View from industry: cons and pros of sponsorship in sport and e-sport for business

9 Pandas — advertising agency of full-service. One of the main directions in our business — managing sponsorship deals in sport and e-sport. Information about our clients and partners you can find at infographics below:

Our experience showed that sponsorship in sport and e-sport increases brand recognition, forms positive associations and helps to solve particular business objectives: to increase conversions into targeted actions, for example. Perhaps, there are some pros which you have to be prepared for. To figure things out, let’s look at how sponsorship works in the particular example. Football suits as the best one — everybody knows it and understand what this is about.
What direct and indirect profits may the company get which decidesd to sponsor the football club? Let’s look at infographics now:

As we see in the infographics, all sponsorship channels may give some profit: increased reach and client conversions, lower costs in video advertisement and others that made the right choice among these channels highly important. Let’s look at the main ones. 

LED-панели и 3D-ковры

LED-панели — один из самых дорогих спонсорских рекламных каналов. Реклама на них продается поминутно и дает охваты в теле- и интернет-трансляциях. Общее правило простое: больше минут оплатили — выше охват.

Additional reach gives highlights which fans watch in the net. Sometimes, if matches are very spectacular, highlights give much bigger reach than online broadcasting. There is an equal situation in 3D-covers. It enters live shows and either reels after the matches. And that’s why it costs more.

There is an interesting fact that many sport leagues are equipped with LED DBR systems and Overlay technology with virtual 3D-covers and GFX integrations during broadcasting that gives the opportunity of choice what geo-targeting to use for having an advertisement. It let 9 Pandas conclude a global sponsorship agreement for 1xBet with Italian football Series A, when bookmakers had no licensing for advertising in Italy. The result was a funny situation:  the whole world watched advertisement 1xBet, but in Italy, where the championship was, there were no viewers. Modern technologies — it is something awesome.

One of the most popular advertising channels among sponsors who want the main football stars to be filmed. It is an obvious desire, but non-realisable — endorsements from superstars were purchased, and they can’t be filmed for sponsors. Instead of it, clubs offer up to five players from different levels: А+, А and В. Perhaps, there are many restrictions. We could film no more than one hour per day before or after the training on the base of the club or somewhere nearly — nothing must disturb footballers to train or prepare for games. To implement  large-scale creative ideas in such kind of conditions will hardly be. Because of it sponsorship videos are the same and unimpressive: footballers feint on the practice field, the graphics, native advertising with product, slogan  are added here — and that’s all. Be ready for it. 

One of the most effective sponsorship advertising channels that gives visual conversion into targeted action. Sponsors get access to a major loyal audience of fans and advertise the products. The main thing — to present advertising unobtrusively and in an interesting manner. Game mechanics are perfectly suitable for it: there is an online game in 9 Pandas where the footballer from Barcelona runs through the stadium and jumps over the ball, and against him — native led-boards illuminate the logo of 1xBet sponsor. As the result — high reach, conversions and no one negative commentary.

World-famous European media clubs are powerful and give multi-million reach. Perhaps, it has some pros which may destroy the whole effectiveness — it is very slow. One post in social media may be agreed for several months. Surprisingly, there are different situations in Russia. Our clubs are flexible and fast. The same thing is in e-sport — it’s a great pleasure to work with them. 

To sum up

Sponsorship in sport and e-sport — in 85% cases is a work for reach, brand awareness and prestige.
The example of BEKO  — a domestic appliance manufacturer from Turkey, certainly confirms it. BEKO was a regional brand having a little market share, but at one moment actively started to sponsor the World basketball championship, basketball championships in Turkey, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, FC Barcelona and Besiktas and BEKO became one of the major advertisers of English Premier League. As a result — everyone knows this brand and it became one of the leaders in the global market.
The main mistake that sponsors do, is obvious. They think of a sponsor contract as a cinema ticket when you have to pay once and do nothing then.  But it’s not true. Rather, sponsorship is a membership into an expensive golf-club that gives privileged status and unlimited opportunities for cross-brand special projects, for creation and concerning on news feed and for fulfilling any ideas beyond what the contract provides.
I’ll give you an example from our practice. We had a show-match NaVi 2020 vs NaVi 2010 for 1хBet. The reason was unique in e-sport history: two generations of NaVi teams won with a difference in 10 years the same tournament in CS:GO IEM Katowice, and we had an obvious question, what school is cooler — old or new one? Obviously, show-match was not originally included in the sponsorship contract and the budget, as nobody could know before that NaVi 2020 will repeat the success of NaVi 2010. And to reduce the cost of the match, we invited other partners of NaVi and an outside sponsor — we got that very cross-brand special project that I wrote about. The budget was formed, a show-match was held and millions of viewers had watched it. Everybody was glad.
Something like that, in short, sponsorship works in sport and e-sport. To talk about it is impossible in one article but there are plenty of interesting topics. Next time I think of writing what is the right way to take advantage of a sponsorship contract. But we can talk about something else. Write what you would like to know about and leave the commentaries.