Corporate sponsorship is the bedrock of football business anywhere in the world. With the avalanche of talents and more than 80million football followers in the country, one would expect that the football game should attract some of the juiciest deals as a frontier economy. This is so in view of the obvious marketing opportunities many corporate brands to explore for the good of the brand. However, the lack of proper sports marketing and structured corporate sponsorship act as minuses in attracting big buck to the game unlike in the developed world.
According to findings, investors aren’t adverse to Nigeria football. Corporate sponsors are still investing in the sport, maybe not in Nigeria Premier League (NPL) or the Federations cup. Brands are coming up with their own tournaments and football programs: Copa Coca-Cola, Guilder five aside, Pepsi beach soccer, Glo dream team reality TV show explains Benson Chukwueke, CEO, GreenHunters Sports International.
So why is the NPL weeping for good deals and it’s the various clubs languishing in horrible lack? This is looking at the deal opportunities club’s jerseys and kits are some of the biggest sponsorship assets a club could possess. Why are these not being explored to the fullest in Nigeria?
Chris Smith of Forbes provides some of the mouth watering football sponsorship deals that keep the game and Premiership clubs going.
Soccer’s most valuable teams have generated legions of fans around the world, and those supporter armies are more than happy to boast their loyalties with team uniforms. That in turn has made a team’s jersey its single biggest sponsorship asset, as players and fans alike have become walking billboards that are up for sale to the highest bidder. Those sponsorship deals fall into two categories – kit manufacturers like Nike NKE -1.29% and Adidas , and the corporate partners who simply pay for chest-front advertising real estate.
Uniform deals jumped to the forefront in 2014 when Manchester United signed its seven-year, $559 million contract with Chevrolet . That $80 million-per-year payout more than doubled what the team was getting from its prior jersey sponsorship and blew away the rest of the field. Even two years later the next largest corporate partnership, Chelsea’s $57 million-per-year deal with Yokohama Rubber YORUY +%, is well behind. Kit manufacturers tend to spend a bit more, given that they directly profit from their investment by selling retail versions of team jerseys, but only two kit partnerships have surpassed Manchester United’s blockbuster Chevy deal.
And yet the top spot on our list of the sport’s biggest sponsorship winners belongs to a different team: Real Madrid. Los Blancos had actually lagged behind the leaders as recently as a year ago, but an astounding ten-year, $1.6 billion deal with Adidas swiftly brought that to an end. The team now makes some $192 million from its jerseys each year (and that’s despite an Emirates Airways partnership that seemed undervalued when it was signed in 2013). Toss in a new $28 million-per-year stadium naming rights agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which will rename Santiago Bernabeu once its renovations are completed, and you’ve got the biggest sponsorship haul in the sport.
Yet Manchester United, which makes some $187 million annually from its jersey deals, is hardly out of the race. In fact, the Red Devils could still take the top spot today depending on how the exchange rates move (we’re using rates as of late April).
In addition to the Chevy deal the team also has a kit partnership with Adidas, which made headlines by usurping Nike with a ten-year deal that’s currently in its first season; that contract is worth nearly $110 million per year. We also give the Red Devils credit for their $22 million-per-year deal with Aon ; Manchester United’s former jersey partner has the naming rights to the team’s training ground and sponsorship of its practice jerseys.
Rounding out the top three is Bayern Munich at $111 million per year from its jersey and stadium sponsorship deals. This year’s Bundesliga champions have been with Adidas for more than five decades, and the company even holds a minority stake in the team. Last year the two extended their partnership through 2030. Bayern also gets $34 million annually from jersey partner Deutsche Telekom, and two years ago the team extended its stadium naming rights deal with Allianz, which also invested some $150 million to take an 8% stake in the team’s ownership.
Fans may be surprised not to find Barcelona, the sport’s second-most valuable team at $3.55 billion, among the top ranks here.
The team currently ranks sixth on our list of jersey and stadium sponsorship revenue with a current haul of $81 million per season, but we expect the Catalan side will soon be surging up the ranks. Barcelona is in its final season with Qatar Sports Investments (reflected on the team’s jersey as Qatar Airways) and is reportedly seeking something in the range of $60 million per year from its next jersey partner. That would top Chelsea’s Yokohama partnership as the sport’s second-biggest corporate deal behind ManU/Chevy.
The team’s Nike deal is also in line for a major increase, and many expect the next iteration should easily clear $90 million per year. New renovations to Camp Nou will be paid for in part by the stadium’s first ever corporate naming partnership; in March a team exec said that deal should inject another $340 million or so. If those deals all come together as planned, Barcelona should be closing in on some $200 million or more a year from the three sources, putting the team right in the race for the top spot on our list.
The English Premier League’s immense popularity is also reflected here, with British teams taking home five of the ten biggest total sponsorship hauls. Manchester United and Chelsea (No. 4, $99 million) are followed by Arsenal (No. 5, $86 million), Liverpool (No. 7, $79 million) and Manchester City (No. 8, $74 million). In terms of specific deals, seven of the ten most valuable belong to English teams (though two of those contracts, Manchester City/Etihad and Arsenal/Emirates, have jersey and stadium naming rights bundled together).
From the manufacturers’ point of view, no kit maker has more invested at the top of the game than Adidas. The German sportswear company is shelling out over $400 million per year to just five teams on our list. By contrast Nike is spending $80 million per year across three teams (Barcelona, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain). Puma and New Balance fill out the final two spots thanks to deals with Arsenal ($43 million/year) and Liverpool ($36 million/year), respectively.
As for corporate sponsors, Emirates Airline has the biggest representation thanks to deals with three teams on our list – Real Madrid, Arsenal and PSG – worth a combined $105 million annually. And those are just half of the brand’s club teams – Emirates also has jersey branding with teams in Germany, Greece and Italy. The last of those three, AC Milan, narrowly missed our top ten cut – the Italian club makes $42 million per season from its jersey deals. Others to just miss the list include Tottenham Hotspur, Inter Milan and Borussia Dortmund.
Additional reports from Forbes
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