Last year Barclaycard spent £48m on a three-year deal to sponsor the FA Premiership whilst Coca-Cola spent a total of £50m to sponsor premier league highlights over the week in the UK’s biggest ever sports sponsorship deal. This kind of activity, says SponsorClick, will lead to the value of the European sponsorship market equalling that of the US by 2008. Sports tie-ins are expected to make up around 60% of this total.
In last year’s report Game On: Sports Investment For European Media Companies (see Forecasts) PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed the importance of professional sport to large European media companies and suggest means of exploiting revenue streams and other commercial opportunities from popular European spectator sports. Sport, said PWC, is not a passing fad and its popularity will not diminish making media involvement in sports content, information and interactivity a must for the long term success of media companies.
