By Alex Miller
10 December 2011
Elite football is not totally immune from the recession after all: the six national teams in Europe with the most lucrative headline sponsorships will go to Euro 2012 with combined deals worth less money than they had at the 2010 World Cup.
While top club wages, bonuses, endorsement deals and TV deals continue to defy the recession, international football associations appear to have been hit in the pocket by the economic downturn.
According to separate findings by the sports marketing companies SPORT + MARKT and PR MARKETING, seen by Sportingintelligence, the FAs of Germany, England, Italy, the Netherlands, France and Spain have taken a combined hit of £6.4m a year compared to their deals enjoyed in 2010.
The 2010 deals v the 2012 are as here (story continues below):
National associations are reluctant to confirm the exact values of their sponsorship arrangements, but research by these well connected companies offer the best alternative data.
The biggest financial losers are the English FA, following the FA’s decision to accept a £5m a year deal with Vauxhall – an estimated hit of £3.6m a year on its previous headline sponsorship deal with Nationwide.
The German Football Association has lost an estimated £2.5m a year compared with its previous arrangement with Mercedes – but continues to enjoy the most lucrative deal of its kind.
From the six major deals across Europe, only the French Football Federation has enjoyed a moderate increase of £500,000 a year compared with 2010.
International sides tend to have more than one sponsor, but the headline sponsor is the most lucrative deal and the company involved tends to have its branding appear on team training kits and leisure wear, tickets, backdrops during press conferences and signs at home games and training sessions.
Dr Peter Rohlmann of PR MARKETING told Sportingintelligence: “The recession is a substantial factor for getting new sponsors at the same level as in an economic boom.
“But my experience is that the influence of sporting failure and negative affairs, for example with Italy and England, has been more important for the acquisition of new sponsorships by the football associations than the economic environment.”
The English FA is about to take a hit in the value of its domestic TV deal with ITV although foreign rights values are expected to growth to around £48m a year.
As Sportingintelligence reported in October, England’s £26m-a-year kit deal with Umbro is second only to France in the world of football in terms of high value.
.
