Of course, this year's deal included the opportunity for interactive TV marketing that was not available in the 2002 deal. However, it would be wrong to assume that by doubling the number of broadcast sponsors this should halve each brand's performance.
Sports communications research company Sport+Markt has analysed the effectiveness of broadcast sponsorship around sports programming, and found that when multiple broadcast sponsorships replace exclusive broadcast sponsorships the reduction in the sponsor recall is not dramatically diluted.
Audience perception of brands advertising around the programme in fact increases, and while each of the two sponsors score lower than an exclusive sponsor, the drop is not at all equivalent to a zero-sum game.
Multiple sponsorships for international football broadcasts are, of course, not new. For several years in the Champions League and with Euro 2004, at least four brands have taken ad bumpers. Here the broadcast sponsors have been official sponsors of the competition, where broadcast sponsorship is part of a broader package for official partners, and so there have been additional means for the partners to enhance their message, e.g. perimeter boards at the matches.
As an official partner of Fifa, Budweiser will also have perimeter boards in Germany. While alone such boards have minimal impact, when combined with broadcast sponsorships they achieve a significant boost to brand recall -- however, there will be many more board advertisers at the World Cup than at Euro 2004 or in the Champions League, so this boost is likely to be reduced.
Nevertheless, the bumpers are likely to complement well the existing package of rights that Budweiser has as a Fifa partner. EDF will not enjoy such a position. So, it is in danger of being swamped by Budweiser (as energy companies generally do when sponsoring or advertising alongside products such as beer, cars or mobile phones).
In order to ensure that its communications can cut through the inevitable clutter, one such option could be a related ad spot to accompany its sponsorship. This can be a more effective combination than with perimeter boards to boost brand recall. Hitherto, energy companies have not been big spenders around such an event -- less than 0.5% of the ad time bought for ITV's live coverage of Euro 2004 was from the energy sector, compared to over 25% for the car industry.
This is likely to be the last time that ITV will have such an opportunity to sell such a deal. Fifa is looking to emulate what Uefa did with Euro 2004 and the Champions League respectively, and by the time the 2010 World Cup in South Africa comes it will have looked to ring-fence for its partners the property to which their engagements had been most vulnerable.
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