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Sport and Technology - news and features on the use of technology in sport
The monthly e-newsletter covering the impact of technology on the business of sport

Letter to the Editor: LED advertising - December 2003  

Dear Editor,

LED advertising at Real Betis
LED advertising at Real Betis
I was interested to read your article about the impact of LED perimeter boards while watching a football [soccer] match in Spain in last month's Sport and Technology.
The use of LED boards in the English national team's away matches has generally brought opprobrium from the UK media, but research conducted by Sport+Markt has found that these feelings have not been shared by the viewing public. Indeed, half of those surveyed the day after watching one such match declared that such boards were "preferable to the normal boards", while close to two-thirds disagreed with the view that they were a distraction.
And this from a target viewed as somewhat traditional and resistant to commercialisation.
Of course the fact that the awareness levels achieved by the brands displayed were a great deal higher than the awareness levels achieved by normal static boards will have left the sponsors and rights holders happy, too.

Oliver Butler
UK account manager
Sport+Markt
www.sportundmarkt.com

Notes:
Sport+Markt, independent specialists in sports communications research, conducted a survey one day after June 2001 FIFA World Cup qualifier between Greece and England to investigate the recall of the sponsors involved and indeed, the reaction of the public to the boards themselves (as reported by Sportcal.com in June 2001). 300 people across England, aged between 14 and 65 years that had watched the match were interviewed and returned some interesting opinions.
Four from every five viewers of the game had noticed that the boards had featured the digitally animated advertising but when a number of statements were proposed to them to ascertain their reaction, the response was surprisingly positive. Although a notoriously traditional target group, resistant to any form of commercialisation or change 64% agreed that the Speedtime boards were 'more effective' and 50% even went as far as to claim that they were 'preferable to normal boards' while almost two thirds (64%) disagreed with the suggestion that the digitalisation had been 'too much of a distraction'.
Certainly, the scores for unprompted recall of the sponsors appeared to back up the 51% that claimed to be 'more aware of the sponsors than usual'. Although Nationwide (15%) was and still is one of the official team sponsors and could have been expected to score well, the day after the match, 22% recalled having noticed Channel 5 on the boards - even though the match was broadcast on BBC1 - and even brands with no real tradition of involvement in soccer such as Rizla (8%) and Fullers (6%) scored relatively well. By comparison, when the same respondents were asked to name brands involved in sponsoring the FA Premier League, with the exception of title sponsor Carling (24%), those companies that advertise on the static boards in each stadium for every league match managed unprompted values ranging from 0% to 2%.

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Page from ArkSports' Sport and Technology (www.sportandtechnology.com) on 2008-11-23 : Letter to the Editor: LED advertising - December 2003 : http://www.sportandtechnology.com/features/0113.html