OF SUNDAY SOCCER AND BRANDS
WHY SHOULD SUNDAY SOCCER BE ON YOUR 2022 SPONSORSHIP RADAR AND BEYOND AS A BRAND?
The community of fans have shifted from the large, animated Panda stands audiences to more cohesive, smaller – but impactful groups that gather together every Sunday for a match or two of football.
Because of COVID-19, there has been a consumer shift across industries in the past few years, and professional football has seen a huge dip in the number of in-person attendance for matches at the stadiums. This demonstrates how far top-level football has evolved away
from its core fan base to new football frontiers and cultures. In the former life, fans often had different methods of consuming football and the activities surrounding it, and exhibited different behaviours towards their club in terms of engagement.
Sponsorship simply focuses on two elements for brands; awareness and sales, and today’s Sunday Football community gets it right, and they are bringing a new wave of supporters to the field in the form of brands.
In a recent analysis of 100 sponsorships between 2020 and 2021 in seven global markets across 20 industries, Research group Nielsen found that the sponsorships drove an average 10% lift in purchase intent among the exposed fanbase.
A perfect Set-piece for brands
Better driven digital campaigns and media access to bigger platforms like Killer Pass have provided greater means for brands and clubs alike to broaden their reach to audiences far beyond the Sunday games.
This also has presented fascinating new opportunities for social clubs to capitalise on this unparalleled level of popularity, diversity of exposure and insatiable fan appetite for Sunday soccer, the not-so-heavily regulated game of football that comes with “I don’t want to go home” post-match experience.
But what are the opportunities that brands can benefit beyond the 90 mins on a Sunday?
Matchday Activations and Hospitality
A perfect home field advantage for your brand, well-put activations result in greater unaided awareness and higher brand recall. Matchday offers a great experiential opportunity to engage with the fans, it could be a brand awareness activity or sales drive with pop-up shops. The numbers do speak for themselves, and we have seen a brand like Bartender, installing its pop-up bar on the game day to extract maximum spending.
Will your brand be the first one to bring a Matchday Box to Sunday Soccer? A great experiential push when done right; Matchday Boxes offer great engagement with exciting hospitality.
Naming Rights Sponsorship
Naming rights in this context don’t have to be complex like in the professional football space, keeping it simple with the title and presenting rights, would work well for the tournaments and can be segmented to cover a number of brands involved.
Most teams do not own the land they play on, a few are on lease while most are using communal spaces. The more organised teams are leasing spaces, and that presents a naming right opportunity for brands to maximise on.
Digital Engagement
Sponsorship monitoring is very useful for brands when it comes to determining where their time should be spent for future investments. Digitally led campaigns make it easy to account for and report on the ROI efforts. Collectively, the football culture has over 300 000 followers on social media and it gives brands a wider net to cast.
|
Club Name |
|
|
Motsoseng Social Club |
14,375 |
|
Ga Inoswa |
12,602 |
|
United Artists |
9,837 |
|
Diarora |
7,287 |
|
Swaggerboys |
4,301 |
ATTRACTING AND KEEPING BRANDS IN THE GAME AS A SUNDAY SOCCER CLUB
Creating experiences and broadening fan engagement beyond 90 minutes
The Sunday football culture has grown over the years and now it’s accelerated at a nuclear speed because of digital marketing, the new fan of today is different from what the culture had years back.
If we talk about effective sponsorship, logo placement is the least weighted and seemingly basic offer you can offer to any brand. However, creating exciting experiences before and after the game creates more meaningful opportunities for brands to sync their schedules and efforts into weekend football tournament schedules and engage with their fans. This emergent culture will be most suitable for FMCG brands as most experiences are around food, music and beverages, be it cookouts or post-game beverages.
Creativity Attracts Brands , And Making The Best Use Of Content Keeps Them
Content development, if well-curated, will make it easy for brands to join in without hesitation, and in an orderly fashion, onboarding won’t be a difficult task for the brand. Demand for content is at its all-time high and clubs that respond well with match highlights, team interviews, in- depth analysis and post-match activities are by far the most exciting part of match day. Most of the fans who follow Sunday soccer do not necessarily engage throughout the 90 mins of each game, but they find excitement in the activities of game day, and this is where brands stand a good chance to engage with them.
Pre-recorded content attracts new fans beyond football. We have seen it with Formula 1, the hit Netflix series Drive To Survive brought in a new wave of fans to the sport. It’s important for teams to develop media teams and produce great content to attract brands.
Shirt Sponsorship But Make It Fashionable
Shirt Sponsorship is easily the most recognizable element of football sponsorship worldwide, it contributes significant revenue to teams worldwide with most sponsors being airlines, retail
and tel-co. Front of shirt branding recall is quite high and fans will carry your brand around even beyond the Sunday games at no extra cost, it’s an opportunity for the teams to create revenue and when matched with a good jersey design it moves off the shelves at a higher pace.
Better kit design plays a great role in setting teams apart, this was demonstrated in pro football when an unknown Brazilian team, Atlético Mineiro, became a worldwide sensation because of their kit design. A great win and colossal ROI for the French apparel Le Coq Sportif.
Locally, Moflio, with the kit designed by Black Soil; a known fashion brand, boosted the team’s brand partnership with the liquor outlet Bartender. The brand saw the new liquor outlet brand sales quadruple overnight, with an immediate ROI.
Ethics, Ops and Brand Protection
In the end, the sponsor does have a goal to improve their sales but through it, they also have to protect their brand ethos. Over the years Sunday Soccer has had a negative affiliation with alcohol abuse and game fights, but the sudden rise of the culture has exacted for the clubs to
introspect and put preventive structures in place, and to be accountable, this has made it easy for brands to consider them lucrative.
Today the team structures are led by experienced corporate leaders and they bring their wealth of experience from their day jobs to lead the teams making it a safe space for brands to engage and work with said clubs.
CONCLUSION
Bold and brave brands will occupy the space over time while some will play it safe and watch the game far from the top of the mosu tree. For brands that are looking for short-term sales outfits and minimal brand awareness it’s best paired with additional activations such as competitions, pop-up shops, and merchandise giveaways. For brands that are going for a more long-term and extensive engagement with the clubs, they should invest in facilities,
management and pair the relationship with their CSR mandate for the impact to be evident over time, with improved brand equity, awareness and most importantly the sales.
Data and insights, as well as knowing your audience should remain key for the clubs as this will constantly help serve their relationship with brands better. The sponsorship relationship over time should be measured and quantified to see if it’s benefiting both parties, sponsorship deals; like other forms of marketing expenditure require a clear and concise evaluation against its objectives to justify its existence going forward and a firm sponsorship evaluation framework is needed before investing into the game.
The playing field is ready to welcome you, even beyond the 90 minutes on Sundays.
About the Author
Seabe George is a partner and Lead Creative Technologist at 52.Sundays, a leading Digital and Experiential agency. He leads the creative team at the agency with clients across Mining, Telco, FMCG, Financial Services; creating cutting-edge and innovative solutions, incredible experiential events, strategy and content development.