Q&A: Matt Cook, Sportingbet
eGR: How does the cost of sponsoring a club in the English Premier League (EPL) compare with your established football sponsorships in Spain?
Matt Cook (MC): The English and Spanish leagues offer similar value in terms of cost versus rights received. In Spain our main agreement for the 2010-2011 season was in branding across a number of La Liga clubs, rather than with one or two specific teams so a direct comparison is difficult. Generally Spain and the UK are a similar cost, but other countries (such as Germany) are different due to different regulatory situations.
eGR: Wolves escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth last season. Had they gone down, would you have been able to revise the terms of the sponsorship given it would presumably have driven less value?
MC: The terms of the agreement do differ should the position of the team change, this is a standard component of a sponsorship agreement. Factors such as less television broadcast exposure come into play on the financial side of things but sponsoring a strong team at the top of the Championship can sometimes be just as beneficial as sponsoring a team near the bottom of the Premier League.
eGR: Are you actually now seeing ROI on your investment in the Wolves sponsorship, or is this mainly a way of launching your brand in what has been a marginal market for Sportingbet?
MC: Return comes in many different guises, from brand exposure through to financial return. It is often difficult to measure return in sponsorship, though if you ensure you have set realistic targets at the start of the deal and measure against those then you will know whether the deal has met expectations and requirements for success. As well as seeing an uplift in betting amongst Wolves fans and across the West Midlands, we have also seen spontaneous awareness of the brand jump from single figures to 82% amongst Wolves fans.
eGR: Asian operators sponsor EPL teams for the uplift it provides in markets far from the UK, via global TV coverage. Where has the sponsorship been most effective for Sportingbet, which also has most of its customers outside of the UK?
MC: The further afield that you go the more difficult – and expensive – it becomes to gauge the true impact. Media values are a good indicator to a point, however they are really only scratching the surface as to the true benefit to your particular brand. Whilst the majority of the measureable impact has been in the UK market, we have indications that there have been benefits of the sponsorship in our bigger markets such as Spain, Turkey, Brazil and Greece.
eGR: How effective have the betting partnerships with Wolves and [fellow EPL team] Spurs proved? Are you able to provide any figures here?
MC: Betting partner deals are obviously a more affordable way to be associated with some of the top names in English football. As well as our Wolves shirt deal, we are the betting partner at Spurs and Leeds United, who both have fantastic, large fan bases. Whilst we can’t divulge any figures, it is true to say that we see a better percentage return on such partnership deals, as our targets are based more in the financial than the brand side.
eGR: With Bodog, 12Bet, Genting and 32Red recently joining the fold, eight from 20 EPL shirts will bear gambling brands next season. With the number of brands competing for punters’ attention increasing, could this limit the effectiveness of such sponsorships?
MC: The football sponsorship arena is indeed cluttered, however so is the betting market in general and we have to employ the same tactics as we do in the marketplace in order to differentiate ourselves. Through campaigns and projects such as the Sportingbet Wolves Zone, we believe we can differentiate ourselves to be utilising the sponsorship effectively to raise our brand above the parapet of others.