I was recently asked by a PL Club, with some notable rivalries, whether there is any evidence that if a brand sponsors one club, rival fans choose not buy that brand ?
Thought about it and then posted the question on the Unofficial Partner’s whatsapp group (UPWG)
The UPWG is made up of previous guests of Unofficial Partner as well as people in senior roles in the sports industry and is by invitation from Richard Gillis and Sean Singleton.
From the branded gentry, such as Giles Morgan-ex HSBC, It is true that certain brands “would not do a club” which is when you are a football club with rivals is not an easy objection to overcome.
Some brand decision makers feel that if you sponsor one club, then you will lose consumers as some fans that support other clubs will refuse to buy your product or service given a choice.
However, even though this hypothesis should be measurable, via the likes of Nielsen Sport, I do feel that common sense/gut feel has been the main driver here. However, I have some limited experience of trying to sell partnerships on behalf of football clubs and alienation of their brand from supporters of other clubs is a common objection to not taking things further.
For every Deliveroo (club deals with LUFC, PSG and Lyon, as well as the FA’s of England and Italy plus partnerships with La Liga and the Dutch League) there is a Just Eat, who sponsored Derby County but then have avoided club sponsorship deals ever since and now utilise broadcast sponsorship (PL coverage on BT Sport and Talk Sport).
In the last 3 years, I have received feedback from many companies and agencies of all sizes that have a policy i.e. “we are not interested in an individual club”.
So if no public sales data available, where does this all come from?
Football rivalries are intense and can be based on both current competition between clubs, geography, religion, history and also the ugly side of the game which is controversial matches and clashes between fans.
Some clubs are hated by more of their rivals more than others and other clubs outside the big cities have just one rival that is locally based and their clashes are known as local derbies.
Whatever, the situation is, the question is whether a brand should take notice of these club rivalries in terms of their partnership acquisition and activation strategy?
In support of brands that don’t wish to sponsor a club, here a few of stories that have hit the national media that I recall:
The Leeds super fan decorator that refused to paint a house red but will give a 10% discount for anyone painting their house white! He even wrote a book called “Paint It White” published in 2004. This article from 2012 shows that Gary Edwards and paint did not gone away- https://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/leeds-fan-wont-paint-gates-red-315061#popup-sso
According to Andy Gray ex player and broadcaster, whilst publishing his book, he said “”I’d grown up in a house in Glasgow where nobody would eat the Penguin biscuit in the green wrapper. In other words, we were Rangers through and through.”
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This article from the press cutting service would set alarm bells ringing in most brand management meetings if it was true?
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/black-cats-fan-boycott-1497424
Kevin Keegan, when manager of Newcastle United was in a TV Commercial with the Honey Monster and Sugar Puffs sales slumped 20% in the North-East due to Sunderland fans not buying them.
So, what do brands do with this threat to their sales that could result from them advertising their brand on a club shirt or using the club IP and players in a TV Commercial e.g. Nivea and Liverpool FC?
Well, one way of dealing with it is to sponsor both clubs in a city. In Glasgow a double-glazing firm called CR Smith sponsored both Celtic and Rangers in 1984. This was then repeated by NTL in 1999 and Carling in 2003, for seven seasons and thenTenants did the same until Celtic went solo with Magners Cider in 2013. Since then Celtic and Rangers shirts have not carried the same sponsor logo.
Whilst you could not debate the value of the association with 2 great clubs and the coverage of the regular derby matches that are the biggest games in Scotland, it does leave a brand being accused of being a “two-timer”? Perhaps by not choosing your primary partner, you then do not receive the brand affinity your investment deserves from each club?
Another way is to become a tier 2 partner of the rival club after a major club sponsorship investment. For example, 3 months after Manchester United announced Chevrolet as the new sponsor in a 5 deal believed to be more than £40m pa in 2013, Chevrolet then became an official partner of Liverpool FC.
My take on this is that this type of investment is known as “hush money” i.e. we chose to sponsor a massive club that happens to have won the title more times (20 times v 19) but please accept some LED advertising for your club to stop you from handing your car keys in or not buying a Chev in future?
So, what do the sponsorship experts on the whatsapp group think in terms of whether a brand is risking sales polarisation or cannibilasation by sponsoring an individual club?
Joel Seymour Hyde –MD of Octagon “ We get this question so often from brands. As far as we have seen there is no evidence that it has a material impact. Of course there will be the odd hard-core fan who changes behaviour but as a brand investing in a shirt sponsorshi , if that worries you then you probably need to answer some other questions first…
Tim Crow- ex CEO of Synergy and now fully independent
“Researched it many times Gary, including for Vodafone (Man Utd), NTL, (Celtic and Rangers) and Coke (various). Every time the result was the same which is that there is a tiny minority of fans whose behaviour can be affected but for the cast majority of fans, the reality is that they don’t actually change their behaviour although many claim too.”
This brings me onto Simon Dent who is from Dark Horses fame:
“I own no red clothing and nothing in my house is red. Red isn’t welcome in my life, I think I would fly Emirates though. Probably wouldn’t have welcomed a JVC video machine growing up as I wouldn’t have spent a lot of time looking at the logo. I feel like the average (NB author has inserted bold) Spurs fan.”
Using my industry contacts, I was also able to get my hands on some actual data on Nivea, since their partnership with Liverpool FC was activated. They have used the likes of James Milner in TV advertising and the club crest and designation:
Based on a nationally recognised sample, Liverpool fans do use more Nivea product and use more than Man United fans. However, here is the crux, Man United fans have a higher current user base and higher purchase intent and “Net Promoter Score” than the general UK population!
I also received the help of Professor Simon Chadwick who besides being a member of the Whatsapp Group has spent 25 years working in leading business schools, published papers on he intersection of sport, business, politics and technology and is now one of the leading commentator in professional sport at elite level.
I received a plethora of reports with such mouth-watering titles such as “Measuring the effectiveness of corporate branding across rival teams”, “Are you with us or against us, the role of threat and anger in sport sponsorship” and “The impact of rivalry of amongst sports teams on sport sponsorship evaluation.”
Mountains of paper and according to Unofficial Partners interim student, little, if no evidence that if you sponsor a team, the fans of rival teams do not purchase your product or service.
I have included some “take-outs from the research at the end of this blog. To save more reading, I think this conclusion nails it?
Whilst a sponsorship may generate some negativity amongst a group of people who aren’t relevant to the brand, it doesn’t mean the property should be avoided:- sponsorships that brands truly believe in has a far more positive position, as oppose to the niche minority of rival fans who irregularly make themselves distance to their rival clubs sponsorship brand.
So, as we approach the new season brands have opportunities to be the main shirt sponsor of clubs from Real Madrid and Manchester United for a cool £90m plus per annum to the likes of Stevenage Borough and Rotherham United at a bit less.
As is widely known, we could be heading for a new era whereby clubs in the UK will not be allowed to display advertising from the betting and gaming industry on their playing or training wear as is the situation in Spain.
This may lead to a correction in the market and will mean that the 30 odd football clubs that have benefited financially from having betting brands on their playing kit, for several years in some cases, will be out to market for season 2021-22.
For rights owners and certain sales agencies that will have to now work harder to secure non-betting partnerships, I hope that they can persuade brands that an individual club sponsorship opportunity is a rich piece of real estate that will not alienate customers who support your rival (s).
For brands, I believe that this blog will put your mind at rest that the positive benefits of shirt sponsorships completely overcome any reservations of upsetting supporters of other football clubs.
Ask yourself, do you really care if a “die-hard” fan that has so much distaste of another football team and prepared to walk out of a shop, pub or a showroom becomes a lapsed customer, would you really worry about losing a few sales?
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Main Findings:
1) Social Identity/Team Identification: Emotions and fans reactions to rival teams sponsorships are relevant to the extent of their levels of fandom
Fan identification (i.e. objective involvement) is the main detriment of denigrated responses to a rival team’s sponsor (De Amorim, 2015) – Groups to which an individual perceives themselves as belonging (in-group) are typically meaningful when others are executed (out-group), and competitive rivalry serves to heighten awareness and salience of these distinctions (Sherif, 1961)
Fans who have strong identification with the teams have emotional connections with these sports organisations (Sutton, 1997), keeping them as a central part of their identity (Gwinner & Swanson, 2003)
Fans’ identification with sports team negatively affects perceptions of a rival team, which leads to negative attitudes towards rival teams sponsors (Melovic, 2019)
2) Advocates vs Avoiders
Value derived from sponsorships are now achieved from outside of the individual city or country of the particular club (BrandAffair, 2016) – Manchester’s football clubs for example, don’t exploit rivalry in their foreign fanbases because they don’t share the same historical dislike of their clubs nearest rivals as the ‘local’ fans do (BrandAffair, 2016)
Local fans in some cases reward sponsors with increased ‘patronage’ in the form of more favourable brand attitudes or purchase intentions (White, 2016)
Whilst a sponsorship may generate some negativity amongst a group of people who aren’t relevant to the brand, it doesn’t mean the property should be avoided:- sponsorships that brands truly believe in has a far more positive position, as oppose to the niche minority of rival fans who irregularly make themselves distance to their rival clubs sponsorship brand