Betting partnership have flooded the game football, with many questioning whether brand and PR exposure can be effectively gained from partnerships and sponsorships.
A seasoned PR panel tells the BOF audience that betting partnership are still a valuable exercise for operator brand communications, marketing and branding…
Session Panel
SBC Notes
Aideen Shortt opens the session by telling the audience that finding value in betting partnerships/sponsorships is harder than ever. However the speaker states that this is a natural process, as all industry marketing practices are now saturated, so football partnerships should be no different.
Shortt states that betting partnerships with clubs are now highly fragmented in the sense that the structure is no longer limited to exclusive relationships with one operator at a time. Clubs now work with multiple operators for different product verticals and sponsorship packages. But to get this right it’s more important than ever to have very specific delivery targets and to know exactly what you want the sponsorship to bring… Whether it’s, for example, using the premier league to get exposure in Asia or getting access to a clubs social networks to drive traffic for particular products or at particular. Though the sponsorship landscape is more complex, it affords more possibilities and for a wider spectrum of betting companies.
Alan Alger dispels the notion that Betting partnerships/sponsorships are the “easy option” for betting operators. Giving insight into Betway’s sponsorship of West Ham United, Alger details how his team have to constantly measure effective marketing coverage with a “value first” approach. This is no easy task as data cannot be easily gained for sponsorship as for other marketing practices
Alger further states that effective sponsorship tests all levels of the operators marketing, including brand, PR, player acquisition and reputation values, thus making it a hard practice to undertake.
Darren Haines states that sponsorship fails on PR and brand terms when operators do not undertake diligence and research on the football club as a marketing asset. Haines states that the operator cannot simply gauge fan reach and media coverage, but should take into account other more intricate values such as the clubs surroundings, its social initiatives, its local history/culture and personal stories of fans and the clubs they support. These focused values can drive more effective reach and PR
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BOF Panel Session Sponsored by Matchbook.com