The reality of marketing
With big drinks brands among the leading players tied into sports sponsorship, we look at what those link-ups can actually mean to hard-pressed licensees
The received wisdom is that televised football in pubs is one big marketing love-in, where suppliers and pubs alike benefit from the money spent by the former on sponsorship and promotions around the beautiful game.
The reality is a much more nebulous affair. Does Budweiser's official beer status with the Premier League translate into extra sales for the average licensee? Do Carling's football-related TV ads actually bring people through pub doors or just persuade them to buy cans of the brand in the off-licence to drink at home in front of Sky? And does it really matter that Heineken is sponsoring the Champions League when your distribution deal cuts you out from its products?
Alex Rand, assistant manager of the Albany in Portsmouth, says: 'I don't think it has a direct bearing on sales, all it does is put the brand name out there. We had bottles of Amstel in when it was the sponsor of the Champions League but it didn't make any difference to whether anyone drank it.
'Obviously with something like Carling it's a high-selling brand anyway and, if it came down to someone choosing between that and Castlemaine XXXX, our other lager, then something like the Carling Cup might make a difference.
No brand has put its faith in football quite like Carlsberg, which has a deal with the FA covering everything from the England team to parks soccer, and struck gold when Liverpool, the team whose shirts it's sponsored for a decade, won the European Champions League in May.
Carlsberg points to its sponsorship of Euro 2004 last summer as evidence of how football can boost pubs' trade. Figures from RMS research, included in a post-tournament report that it produced, showed that one in five people watching football in pubs were not regular drinkers in those outlets where they did so. As the average drinker spends £17 on in-pub football occasions, Carlsberg suggests that a pub with, say, 250 people watching a game, brings in around £1,000 from people who wouldn't normally be in that pub.
Carling sponsors what was originally the Football League Cup, and Martin Coyle, head of sponsorship for the brand at Coors Brewers, insists that there are tangible benefits for pubs from its activity, but the headline news is still about the benefits to the brand rather than licensees. 'In tracking studies, we're the brand people most connect with football, with spontaneous awareness ahead of Nike, Adidas, Barclays and Carlsberg, he says.
He adds that a 'controlled study following the Get Your Kit On promotion in Scotland, which gave consumers the chance to play at Carling-sponsored Rangers or Celtic, increased rate-of-sale of the brand in pubs. The hope is that a scratchcard promotion leading up to next year's World Cup will perform the same trick across the country.
Other brands are still vague about their specific plans for football activity in the coming year. Tennent's, for example, confirmed its renewed sponsorship of the Scottish Cup but had no more details about its plans. With the World Cup lurking at the end of the season, it's likely to be a slow-build until then.
