What you need to know
The sports sponsorship market is thriving, with clubs and governing bodies across a range of sports reporting record figures. This has been led by Premier League football clubs, who saw commercial revenue increase by 7.1% in the 2016/17 season.
UK sports viewership and attendance remains strong, ensured by embedded loyalty and support across the sector. This has been boosted in recent years by growing global viewership, much of which is the result of a series of broadcasting deals across the industry.
However, the way sport, and as a result sponsorship, is consumed is changing. Technological advances and the rise of social media have seen sports consumption increasingly migrate online. Sponsors have had to take a multi-channel approach to the industry, which has seen boosted exposure in mobile apps, streaming services and social media.
The market is forecast to remain buoyant in the coming years, driven by the huge popularity of British sports both domestically and globally. Sports sponsorship will circumvent much of the detriment posed by Brexit headwinds, while the final realisation of eSports’ potential could provide a significant new avenue for growth in the coming years.
Covered in this Report
This Report examines sports marketing and sponsorship in the UK, focusing mainly on the sponsorship of sports properties, athletes and governing bodies. Sponsorships that only cover the broadcast of sports events are excluded, but may be discussed for the purposes of context, while many sponsorship deals will now include sponsorship of properties and broadcast coverage as part of the same deal.
There are various ways of defining sponsorship. One useful version, put forward by S Sleight in the 1989 publication Sponsorship – What It Is And How To Use It, is used by Mintel as a guide throughout this report:
“Sponsorship is a business relationship between a provider of funds, resources or services and an individual, event or organisation, which offers in return rights and association that may be used for commercial advantage.”
Within this framework for the sector, Mintel’s analysis and value statements are confined to: events taking place in the UK, part(s) of which take place in the UK, representative organisations and governing bodies based in the UK.
Sponsorship of individual athletes is not included in the value assessment but may be covered in discussion; particularly in individual sports.
The cyclical nature of the sports sponsorship market and the high proportion of deals where value goes unreported mean there is no reliable measure of brand expenditure in the market. Accordingly, values included in this report are done on a sports-by-sports basis, using the published accounts of each sport’s leading trade association.
Most small-scale sponsorship deals are not included in the market size, such as local or regional projects or events, local sports leagues, and anything else that is not reported in the national media and is, therefore, unquantifiable.
