King George deal inches 32Red towards £20m marketing outlay
Sponsorship of high profile Boxing Day race reflection of growing confidence as firm accelerates brand spend
32Red’s King George VI sponsorship deal has put the operator on the brink of spending £20m in marketing in 2016, a near 60% hike on the operator’s outlay across the previous 12 months.
Speaking to EGR shortly after the three-year deal was announced on Saturday, 32Red’s chief commercial officer Matt Booth said the firm’s aggressive marketing strategy was a reflection of the firm’s confidence in getting ROI on such deals and would accelerate spend moving forward.
“We have spent time to build our data modelling to know where and when to spend the money efficiently and whilst we will probably spend close to £20m on marketing in 2016, we haven’t eroded our ROI. We still receive a payback on our marketing spend inside 90 days,” Booth said.
“All of this means we can safely invest in widening our advertising reach in both sport and lifestyle media. We will continue to accelerate our brand spend in channels such as TV, sponsorship, digital advertising and PR and look to take more share here in our primary market, the UK,” he added.
In addition to the King George, the headline race on Kempton’s Boxing Day card, 32Red also sponsored Kempton’s Lanzarote Hurdle day fixture and extended its support of the Tolworth Hurdle card at Sandown.
32Red has become one of the biggest backers of UK racing in recent years but has prospered further still under racing’s somewhat controversial Authorised Betting Partner (ABP) scheme â 32Red replaced current non-ABP operator William Hill as the King George sponsor.
“We know that horse racing is a good sport for us to advertise around as the target audience is open to and are frequent gamblers,” Booth said. “We measure our success in the new players we acquire and their activity in sports but also how well they cross sell to our flagship casino product.
“Indicators have always been positive from horse racing investment, so we can confidently invest more.
“We believe we have picked great partners and fantastic events to build our brand behind, in particular, we are very excited to see our brand associated with the King George VI Chase at Kempton.
“This is one of the few races that attracts wider mainstream attention, so it will be interesting to see how this sponsorship impacts our core metrics,” he added.
32Red has also been busy outside of racing, with TV adverts running both in the UK and in Italy. The firm also sponsors Sky Sports News’ overnight coverage and is the shirt sponsor of both Leeds United and Rangers FC, who this weekend plays Celtic in what is the high-profile return of the Old Firm league fixture.
Following the acquisition of Roxy Palace last summer, 32Red’s H1 2016 revenues were up 63% to £30.4m, with organic growth over that period at 32%.