Euro 2008 fans ‘unaware of sponsors’
- Added:
- Jun 05, 2008
Two in five (41%) European football fans don’t know who is sponsoring the Euro 2008 championships, according to a new survey.
Survey Sampling International (SSI) found that while companies are investing huge budgets on achieving brand association with such a high profile tournament, results suggest that most of their messages have not got through to the actual football fans yet.
Drawing from a panel of 1,820 European consumers, SSI’s latest survey demonstrates that amongst respondents who claimed they would be following the games, the UK is the hardest audience for marketers to reach.
As many as 77% of UK respondents claim they do not know who this year’s sponsors are. The UK is closely followed by France (55%), Spain (42%), and Germany (28%).
It’s not all bad news for marketers though. People might not know the sponsors but they do say that they at least notice the adverts around the pitch. Results showed that 66 % of Spanish respondents notice pitch-side branding, compared to 63% of French and British respondents, and 43% of Germans.
Just as Germany is shown to be the nation least affected by pitch-side advertising, it also seems that the German market is the hardest to influence. As many as 35% claimed that they notice brands but do not allow it do affect their purchasing decision, whilst respondents in other countries are more easily influenced. Only 20% French, 17% UK, and 14% Spanish respondents thought that a pitch-side advertisement would not influence their purchasing decisions.
“Our international survey has shown a large number of football fans are still vastly unaware of the Euro 2008 sponsors. This could suggest sponsors need to review their marketing strategies to communicate their brand values to the fans if they are to succeed in using their sponsorship budget to its maximum effect,” says Volker Andresen, European Marketing Manager at SSI.
Unsurprisingly a significantly high percentage of football fans want their country’s team to win in the Euro 2008. When Brits, French, German and Spaniards were asked by global panel company Survey Sampling International (SSI) which countries they would support if their team got kicked out, almost half said they would support Italy, and other countries as shown in the order below:
- 47.6% Italy
(14.8% of respondents from Spain, 13.6% UK, 10.9% France and 8.3% Germany)
- 37.9% Portugal
(16.2% in Spain, 11% UK, 6% France and 4.7% Germany)
- 27.1% Spain
(9.1% UK, 2.8% Germany and 15.2% France)
- 24.9% Germany
(16.2% in Spain, 11% UK, 6% France and 4.7% Germany)
- 24.7% Netherlands
(11.1% in Spain, 6.3% UK, 4.9% France and 2.4% Germany)
Patriotism at its best
Although some people did choose another team as second choice most of them were very strict on only supporting their country’s football team. The Germans felt very strong about not supporting any other team but their own with 24.4 per cent saying that they would stay loyal to their own team. Figures are similar among French supporters with 20.1 per cent and the Spanish with 18.5 per cent.
Top scorers according to poll
Christiano Ronaldo was voted by far to be the top scorer during this year’s European football championship. An average of 38.93 per cent said that he’d be the best player of the tournament with over half the people in the UK and Spain being convinced of this fact. Other players only followed with an average of 12.88 per cent (Thierry Henry), 11.73 per cent (Luca Toni) and 8.25 per cent (Miroslav Klose).
Source: www.surveysampling.com.
