The SIG Column – 12 April

With the news that a F1 team had made its team sponsorship available
to buy on eBay, Drew Barrand, head of media at Sport Industry Group, examines
why the gimmick could prove to be an expensive mistake…

Long-time users of the eBay online auction service will testify of its power
to turn previously discarded items of perceived worthlessness into veritable
money-spinners. After all, one man’s junk is another man’s gold.

You’d have to hope it’s not this strategy that drove F1 team Spyker to decide
that the best way to sell sponsorship spaces on its cars was to put them on
eBay.

When news filtered through this week that the Spyker team had put four of its
main exposure slots available to potential sponsors on the online auction site
it raised more than a few eyebrows.

Of varying degrees of price from €500,000 through to €3m, the stunt – and it
was almost certainly was a stunt – did its job in garnering column inches for a
race team that has so far spent, and will continue to spend for the foreseeable
future, much of its time at the unglamorous end of the F1 grid.

So now everyone knows that these sponsorship opportunities are available. But
perhaps the more salient point is whether anyone will now regard them as
anything other than a joke.

Any prospective sponsor worth its salt in today’s financially pressured
environment is not going to spend €3m of the company’s money on an auction whim
with no plan on how to prove a return on that investment.

Slapping the package on eBay seems to state that the sponsorship is solely
about price and gimmickry as opposed to delivery on a brand’s objectives.
Sophistication of approach does not exactly spring to mind.

Selling sponsorship for the Spyker F1 team might be a frustrating experience
given its relative lack of status within the lucrative world of the sport but a
look at even the basic exposure levels would seem to suggest that the team is
doing itself a disservice by going down the route of what many would perceive to
be a tacky PR stunt.

TNS research, exclusively provided to Sportindustry.biz, suggests that from
the first race of this season, Spyker F1 received 2 minutes 43 seconds in
broadcast coverage from the live race and qualifying.

This may not sound like anything to write home about in the grand scheme of
things but when you consider the 100m plus TV audience each race achieves it
suddenly becomes a lot more attractive. Add into that internet and press
coverage and you’d have to think that it’s a property that’s more valuable than
an eBay flogging.

As this column was being written the four lots had thus far failed to attract
a single bid. With the lots scheduled to expire at the weekend, should the
current dearth of bids continue, the PR inches generated from the lack of
interest may have the exact reverse effect intended.

Somehow, a multi-million pound F1 sponsorship package doesn’t seem to sit
right among the second-hand mobile phones and gig tickets that millions of
consumers flock to eBay for. It’s not exactly a hidden treasure you discover in
the attic now is it…