Surprising sports sponsorships

Sports sponsorship dates back to 1902, when Slazenger, the athletic equipment company, became the official Wimbledon tennis ball supplier. The company still sponsors the sport today and is one of the more conventional partnerships you may have witnessed over the years.

The sponsorship market has drastically changed since the early years of the 20th century, and unlikely partnerships have cropped up in football, basketball and even the Olympics, proving that no matter what the brand, there’s an event out there for you.

Aldi

This March (2015), Aldi became the first official supermarket sponsor of the British Olympics team in a deal estimated to be worth up to £10m.

The sponsorship shocked the sporting and marketing world, with many asking why a German company was sponsoring a British team. The campaign includes the launch of an online TV platform,The Taste Kitchen, featuring six aspiring Rio Olympic athletes sharing their healthy diets. Aldi will also offer all Team GB athlete members £25 of vouchers to spend in store each month.

Aldi have always been seen as small players in a big field; behind supermarket giants such as Sainsbury’s,Tesco and more recently Lidl. But by attaching themselves to the biggest sporting event in the world, Aldi can no longer be considered as small fry by its competitors. The sponsorship is likely to cement their position on the British retail scene, 25 years after opening their first store in this country. And if the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel are anything to go by, the future is looking bright for the German supermarket chain.

Etihad Airways

When Manchester City signed a 10-year, £400m sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways in 2011, it was described as one of the most important arrangements in the history of world football. But the sponsorship didn’t only provide the club with a new training ground, new shirts, a stadium refurbishment and a sports science centre. Manchester City Council, an authority in the grip of financial cuts and the owners of the stadium, also received £20m from the second largest airline in the United Arab Emirates.

To sweeten the deal, Etihad Airways also announced that it was basing its European call centre at the airport, creating 160 jobs for Mancunians and helping to fuel the £600m Manchester Airport City project. The sponsorship deal is the highest in the history of football, and was criticised by members of the sporting world as an attempt to evade UEFA's new financial fair play regulations. This was due to the fact that the airline’s chairman, Hamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan is the half-brother of Man City owner, Sheikh Mansour Zayed al-Nahyan.

The sponsorship is reportedly part of a wider strategy by the airline to turn Manchester Airport into a lucrative source of business for its international network, and has provided Etihad with a global platform to promote their brand. Three years after the deal, the airline reported that they carried a record number of passengers and cargo in 2014, marking their strongest operational performance to date.

McDonalds

There’s nothing surprising about McDonalds sponsoring the 2012 London Olympics, the fast-food chain have been sponsoring the international sporting event since 1976. What was surprising were their sponsorship terms and conditions. Under their deal with the International Olympic Committee, the fast-food chain had the sole rights to sell chips in the Olympic Park. Other restaurants in the venue, where McDonalds had four restaurants, were allowed to sell fish and chips, but not chips on their own.

Numerous organisations have called for a ban on the sponsorship of the Olympic Games by McDonalds, and questioned the logic of a fast-food chain sponsoring an event associated with healthy living. However McDonalds’ loyalty to sport cannot be denied. By sponsoring events like The World Cup since 1994, the Olympics since 1976, the NBA, and numerous NASCAR cars, it has spent millions in keeping these events alive.

If McDonalds were to stop sponsoring, according to Olympic organisers, there would be no “Goosebumps, gasps, records smashed, strangers hugged, or a whole world brought together”. In other words, the Olympic Games wouldn’t be possible.

McDonalds also rely on sports sponsorship as part of their long-term campaign to shed their negative health associations. And with initiatives such as their 'Go Active' Happy Meals, which served pedometers with burgers instead of toys, they have a long way to go, but are one step closer than before.

UNICEF

UNICEF and Spanish football club Barcelona joined forces in 2006, when the club displayed the charity’s name on the front of their shirts; making them one of the few sides in football not to display a corporate logo. Unlike traditional sponsorship deals, Barcelona donates €1.5m a year in order to carry the UNICEF name on their shirts. The sponsorship deal was extended in 2013 which saw the logo moved to the back of the shirts to make way for Barcelona’s new sponsor: The Qatar Foundation. It marked the first time in the club’s 111-year history that Barcelona was paid to carry a sponsor on their shirt, in a deal worth €150m.

We've also welcomed UNICEF for the first time as our official charity for 2015-16 and 2017-18. And for our tenth edition, we've gifted them a branded yacht to help spread their message around the world.

As more and more people realise the economic, social and cultural benefits of sponsoring sporting events, what was once seen as surprising will become normal as first-timers and unlikely companies begin to take huge steps into the sponsorship arena.