  | | Source: EMPICS |
Sponsorship Evolves: The 14th ESA Congress provided a veritable feast of technology-related tales and tribulations – and we are not even referring to S&T’s Robotic dancing on the podium at a certain Lisbon nightspot. Laud Lumme no! (No relation to the new IOC marketing director by the way).
As far as technological congress feasting went, we had the starter, shovelled down the main course, consumed a sizable pudding and were still chewing over the widget-style petit fours long into the balmy nights.
Opening remarks were provided by Angelo Brou, vice president of the Portuguese Football Federation, jubilant host of the UEFA EURO 2004 soccer championships that were, he said, attended by 1.1m fans. Brou was quick to praise the technology companies involved in partnering the tournament – namely T-Mobile, Benq, Portugal Telecom and NTT/Verio. “It was a huge project,” he said, “and their role was critical to its success.” The UEFA EURO 2004 website itself ended up attracting 41.2m users from 230 countries between launch in March 2004 and the end of the tournament in July. Interest from China was so vast, claimed Brou, that a Chinese version of the website was developed to cater for that market along with eight other versions of the site. “Traffic figures show that 45% of visitors were from the European Union, 27% were from Asia and 20% from North America,” he added.
The ESA Congress included presentations from a shortlist of contenders for the European Sponsorship Awards and technology once again popped its head up in a rather cheeky manner. Telecom Progetto Italia showcased its advertising programme “which aims to educate the Italian public” about its ‘new’ brand through four types of sponsorship – culture, education, social and sport. With sailing being a Telecom Italia sponsorship stalwart, S&T swallowed our sea legs and sat back to hear from another ESA Sponsorship Award nominee about a different sport – tennis – namely the Stella Artois Tennis Championships. Having already supped an iced glass or two of the eponymous beverage at Queen’s club in June this (UK) summer, S&T was thrilled to hear that the 2004 event attracted a record 54,000 people and more than 165,000 unique users during the tournament week. “The media value alone represents more than a 200% return on investment for Stella Artois,” claimed Tim Hunt, event director for Stella Artois.Accolade for Inmarsat However, S&T was as happy as Larry (as they say in Merthyr Tydfil) to be present when our new best friend, World Rally Championship sponsor Inmarsat, picked up the actual sacred European Sponsorship Award gong itself, fending off competition not only from Telecom Progetto Italia and Stella Artois, but also from Heineken, Allied Irish Bank, Clydesdale Bank and Karlovacko (a Croatian beer brand), all of which had won national sponsorship awards in 2004. Now fully recovered from our sojourn to the World Rally in Corsica last month via madly lurching overnight ferry (bluergh), we were able to join Inmarsat’s sponsorship manager Luisa d’Aprano in a champagne toast without feeling even a little bit queasy. Said d’Aprano, after a round of joyous high-fiving (ok, that was just S&T delirious on the bubbles): “We are thrilled to receive this award. Our aim was to demonstrate Inmarsat’s technological leadership on global scale. This prize recognises that we managed to achieve this through the medium of sponsorship using the WRC as our strategic partner.”
Continuing the technology theme at the Congress, Glen Kirton, chairman of Navigator, hosted a workshop on the role of new media in sponsorship programmes. “This is a subject that irritates me,” said Kirton, kicking off the workshop proceedings in a refreshingly heated (oxymoron?) fashion. “New media was spoken about as a panacea during the dotcom boom. This won’t be the case though if new media is perceived as something different to the rest of sponsorship in the industry. Let’s remember that new media is nothing more than just another type of media.” Kirton believes that convergence in technology will eventually mean that people with properties as high-profile as say, the FIFA World Cup, “will become their own distributors via broadband or narrowband and will charge the customer directly themselves”. This led to debate from the audience who largely considered that most large properties realise that they are not broadcasters and will probably chose to leave all that technical malarkey to those who are already set up to do it – i.e. the broadcasters themselves.
The debate continued into the night, but intriguingly moved away from technology matters to the unveiling of certain Congress members’ ‘screen names’ if they were to appear in, how should we phrase this – movies of a continental flavour. Apparently, (because of course S&T is extremely naïve in all matters Hollywood – or should we say Cricklewood) (yeah right), a continental screen name is derived from the name of one’s first childhood pet and mother’s maiden name. Hey presto, S&T was renamed Bunty Fitch for the night (which may partly explain the Robotic podium dancing later. Or that could have been the Sangria). After that night, S&T will be chuckling about the exploits of Teasy, Tiger, Petra, Eagle, Sooty, Big Mac and Smudge, among others, well into the next millennium. Or at least the 15th ESA Congress. Bring it on. You know who you are, you crazy kids! Darting the issue Proving that S&T does not always lead a particularly glam lifestyle and likes to ‘keep it real’ as they say on the streets (and on a street called Highgate Road in particular), for S&T it was straight from the continental brouhaha of Lisbon to the VIP section (see, keeping it real) of the Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor versus Andy ‘The Viking’ Fordham Darts Showdown at The Circus Tavern, Purfleet, Essex – otherwise known as the home of darts. Apart from S&T’s house that is, which is the other, smaller, but more perfectly formed home of darts. (Made of gingerbread).
For those readers not in the tungsten-know, and who actually care, this was a pay-per-view much hyped up arrows-fest stand-off between Taylor, 11-times World Champ and reigning PDC champion, and Fordham, reigning BDO World Champion, which would determine who the best World Darts Champion ever is without resorting to handbags at dawn. (Remember that darts has two codes – a bit like rugby – well kind of, that’s all you need to know). Anyway, unfortunately the match was eventually abandoned after Fordham suffered an asthma attack and S&T’s hero ‘The Power’ declared the winner, but for those of you wondering what the technology angle to this rambling is, well, gather around, the match was sponsored by online gambling website PartyPoker.com and there were 32 cameras at the event. Will that do? (Hell, S&T gets its darts kicks when it can). For more Taylor/Fordham stats, kindly surf over to the Infostrada Databox this month, but please come back afterwards because we’ll miss you. And also there’s the Soccerex 2004 review still to come. The Soccerex 2004 review Told you. Without pausing for much else than a quick hosing down after the sauna-like darts extravaganza, S&T found ourselves snoozing on a flight to Dubai (as you do), for Soccerex 2004, the annual convention for the glorious game. When the convention eventually got underway, (we think we must have had our watches set 45 minutes fast the entire time we were there), S&T was chuffed to hear that a technology workshop would be held, hosted by CRM and ticketing provider Ascent. We sulked for a little bit when we found out that it wouldn’t be held until day two, but eagerly pitched up at the allotted time for the workshop, practically rabid for some technology-related pearls of wisdom.
Forty-five minutes later (again with our rubbish watch; must get that fixed) we weren’t disappointed, being treated to some lovely CRM-related case studies from Phil Smith, head of marketing at English Premiership soccer team Aston Villa, and Ian Riddoch, sales and marketing director, from Scottish Premier League team Aberdeen. Riddoch spoke about how Ascent’s database system has been utilised to create a weekly e-newsletter for the club – RedAlert. “We have hostile local media so we needed a tool to tell our own story,” he said. The newsletter has provided Aberdeen with a great new revenue stream. “We can send advertisers a full breakdown of who has seen an advert and what their gender is etc. We have had £25,000 ($48,700) per month in additional revenues since launching RedAlert thus proving that we are not going to grow our business just by winning on the field.”
S&T loved the story about the ‘two for one’ fish and chips offer that was promoted in RedAlert. According to Riddoch, 3,000 people downloaded a voucher for the particular fish and chip restaurant in Aberdeen that had some downtime (posh S&T parlance for empty tables) on Tuesday lunchtimes. One chap with obviously a hearty appetite however decided to download the voucher an amazing 33 times. Riddoch was able to phone him up and say “Oiy fat lad, stop downloading that voucher”. The “fat lad” in question was suitably flummoxed and is now probably too scared to ever go near his computer again. Or a purveyor of deeply-fried food and snacks.
Fish and chip shop offers aside, Riddoch had an especially pertinent note to make to the Soccerex Hardcore Technology Faithful: “With RedAlert, every club department has the chance to outline what they are doing directly to our fans. We can also conduct realtime research and add value to relationships with our stakeholders.” You can’t say fairer than that.
All that talk of food has made S&T hungry which is just as well with the festive season looming upon us once again. S&T is still trying to work off the (vegetarian) mince pies from last year, let alone preparing our bodies for a seasonal trip to Cape Town for the remainder of 2004. Hopefully, S&T will be indulging in a bit of cricket while there (watching not playing), in between the odd bit of shark diving (swimming not being eaten). Touch wood that we don’t get them mixed up lest ‘leg before wicket’ becomes ‘leg before arms, torso and head’.
Therefore, all that remains to be said is, where did we put our snorkel and flippers? Oh yes, and the very best and heartiest seasonal cheer to all of you lovely S&T readers. And even to the ones who aren’t lovely. Of which of course, there are none. Ho ho ho! Catch you in 2005! Rachael Church (aka Bunty Fitch) – Editor Do you have a continental screen name that you would like to share with fellow readers? Or do you think they are a waste of tax-payers’ money? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com. Go on, treat yourself for Christmas. Steve Davis, former world champion snooker player did.
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