Ahead of the derby on Saturday, 7 April, Manchester City and Tinder announced a new, multi-year tie-up that saw the dating app switch its colours across social platforms to City blue and a branded balloon hover above the heads of the fans as the club’s Etihad Stadium.
The partnership will sees Tinder work with both Manchester City men’s and women’s teams, as well as City Football Group sister club in Major League Soccer the New York City FC, to create bespoke experiences for Tinder users and football fans.
These experiences and activities will include exclusive access to in-app games, as well as events at the stadium and once-in-a-lifetime club-related opportunities.
To celebrate the partnership launch, a co-branded blimp flew over Manchester.
while digital and social media assets celebrating the tie-up were linked by the campaign hashtag #perfectmatch.
Happy Derby Day! Let’s go @ManCity #perfectmatch pic.twitter.com/FU48Xx0zrX
— Tinder (@Tinder) April 7, 2018
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We ❤️ you @mancity, we're with you all the way. pic.twitter.com/DxIZuJLoL9
— Tinder (@Tinder) April 7, 2018
Explaining the new alliance, Tinder partnerships VP David Wyler said: “Tinder’s global presence and highly engaged user base gives us a unique understanding of what people all over the world are passionate about. And they’ve made it clear that they have a love for sports, particularly football. Football is a sport where anything can happen at any moment. We wanted to be true to the game and do something unexpected by surprising the fans and our users with news of our partnership in a fun and creative way.”
While Tom Glick, chief commercial officer of City Football Group, added: “Tinder is a huge global platform which, just like football, is bringing millions of people together every day all around the world. Football is all about a community of fans, sharing moments, emotions and passion for the sport they love. Together with Tinder, we have a great opportunity to explore how we can combine Tinder’s significant appeal and reach with our global audience to create even more relationships in a new, fun and creative way. We believe this will be a perfect match for Tinder and for City.”
Comment:
So it seems that ahead of the Manchester derby, table topping City and Tinder have found one another #ThePerfectMatch – although, thus far the joint activations have been fairly vanilla.
Earlier in the year there were rumours that crosstown rivals Manchester United were in talks with Tinder about a shirt sleeve partnership, but the deal didn’t materialize and so it seems that Tinder took its rivals out on a sponsorship date instead.
Just a shame the football club and dating app brand’s first date was ruined with a Manchester United victory that delayed City’s confirmation as Premier League Champions by another week at least.
The deal marks Tinder’s first official foray into sports marketing: a space that several dating apps are dipping their toe in the water.
But it isn’t the first sport club activation leveraging Tinder.
Previous Tinder campaigns in the sports space have ranged from Serie A side FC Napoli offereing its fans a novel way to get to know attacker Arkadiusz Milik by going on a ‘date’ with the Polish international via a Tinder hook-up (see case study), to Valentine’s Day mascot campaigns from the likes of FC Grenoble on Valentine’s Day (see case study) and the Oregon Duck (see case study), plus the NBA team Atlanta Hawks hosting its own ‘Swipe Right’ night (see case study).
We expect more football teams and sports rights holders to grow their brand in new ways and look forward to more partnerships like these to emerge.
But, it is vital in the dating app space, to avoid the potential pitfalls associated with the category: which could range from being accused of enabling and supporting causual sex to far worse and more serious matters.
Links:
Manchester City FC
https://www.youtube.com/mancity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/manchester-city-football-club
https://www.facebook.com/mancity
https://twitter.com/ManCityWomen
Tinder
https://www.facebook.com/tinder/
https://www.instagram.com/tinder/
https://www.youtube.com/Tinder
