Change is constant. If you are a football fan, you already know that Amazon obtained the rights to broadcast 80% of the French Ligue 1 matches until 2024. Amazon’s decision to start streaming live games is not only happening in France. In Brazil, Amazon Prime will broadcast more than a thousand games, including the Brazilian Championship, the Brazilian National Cup, and others. These changes raise a question: what can we expect in the coming years in terms of live sports coverage?

The changing behaviour of new generations has forced the industry to create new forms of engagement for sports fans. According to a Facebook survey, 86% of sports fans use their mobile phones while watching TV. It is, therefore, necessary to create a multiplatform content strategy. 

This scenario enables the entry of different companies as sports broadcasting tools. Today, there is the league’s own television, such as Conmebol TV, large companies that already had streaming services (Amazon, DAZN), and social media that also already have the expertise to broadcast live content to millions of users (Facebook, TikTok, Twitch).

Another example happened in Spain. Kosmos, the company of the FC Barcelona football player, Gerard Piqué, bought the rights to broadcast French Ligue 1 in Spain. The corporation had already bought the TV rights of the last Copa América to broadcast the competition on Twitch.

Change in the way sports content is consumed increases the commercial possibilities for sports marketers. The possibilities are countless. Just as television revolutionized the way of watching football – many even believed it would be the end of the audience in the stadiums – the same happens with these new streaming channels.

The 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo will finally start. After a one-year delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Opening Ceremony will take place on Friday 23 July at the Olympic Stadium. The situation of these Olympic Games is very rare. This is the first time in 124 years that they had been postponed, though they were cancelled 3 times and suffered political interference over the years. Do you know all the historical facts that changed the history of the Games? Check our list below:

1916 Berlin

The 6th Olympic Games of the Modern Era were scheduled to be held in Berlin. But the Games had to be cancelled due to the outbreak of World War I in July 1914. Initially, the organizers have continued the preparation for the Games for a while, as they thought the war would be “over by Christmas”. Yet, it lasted until November 1918. 

1932 Los Angeles

The Olympic Games held in Los Angeles were severely affected by the Great Depression, which began with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929. In the scenario of an acute world economic crisis, the Olympic Games had a significant reduction in the number of participating countries (37, when there had been 46 countries in the previous Olympics) and, above all, in the number of athletes, dropping from 2,883 to only 1,332.

1940 and 1944

The 1940 Olympic Games were also originally scheduled to be held in Tokyo, Japan. But then, both the 1940 and 1944 Summer and Winter Olympics Games had to be cancelled due to World War II.

1948 London

Held in London, the organizers of the first post-war Olympics decided to ban both Germany and Japan for their participation in World War II. The Soviet Union was invited but decided to not participate. 

1964 Tokyo 

In the first Olympics in Asia, the IOC decides to ban South Africa from the Games because of the country’s segregationist apartheid regime. The decision is based on the Olympic principles: “any form of discrimination against a country or a person based on race, religion, politics, sex, or other considerations is incompatible with participation in the Olympic movement”. 

1972 Munich

The Munich Olympics were tragically marked by the attack by the Palestinian group Black September on athletes from the Israeli delegation. Two were killed immediately and nine were taken hostage, against the demand for the release of 200 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. In the end, 18 people died: 11 athletes from Israel, five terrorists, one policeman, and one pilot. The Games were suspended for 34 hours, but, by IOC decision, were resumed and came to an end. 

1976 Montreal

The Montreal Games were boycotted by 22 African countries, led by Tanzania, in protest against the participation of New Zealand, whose national rugby team had gone to play in South Africa, banned from sporting competitions because of apartheid. 

1988 Seoul

In the preparation of the 1988 Olympics, North Korea demanded that 11 of the 23 events be held in their country and wanted its own opening and closing ceremony. The negotiations were not successful and the IOC offered only half of the desired sporting events. The games were then boycotted by North Korea and others socialist countries, including Cuba, Albania, Ethiopia, and  Seychelles.

1992 Barcelona

The fall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe has resulted in major changes for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. These Olympic Games were particularly a landmark occasion. With The breakup of the Soviet Union, 12 of 15 nations chose to form a Unified Team, while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania competed with their own teams for the first time since 1936. 

The 1992 Olympics also had Germany competing as a unified team for the first time since 1964. Finally, with the end of apartheid, South Africa returned to the Games for the first time in 32 years

2020 Tokyo

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games were postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. It’s the first time in its history that the Games have been postponed. 

International Women’s Day is celebrated to honor the history of fights and achievements of women around the world. But, it is also a time for reflection, especially when we talk about women in sports. In many countries, sports are still seen as something made for men, and much of this perception comes from the media itself. According to a study conducted by the Cambridge University, men are commonly depicted by the media as ‘fastest’, ‘real’, ‘great’ and ‘strong’, in contrast, women are commonly referred to as ‘aged’, ‘unmarried’, ‘pregnant’ or ‘older’.

Women get less media coverage than men and when they do, they are much more likely to be portrayed off the field, out of uniform, in sexualized poses and being asked questions about their personal lives and physical appearance. In the USA 40% of all sports participants are women, and yet, they only receive between 2 and 4% of press coverage. In Brazil, that number is around 3% and in the Old Continent the situation is not so different, standing at 5%. How can we begin to change this?

Sports fans have a hunger for news, and they don’t care if it is men’s or women’s sports. All they want to see is their idols playing and bringing trophies home. If people had the opportunity to know more about women athletes, what they have achieved or what they have overcome, they would certainly love it. There are a lot of great events and stories  which can be covered to give those fans the same kind of excitement.

Recently we have seen the union of 4 Olympians to elevate women’s voices. Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Simone Manuel, and Chloe Kim have joined together to fight against the underrepresentation of women by creating TOGETHXR, a media and commerce company. We hope that this will be the starting point of a significant change.  

Women’s Soccer World Cup 2019, Rugby World Cup 2023, Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024, Roland-Garros, Tour de France… The calendar of sporting events in France is growing rapidly. This is also accompanied by an interest from companies in sports sponsorship. The objective of this article is to briefly present some concepts related to sports sponsorship: definition, marketing implementation and the return on investment.

Before talking about sports sponsorship, it is important to understand the difference between sponsorship and patronage. The first major difference lies in the objectives pursued through patronage and sponsorship. Sponsorship responds to an economic strategy to enhance the commercial value of the brand or products, while patronage responds to an institutional strategy to enhance the social value of the company. In other words, the objective of sponsoring is to sell (it is at the service of marketing) while the objective of patronage is to promote (it is at the service of the company’s institutional image).

Sponsorship as a component of marketing

“74% of French people think that sponsorship is useful for sport and 81% think that it makes brands more appealing.”

Sponsorship is part of what is known as the “marketing mix“, i.e. it clearly participates in a rational management of the company where the cost must be minimized for maximum efficiency. By definition, sports sponsorship is a communication technique that aims to persuade the public who attend an event of a link existing between this event and the communicating company in order to make the company, its products and possibly its brands known and to reap the benefits in terms of image.

It is a marketing tool at the service of the brand, a brand that can be defined as a promise made to the consumer to find in the branded product the advertised quality. Through sponsorship, the brand seeks to get as close as possible to consumers to maintain an emotional bond with them. The consumer spectator placed in a non-commercial situation is in confidence. They have more sympathy for the brand than in an explicitly, commercial situation since the sponsor has nothing to sell them directly in the context of the sporting event.

Implementation of sponsoring and promotion of actions

Sports sponsorship can be done basically in two ways:

◾ Athletes’ support

◾ Sporting events support

Measuring the return on investment

From an economic point of view, it is very important to evaluate the financial profitability of a sports sponsorship. Some companies use sponsorship to increase their turnover, others to increase their notoriety, or to develop their brand image. When we evaluate the return on investment, we must keep in mind the main objectives to better choose our indicators. Here are a few examples:

◾ Economic efficiency indicators:

◾ Exposure and audience indicators:

◾ Indicators of memorization and notoriety:

Assisted notoriety: it indicates a percentage of people who have cited the sponsors from an exhaustive list.

Spontaneous notoriety: percentage of people who cited the sponsors in the absence of a list.

Top-of-mind: it indicates the percentage of people who spontaneously cited the sponsor as the first sponsor.

According to the latest study conducted by Sporsora, sponsorship in France represents 4 and a half billion euros. The focus on sports sponsorship is justified by the fact that it represents about 2/3 of sponsorship in France. Approximately 11% of general information from television, radio and the web are devoted to sports information. As the media treatment of sport is becoming more and more important, more and more sponsors are attracted to this sector.