How Effective Is It For Gambling Companies To Sponsor Sport?
Probably the biggest single category investor into sports
sponsorship over the last few years has been betting and gaming. The vast
majority of this investment has gone into football through shirt sponsorship
and LED perimeter advertising. In today’s market the Premier League is
dominated by brands that also have no interest in the UK market, purely
sponsoring and advertising at the the clubs for exposure back into Asia where
the laws on betting restrict advertising within the territory. Sites like
Dafabet, TLC88 and Fun88 are not even currently accessible to UK punters.
Household name brands like Ladbrokes and William Hill have
shifted more of their activity to “above the line” advertising and the focus
for them is for mobile and in-play betting . “Second Screen” is becoming an
important part of how viewers consume sport at home and betting is an integral
part of this development. Stadia are also becoming wi-fi enabled which
increases the potential for ROI from in stadia betting on mobile.
Category exclusivity is an ever growing concern. Watch any
live football match on TV these days and there will be up to six or seven
brands advertising on the LED perimeter; William Hill are the exclusive betting
sponsor of the Football Association but even they cannot guarantee exclusivity
at Cup games or national team matches. Bet Butler seemingly have the
official and exclusive rights to the Football League, but dissect the deal
further and its only exclusivity concerning the digital rights to the clubs in
the Football League. It means a potential punter who attends a match can be
exposed to one betting company on the concourse taking live bets, several more
on the LED during the match and only find BetButler by going to the club’s
website.
Effectiveness has to be measured by ROI and the different
stage of the product lifecycle the brands are on. New brands tend to go for the
mass awareness the Premier League can offer through high profile shirt
sponsorship but betting brands are very protective of their data and rarely
give access to actual “sign ups” of new accounts as a result of their
sponsorships in sport.
One sign may be the shift where only a few years ago almost
50% of the Premier League clubs sported a gambling sponsor on the shirts.
Coming into the 2013/14 season it is likely to be less than 20%.
Whilst in the early days of betting there was a huge land
grab for the rights where share of voice was hugely important, these days the
betting companies are employing media savvy individuals whose focus on ROI is
under more scrutiny means that clubs are not seeing the same “windfalls” they
did historically. Allied to that is the influx of new money into football
from the Middle East which is “gazumping” the big betting shirt sponsorships,
for example where Emirates has taken over the profile shirt deals once enjoyed
by BWIN at clubs like Real Madrid and AC Milan.
The ever changing regulatory situation in different
countries means betting brands have to find ways of creating standout and ROI
at the same time in markets where they can advertise. It is not easy in an
increasingly cluttered market place but the synergy between betting and sport,
especially football will always be there, which is why brands to some degree
cannot afford not to be present and why the Premier League, which offers a “one
stop shop” to global exposure will always attract brands in this sector.