While the average football fan might not admit it, the logos that are emblazoned on his or her team’s shirt have long held a fascination.
Football teams in England were first permitted to have sponsors on their jerseys in 1979, and it was fully ten years before they were allowed to wear them during televised matches. In the early years of kit sponsorship, the logos were all local: breweries, travel agents, banks. Only the most successful club at the time – Liverpool – went global, tying up with the Japanese conglomerate Hitachi.
Fast-forward three decades, and the world of football sponsorship, and sports sponsorship in general, has matured into a multi-billion dollar industry.

BEYOND THE SHIRT. “It’s not just about putting a logo on a shirt anymore,” says Peter Baumgartner, chief commercial officer with Etihad. He says sports marketing has changed in the past few years; gone are the days when a football jersey with an electronics company logo was enough to shift units out the door. These days it’s all about building communities, reciprocal branding and utilizing new technology.
For the UAE’s two biggest airlines, sport sponsorship has seen their brands beamed into millions of homes worldwide and has helped them become household names in many of the countries they fly to. For both Etihad and Emirates Airlines, the sporting world offers them a chance of becoming the carrier of choice for viewers around the world. But while both brands use sport to generate visibility and revenue, there are differences between their approaches.
As you might expect from an airline that started operations in 1985, Emirates has more sponsorship deals than Etihad, which was only created in 2003. The Dubai-based carrier is involved with everything from Singapore horse racing to New Zealand yachting and has spent millions of dollars ensuring its name is attached to the world’s biggest sporting events. So why sport? And does this exposure result in more bums on plane seats?

MAXIMUM EXPOSURE. Vice-chairman of Emirates Airlines Group, Maurice Flanagan, has no doubts about the effectiveness of this type of marketing. “Sponsorship generates Emirates favorable awareness – not just any old awareness – through media exposure. Enhanced awareness has definitely brought commercial benefits, and we have seen our operations grow in many countries after the sponsorship of a big event.” He points to the FIFA 2006 World Cup as an example. “As one of the partners in the championship, Emirates enjoyed a cumulative television audience of multi-billion viewers in 213 countries generating a media value of approximately $155 million (AED 569 million). Our sponsorship of the fifaworldcup.com Web site also resulted in 3 billion page views. TV audiences help justify our investment as we strive to reach more and more passengers around the world. Not to mention that hundreds of thousands of fans who had an opportunity to interact with our brand through our marketing activities, like branded ‘live’ broadcast stands at major airports, media contests and other local market events.”
Flanagan describes Emirates as “a truly global airline;” in that context its sponsorship of events such as the World Cup makes perfect sense.
For Etihad, a newer and smaller airline, the approach differs slightly. It sponsors teams in major competitions (for example Ferrari in Formula One), or more local events or championships (such as the Hurling Championship in Ireland). This tactic is employed to create an emotional connection between the fans and the sponsor, though it is not without risk. While it is unlikely the popularity of the World Cup will ever wane, sponsoring an individual team is a lot riskier, particularly if your brand is intimately tied to that team. What would happen, for instance, if Manchester City – for whom Etihad are the key shirt sponsor – were to be relegated?
“When it comes to individual teams there is always a risk,” says Baumgartner. “But we have contractual safeguards, and before we sign, we do due diligence, we look at how the team’s strategies are aligned with our own interests and try to predict the future.” Baumgartner gives the example of Etihad’s sponsorship of the Spyker Formula One team.
“We knew it was a team at the lower end of the grid. It was a lower team challenging, a similar brand to ours so the story was a credible one. There is more to it than just results on the track.” That is certainly true; one of the major goals of any sports sponsorship is to have fans buy into the message. But will a community accept a large foreign brand sponsoring their team or sport?

INTERNATIONAL IRELAND. When Etihad took over the sponsorship of the All Ireland Senior Hurling Championships in 2008, a few eyebrows were raised. Hurling – along with Gaelic Football – is the most popular sport in Ireland, and is often thought of as the glue that holds rural communities together. Yet in spite of the disconnect between an ambitious Middle Eastern airline and a sport that goes back more than a hundred years, the sponsorship has been a success.
The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) is the sport’s governing body, and the association’s Dermot Power believes the link up was natural. “The GAA has always had sponsorships from international companies like Coca-Cola and Toyota,” he says. “[It] was happy to have a partnership with an internationally renowned airline like Etihad Airways, which has a schedule of flights to and from Ireland.”
According to Power, the sponsorship has brought numerous benefits to the GAA. “[We have] benefited from being associated with a prestigious international brand, from innovative promotions such as the ‘Best Club Under The Sun,’ to the opportunity to bring the sport to an international audience with innovations like holding the Interprovincial Hurling Final in Abu Dhabi.”
Baumgartner also believes the linkup with the GAA was the right move. “We were the first airline from the Middle East to serve Ireland properly so the tie-up was a way to make sure we were still in their hearts when the market becomes more crowded,” he says. “Hurling in Ireland is more than just a sporting occasion, it is a celebration of culture, and we were able to tap into that level of emotional loyalty. It gave us overnight fame in Ireland – everyone was interested in who was supporting the GAA.”

AIR APPARENT. Both airlines agree that the aviation industry has advantages over other fields such as electronics when it comes to marketing. “As an airline we have many communication platforms,” says Baumgartner. “In-flight entertainment, duty free, retail shops, flying teams over for games – it’s all about activation tools.”
Flanagan believes that sports marketing offers opportunities absent in other forms of marketing. “Sponsorship activation utilizes all marketing channels and platforms – advertising, PR, events, direct marketing, and CRM amongst other tools – to embed the Emirates brand and bring to life our brand association with a sponsored event or property,” he says.
He also agrees with Baumgartner on the need for due diligence before sponsoring a team or event. “It must be a sport or an event that reflects the quality of Emirates,” he says. “The event must be relevant to an Emirates destination. The event must have guaranteed television coverage and there must be a measurable return on the investment of a minimum of eight to one.”
The carriers’ separate strategies seem to be working, at least for now. As for the future of sports sponsorship, both airlines are bullish.
“Activation and promotion of sponsorship will continue to be competitive as brands work hard to get their message across to their target market,” says Flanagan. “This is why Emirates decides on its commitments carefully, to ensure that we remain as one of the leading brands around the world.”
Meanwhile, Baumgartner believes new media and social networking will guarantee a closer connection between the sponsor and the fans. “There will continue to be new developments like etihadfootball.com,” he says. “We get into a dialogue with people that is relevant and show exclusive footage of things that only we as a main sponsor can give you. We can make you very loyal and make sure that you identify with our brand. Our ideas our endless, we are still at the very beginning.”