Insightx: Premier League Sponsorship Review
Sport Industry Group official partner InsightX has released its Premier League Sponsorship review.
The report analyses the impact of every Premier League club’s front-of-shirt sponsorship deal for the 2021/22 season with added research around the risks that each sponsor represents to every club’s reputation and the perception on social media of the deal.
Several of last season’s Premier League clubs face risks to their reputations as a result of the activities of their main shirt sponsors, according to research carried out by InsightX. The reputations of Watford, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Liverpool and Wolves are at the highest risk of the clubs which were in the Premier League last season.
The Premier League Sponsorship Review analyses the risks sponsors represent to each club’s reputation and gives them a rating of Low, Medium or High. The rating is based on due diligence investigations into the sponsor and the perception of the deal across social media. In this report due diligence investigations involved analysing key areas of ethics, human rights, environment, and criminal litigations.
Watford, Manchester City, Arsenal, Wolves, Liverpool and Spurs all faced the greatest risk while Burnley, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Leicester City, Aston Villa, Brentford, Leeds United, Southampton, Everton, Newcastle United and Norwich City all had sponsorship deals which were ranked as medium risk. Manchester United’s 2021/22 sponsorship deal with Teamviewer was the only one judged to be low risk.
Key risk areas flagged in the report include potential links with money laundering, links to organisations or nations with a questionable human rights records, links with organisations which allegedly finance terrorist groups and deals with high carbon emitters.
The report also ranks deals by the volume of social media conversation around sponsors and plots these against the sentiment of the conversations. It also analysed the potential brand exposure each club could have gained from its sponsors’ social media presence.
Every club is individually profiled in the report with more details on each deal, citing and linking to evidence and sources in the public domain.
To provide further context the report outlines some of the sponsorship issues being discussed in the news including the Gambling Act review, ties with Russian sponsors, the rise of crypto sponsors, and the introduction of new rules for ‘associated party’ sponsorships.
InsightX COO, Justin Williams, said, “Our Premier League Sponsorship Review is the most detailed analysis ever conducted into sentiment and risk around every major activation in football’s top flight. We hope that it provides a useful resource for clubs as they negotiate with shirt sponsors and consider other deals. InsightX will continue to update this report at the end of every season.”
You can find the full report here.
