French club Paris St Germain and Spanish giant Barcelona, sponsored by Emirates and Qatar Airways, respectively.
Acquisitions, takeovers, mergers, name it what you like. They help strengthen businesses and weaken rivals.
Competitive edge is the key that makes the real difference between what you have and what others don’t.
It’s all about survival of the fittest. It’s about being the biggest, the best, the most profitable and the most savvy.
One, or a combination of the above, can help achieve the goals outlined above. In the cut-throat corporate world where competition is fierce and at times brutal, it is the strong business acumen and shrewdness of operators that will win the day.
So, one may ask, how do airlines and sport – football in particular – play their role in the global marketplace where the stakes are high.
Soccer, as we know, is no longer a game of two halves.
Commercial departments at soccer clubs are hard at work finding ways to fund rich assets on the pitch who plying their trade week in, week out at home and away.
Sponsorships and endorsements are the norm. Without them, clubs find it difficult to compete at the highest level.
More money brought into clubs means more available to buy star players, pay huge wages and secure a share of TV rights to screen games. Partnerships significantly help soccer clubs boost income since ticket sales alone barely cover the cost of superstar salaries.
A cash injection from sponsors with deep pockets is widely welcomed with open arms – certainly for clubs looking for a sense of financial security and alignment with strong brands.
Airlines are easy prey for the commercial sharpshooters looking to bring in powerful sponsors. And yes, soccer clubs go all out with the best of proposals to lure airlines that match their aspirations: a global brand supporting a global club. Airlines haven’t traditionally gone knocking on doors of soccer clubs. They instead get hounded for multimillion dollar deals. However, airlines are increasingly turning to football as a prize catch simply because of captive audiences that run into tens of millions watching 90 minutes of action every week.
Think of it this way.
An airline’s brand name and logo emblazoned on soccer jerseys, perimeter hoardings at stadiums, match day programmes, backdrops for player and manager TV interviews, together with repeats on soccer shows and highlights on news channels is not something to turn a blind eye to. A brand becomes so powerful crossing Continents with broadcasters playing their part to boost exposure and increase fan following.
For the airline, such coverage thrusts it into the global spotlight which greatly supports their promotional efforts around the world promoting service and routes.
Whether you are a follower or not of the “beautiful game”, the fact that soccer is a global sport endlessly thrust into our homes, is a prime opportunity for brand sponsors such as airlines to get a share of a mass global audience.
From the fans in the stadium watching a match in their tens of thousands to the tens of millions armchair followers at home, pubs and bars around the world, it doesn’t take a genius to work out the return on investment reaching such a large potential customer base.
Naming rights of stadiums automatically leave their mark with those watching.
Does Highbury, for decades the home of English Premier League club Arsenal, ring in the ears of fans on match day? No.
Does Maine Road too, again for decades, home to Premiership champions Manchester City ring a bell? No again.
Both clubs, multimillion assets that have built up their reputation and empires over the years, have grounds known as The Emirates and The Etihad respectively – named after two of the leading airlines in the Gulf.
Both stadium names just roll off the tongue. It’s clever marketing for airlines to secure naming rights. Though at a price, it’s what the airlines want: to get people talking about them and spreading the word about their rapidly expanding global businesses. This week, one of the most anticipated games of the season so far saw Champions League giants Paris Saint Germain play in the French capital against the star-studded Spanish team Barcelona.
With a strong local connection – PSG is Qatar owned and Qatar Airways sponsors Barcelona – we saw a battle on the pitch between strong airline brand names from this part of the world. PSG happens to be sponsored by Dubai-based carrier Emirates.
All 22 jersey fronts had either Emirates or Qatar Airways written on them: TV cameras at every angle and photographers capturing every moment, simply a sponsors’ dream. In the English Premier League, QPR is sponsored by low-cost carrier Air Asia, owned by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes, who happens to also own the London club. Though the airline is in a different league to its full-service Gulf peers, the brand is extremely powerful being Asia’s largest low-cost carrier in the region starting off life in Kuala Lumpur before expanding operations to subsidiaries with the same name in neighbouring countries.
With the UK being Europe’s number one outbound travel market to south east Asia, it is evident why Air Asia sees fit to team up with an English soccer club.
QPR’s marketing director, Becky Grote, says: “Moving AirAsia on to all three of our playing kits allows them the maximum exposure to the growing worldwide football audience. We have great ambition for the growth of QPR in the Asian market, and AirAsia provide us with the perfect platform to raise awareness of the Club in new territories.”
Liverpool has a tie-up with Jakarta-based Garuda Indonesia. A strange fit one would think, but a clever one that clearly appeals to both parties. Garuda’s extensive Asian network of flights and Liverpool’s huge fan following across the region itself presents tremendous opportunities. The Reds, as they are known, enjoy the biggest following of any local-language Liverpool Football Club Twitter account with more than 100,000 followers, and the second biggest following on the club’s Facebook page (2mn).
Currently limited to a preferred airline and training kit sponsorship, Garuda will surely be eyeing a shirt agreement if current sponsors Standard Chartered backs down. With Garuda also recently celebrating its first non-stop flights to Europe, a promotional push for the Asian flights with Liverpool FC gives it impetus in a market dominated by regional and Gulf rivals.
Russian airline Aeroflot recently took over from Turkish Airlines to become a sponsor of Manchester United. An unusual choice for the soccer club as Aeroflot has endured a poor safety record over the years, but the Moscow-based carrier is undergoing a major fleet modernisation programme to improve its image – and that of a country hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Just this week, Turkish Airlines announced it was further enhancing its position in football.
The airline industry’s dark horse is giving its key Middle East rivals a run for their by prematurely announcing on Twitter that it will become the next shirt sponsor of London football giant Chelsea. As Chelsea’s 10-year shirt agreement with Korean electronics firm Samsung finishes at the end of the 2014/15 soccer season next May, Turkish is due to step in.
Although no figures have yet been released, it is very likely that the deal will be worth close to the $45mn-a year-deal Arsenal struck with Emirates two years ago to extend its sponsorship originally signed in 2004.
Arsenal has a $225mn shirt extension agreement with Emirates until 2019 and naming rights of the Emirates Stadium pushed to 2028. But it was Etihad in 2011 which struck the largest deal of its kind in football history with a reported $600mn sponsorship agreement with Manchester City in a 10-year deal covering shirt sponsorship and stadium naming rights. Qatar Airways’ five-year agreement with Barcelona that was implemented in 2013, is said to be valued at $169mn.
The huge investments are seen as crucial to build brand awareness.
Emirates, an Official FIFA Worldwide partner since 2007, is currently the brand leader in soccer sponsorship with a number of agreements including a shirt deal with Spanish champions Real Madrid and Italian club AC Milan.
Last year alone, Emirates’ total sports sponsorships were valued at $272mn. Investment in sport around the world is part of its strategy to create a global airline power. Emirates has clearly led the way in everything from soccer and rugby to sailing and cricket among the 70 different sporting agreements in place.
By driving a strategy to develop its Dubai home as the world’s leading aviation hub, Emirates has used sponsorship as a key tool to build brand image and spreading the word about its burgeoning route network to a global customer base, both existing and new.
Turkish and its three Gulf competitors currently operate a whooping combined fleet of over 600 aircraft to around 600 destinations worldwide. From the UK alone – London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle – between them, the four airlines of Turkish, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad operate more than 35 flights each day to their home base airports.
From their respective hubs of Istanbul, Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the carriers have a large network of connecting flights to cities across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australasia.
With plenty of seats to sell and great promotional efforts needed to generate market awareness, football sponsorship in the UK, in particular, is a big and good business.
But airlines don’t resort to just tactical promotional offers on flights to secure more business. The promotional bandwagon covers much, much more. Soccer clinics for youngsters with football stars in airlines’ chosen markets; players flown around the world as club ambassadors; campaigns featuring superstars of the pitch with glamorous cabin crew; and even aircraft painted in the colours of soccer clubs as we have seen with Barcelona and Manchester City, courtesy of Qatar Airways and Etihad respectively.
We saw examples as recently as last month when Barcelona’s new striker Luis Suarez and retired defender Carlos Puyol, now the club’s new assistant director of sport, were in Qatar.
They were among the star turnouts in Doha to grace the arrival of Qatar Airways’ first Airbus A380 superjumbo. The link? Like any sponsorship agreement involving celebrities in any field, promotional duty is a must to generate a return on investment.
The airline industry and soccer clubs are a great combination for brand marketers competing for an ever increasing global fan base to secure that all-important competitive edge.
*Updesh Kapur is a PR & communications professional, columnist, aviation, hospitality and travel analyst, social and entertainment writer. He can be followed on twitter @updeshkapur
