Summer of sport has begun with European Football, next week it's Wimbledon and the Rio Olympics starts on 5 August. Hundreds of companies have paid to sponsor the events, the teams and the players.
But if you haven't paid to be an official sponsor, beware of trying to associate your brand with sporting events. Firstly, the sporting event brands themselves police sponsorship very closely; the chicken shop in Stratford that rebranded itself Olympic Chicken in 2012 was short-lived.
Secondly, avoid tortuous connections in your email marketing. The eshot that begun 'With Valentines Day fast-approaching, now is the perfect time to buy a new toner cartridge' was mocked and swiftly deleted. Not many b2b companies can claim a real connection to a big sporting event so it might be best to leave that to consumer brands. This is the time to be in takeaway pizzas and big TVs.
Electric Marketing was asked for mailing lists of the companies who are official sponsors of international sporting events. It follows that if there is a sponsorship budget for the European Football, there must be a big marketing and promotions budget surrounding it. If you can make this work for you, we now have lists of sports sponsors.
There are different levels of corporate sponsorship; the ten global sponsors of the UEFA 2016 football championship are Adidas, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Continental Tyres, Hisense (Chinese electronics giant), Hyundai-Kia, McDonald's, Orange, SOCAR and Turkish Airlines.
Although national teams are not permitted to display sponsors' logos on their shirts, Vauxhall sponsors England, Northern Ireland and Wales national teams. The England team have an official supermarket sponsor (Lidl), their suits come from sponsors Marks & Spencer and Panini is the official sticker provider. There are many more companies involved in sponsoring the teams in the Euro 16 Football and still more in the Rio Olympics.
These sponsors will have allocated big budgets to be spent during these events and have a very limited time in which to spend them. The right approach at the right time could see a small chunk of that budget heading your way.
To access the mailing lists of companies actively involved in the business side of this summer's sports, see our website page dedicated to mailing lists of UK sports sponsors.