ASI Ryder Cup Work Spans ‘Leadership’ Ads, ‘Access All Areas Video’, ‘Pick Predictor’ & ‘First Tee’ Experience

For Aberdeen Standard Investments, this flagship sponsorship not only complements its other sports partnerships in golf, tennis, rugby and skiing, but also reinforces and reflects its ambitions to become a world-class diversified investment company.

It hopes the tie-up will continue to draw synergies and comparisons between the brand and the event in terms of ‘striving to achieve excellence’ and ‘having a distinctive team culture’.

Both of which it believes are central to the Ryder Cup and central to its own culture.

Plus, it argues that there is a match in terms of global reach and client base.

Interestingly, ASI was the first (and only) company that managed to navigate the old Ryder Cup sponsorship system to become a worldwide partner in 2014 (as Standard Life Investments).

The Ryder Cup is becoming one of the biggest one-off weekends in sport in terms of fan base and commercial deals.

Since rivals Team USA and Europe linked up to offer new, unified global commercial packages the tournament has generated deals worth more than £200m.

In previous years, some potential brand sponsors have been discouraged from penning big money partnership deals because they have had to negotiate with rights owners on both sides of the Atlantic.

Nathan Homer, the commercial director for Ryder Cup Europe, said: “Ryder Cup Europe and the PGA of America are working together to maximise the global commercial opportunities of The Ryder Cup by harmonising the commercial programmes on both sides of the Atlantic… Several more partner and supplier announcements are expected in the coming months as we expand the global programme.”

This year’s tournament has attracted 34 official partners, suppliers and licensees with an average price per sponsor of around £3m.

Of the 34 official commercial partners of the 2018 Ryder Cup, Aberdeen Standard Investments is one of the four top tier sponsors at the top of the partnership pyramid alongside BMW, Emirates and Rolex.

Each benefited from image, marks and logo rights, a significant programme of pre- and post-tournament events as well as extensive hospitality programmes.

The investment brand’s association with The Ryder Cup began five years ago when parent company Standard Life Investments became a Worldwide Partner of the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, Scotland (see case study).

It then became a Worldwide Partner of the event in 2016 in Hazeltine, USA (see Standard Life’s 2016 ‘The Story Of World Class’ Ryder Cup case study) and in for the 2018 event it played the role of a supporter of both the US and the European teams at the 2018 event at Le Golf National, Paris under the new unified team partnership structure.

An approach created to further showcase both the brand and the event as a truly global event.

According to the Nielsen Sports, in the last four years the Ryder Cup fan base has grown to 6.7m: with US fans accounted for 5.6m and European fans 1.1m (figures which slightly surprise us in the degree of imbalance).

“During the last Ryder Cup on European soil in 2014, there was an uplift of an additional 6.4m fans in the months following the event”, said Marco Nazzari, managing director Europe at Nielsen Sports.

“Although those numbers return to their pre-event levels within 12 months, it will be interesting to see what impact this, only the second Ryder Cup to be hosted in continental Europe, will have on fans sizes.”

Research carried out ahead of the 2018 tournament by Nielsen show that 20% of UK consumers say they are ‘interested’ or ‘very interested’ in the Ryder Cup, with 15% in the USA, 12% in Spain and France, Germany and Italy all on 6%.