowed the club to do things as well. So we have freed up the exclusivities with regards to clubs. Barclays in effect locked out a number of categories for clubs, and that has changed. The inventory that Barclays currently enjoy went back to the clubs as well. So you can’t look at it as a simple, linear mathematical equation.
“You can’t look at this in the nine months that we made the pretty big decision to change the whole thing and where are we now? You have to judge it over six years I think. Nine months on from where we were it feels like a very big decision with lots of opportunity and promise for the future.”
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