With what is eaten the sponsorship of a top competition

Accustomed from the intern championship, where “sponsor” is also  the little businessman which gives some money in order to turn up at TV as a specialist, and the multinational which invests one million to see its logo on the chest, back or posterior of the football players, we have started to give a pejorative connotation to this term. However, in the good world of sport, the sponsorship is a serious problem.

And the big competitions collect sums comparable with the GDP of a small country. Behind the billboards which round the stadiums from Euro 2008 there are millions of euro. And the few sponsors, chosen from among the knit one’s brows by UEFA, are involved in a real industry, invisible for the ordinary TV spectectator. This only takes the information as such and contributes to the increase of the brand awarness, so wanted by sponsors.The company Canon for example, whose name became synonym with the image, sponsors for more than 30 years the big football competitions.

This year reached also at the table of the powerful ones for a sum probable “indecent” in the perception of the public at large, but surely confidential. The benefits which the Japanese receive (in fact the subsidiary Canon Europe) can be counted on the fingers from one hand: the right of making public by any means the quality of the tournament’s sponsor, the billboards that are on all the stadiums where take place football matches, 50 seconds screen credits  at every match, the right of installing their own stalls in the hospitality areas of the stadiums and in the fan-areas which host matches, the exclusivity of the Canon logo on the waistcoats of all the photographers. And that would be all.

What do they offer in exchange? Beside the significant sums of money paid towards UEFA, Canon installs a network of 100 operational printers which allow to all the officials of the tournament, in number of over 5.000, to print in any location of the Euro 2008 (stadiums, hotels, airports etc) the important documents, in 24/7 regime, the technical assistance being included. Canon, also assures permanently technical assistance for all the accredited photographers, as also professional photo services in all the locations. But maybe more important and spectacular then the contractual relation with UEFA there are the hospitality programs carried on by all the sponsors of the competition. A real tour of force, which assumes booking flight tickets, hotel rooms, bus and vehicles for tens of thousand of guests. Only Canon, for example, brings its own expenditure about 10.000 guests at Euro 2008. Beside the touristic package and of the tickets for football matches (do a simple calculation: 250 euro x 10.000 persons, in order to take into account the average price at the matches from groups), the sponsors have arranged, all together, a small VIP town at each stadium, where the guests are brought before and after every match, and where is listened live music, are served drinks and food or the matches can be watched on huge monitors.

Being nostalgic for the innocence of the sportive competition of another time, we notice that the sport generally – and the football especially – have transformed into a business of which the ones involved gain stunning values and which bring huge benefits of image to the ones which choose to invest.