Demand grows for more social responsibility in sport sponsorship

Gambling has been overtaken by Construction and Engineering, Automotive and Financial Services as the biggest sponsor of mainstream team sports in the UK, a new study shows.

Why it matters

The decline in Gambling’s relative position is seen as evidence society is increasingly demanding clubs are more socially responsible. In addition to gambling sponsorships falling, alcohol has also seen a big decline in sponsorships.

The research

Sponsorship intelligence firm caytoo looked at the single main sponsor of 221 teams across soccer, rugby and cricket, and found that Construction & Engineering firms now make up 11.2% of sponsors, followed by Automotive (9.4%) and Financial Services (8.5%) firms.

The details

• Gambling has seen its share across all the sports almost halve from 15.3% to 8.1%. This is almost entirely due to declines in soccer, where Gambling’s share has shrunk by more than half from 32.7% to 15.2%.
• The growth of sponsorships by IT Services/Software, Automotive, and Telecoms is a reflection of how the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the shift towards e-commerce.
• Despite these shifts, Gambling remains the most prevalent sponsor of soccer teams. In rugby, Financial Services dominate, and Automotive and Construction & Engineering lead the way in cricket.
• The increasing prevalence of IT Services and Software companies sponsoring sports is almost entirely driven by women’s teams, who were responsible for six of eight new sponsors

Key quote

“A prime example of this change is Norwich City FC. At the beginning of our research the club signed a deal with Asian betting firm BK8 but by the time the research finished Norwich had terminated the deal due to public pressure over the sexualised nature of BK8’s marketing activity and replaced them with Norfolk-based Lotus Cars which recently announced a £2.5 billion investment to move to producing only electric vehicles” – Alex Burmaster, Head of Research and Analysis, caytoo.