World Cup is over but players are still cashing in
The World Cup is now gone and saw, once again, multiple advertising campaigns featuring a wide number of players of many different nationalities. Be it a sponsorship of a national team or campaigns with players on their own in their individual capacity (hence not displaying any team imagery), we have seen winners and losers also off the pitch.
Our first newsletter of the season -and first after the World Cup- allows us to realize that there is “life” outside the big tournaments in terms of using players as media and communication platforms. Since then, we have seen high profile brands activating year-long existing deals –such as Replay, EA Sports, Adidas, Nike and Lucozade-, but also new agreements for usual suspects such as Andrés Iniesta, Raheem Sterling, Pelé or even the more and more popular manager of Real Madrid, Carlo Ancelotti.
Using players (or managers or legends) outside the big tournaments may come with more limited global impact, but offers major benefits such as:
- Reduction of risk concentration in a couple of weeks (vs year long season projects). An injury, a bad sporting result or a manager decision can just ruin the work of some sport marketers.
- Less cluttered environment and hence more opportunities for the brands to stand out in the media alongside their ambassadors.
- Possibility to agree lower fees with the players.
- More opportunities to agree appearance dates and each of them of more quality/length.
So be prepared to keep on receiving thru this newsletter plenty if posts about players helping brands, even if next truly global football tournament will only take place in 2016 in France.
Esteve Calzada
CEO Prime Time Sport