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Newcastle United and Sunderland Football Club sponsors named as Premier League’s ‘least effective’

Wonga and Dafabet, the sponsors of the North East’s top tier football clubs, have been named as the least effective in the Premier League.

Almost a third of the £200m that will be spent by brands on Premier League shirt sponsorship over the coming season will go to waste because the brands are failing to engage with football fans, a new report claims.

The Premier League reaches more than 200 global territories and is watched in around 650 million homes worldwide, in addition to the 360,000 who attend Premier League games every week.

However, a new report from Aberfield Communications argues that brand awareness generated through shirt sponsorship is only effective if supported by a bespoke activation programme geared towards engaging with, and influencing, the club’s fans and the wider football-following public.

Phil Reed, Aberfield’s managing director, explained: “Football is one of the world’s most brand-saturated markets, and relying on TV coverage to leverage the sponsorship is both passive and unproductive.

“At an average of around £10m a year in the Premier League, shirt sponsorship is great business for the clubs, but it’s only good for brands if they’re prepared to put some marketing effort behind it, not just rely on TV coverage to reach potential consumers. Otherwise that £10m is largely wasted.

“Brands need to be able to communicate their values, and consumers need to understand, and have an affinity with, those values. Fans need to know more than the brand’s name. They need to understand how and why the brand fits into their lives.”

The research by Aberfield, whose sponsorship team has worked with brands in football, motor racing, golf, cricket and other sports, focused on the marketing activities of shirt sponsors in both the Premier League and Football League Championship over the past three seasons.

The researchers found little or no evidence of audience engagement from almost a third (30%) of Premier League shirt sponsors and nearly half (46%) of Championship sponsors, including such well-known brands as Wonga, American Express, Waitrose and Suzuki.

They are in contrast to the likes of Veho, Aviva and Marathonbet, who the report names as the most active and engaged sponsors across English football’s top two divisions.

Chelsea and Liverpool’s shirt sponsors, Samsung and Standard Chartered, are also singled out as being active, and successful, in engaging with their clubs’ fans in the UK and internationally. Championship club Middlesbrough’s sponsor, pawnbroking chain Ramsdens, was also named in the report as a ‘model sponsor’.

“Samsung’s approach to its sponsorship deal is in marked contrast to that of AIA, for example, which has used its Spurs links for its Far East marketing but has done very little to engage with the club’s fans,” Reed added.

The report says the Premier League’s top five shirt sponsors since 2012 are:

· Veho (Southampton)

· Aviva (Norwich City)

· Standard Chartered (Liverpool)

· Chang Beer (Everton)

· Samsung (Chelsea)

The five least effective sponsors in the Premier League over the past three years are:

· Wonga (Newcastle United)

· Dafabet (Aston Villa – now Sunderland)

· GWFX (Swansea City)

· Energy Consulting (AFC Bournemouth)

· Alpari (West Ham United)

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