The final whistle may have blown on a thrilling 2017 RBS 6 Nations, but from both a rights holder and sponsor perspective the first months of the off-season are going to see a scrum of activity: after all, the tournament needs a new title partner, France is searching for its first ever shirt sponsor, while the Welsh are seeking a replacement jersey sponsor and then there’s ongoing activation around the upcoming British & Irish Lions summer tour of New Zealand.
Below is our review this year’s championship as a commercial partnership property and our choice of Activative’s tournament’s Top 10 campaigns.
Tournament Overview
The world’s biggest annual international rugby union tournament, the 6 Nations, is in rude health. After struggling through much of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, the Northern Hemisphere’s leading national teams look to be much more competitive (led by England who retained the trophy and who’s excellent sponsor activation spanned shirt supplier Canterbury’s pre-tournament ‘Hartley Fan Prank‘ to the RFU’s own record equalling ‘#CarryThemHome’ social spot salute) and are serving up a combination of skill, passion and entertainment that attracts a combined TV and digital audience of more than 150 million.
The 2015 live TV audience topped 125 million, while online viewing across broadcast partner platforms across the RBS 6 Nations fell just short of ten million (two and a half times greater than the number two seasons ago).
The last full set of stats from 2015 showed the official website attracted record numbers, the official YouTube channel has in excess of 21 million views, while other social media followers are also expanding fast such as Facebook (925,243), Twitter (303,000) and Instagram (198,000).
Plus, the official app boasts all-time downloads and updates of more than 3.9 million and the new official Fantasy Game also generated serious interest.
In-stadium audiences have topped one million over the 15 games for the last six years. Indeed, early estimates for 2017 at-game tournament attendances suggest a record total of 1,076,000 and an average crowd for the championship of 70,000.
Surely such figures will attract plenty of interest from commercial marketers considering stepping up to replace RBS which, after backing the championship via one of rugby’s longest running major global sponsorships, has brought its 15-year tournament title sponsorship to an end.
The RBS deal began back in 2003, fairly early on in the dawn professional rugby union, and benefitted from an expanding tournament (Italy joined in 2000) and an expanding European rugby union footprint that saw the 6 Nations bloom into a commercial giant with consistent audience growth across TV and digital platforms, as well as record-breaking crowds.
Indeed, the partnership proved to be such a solid marketing platform for RBS (in Britain) and Ulster Bank (in Ireland) – both part of the RBS Group – that it even survived that shocking economic slump of 2008 and its associated sponsorship cull.
In fact, despite axing other partnerships such as motorsport and golf, RBS actually renewed its 6 Nations deal with four-year extensions in 2009 and 2013.
The latter deal came at a reported cost of £11m per year (a 70% increase on the previous four-year rights fee).
The rude health of the championship has seen market watchers report that 6 Nations chief executive John Feehan is seeking around £15m-per-year from whichever brand replaces RBS.
This certainly looks possible: while some sports are seeing declining television viewing figures, international rugby union is one of the few boasting increasing numbers.
Plus, pressure is building to expand the tournament further: especially from the likes of Romania and Georgia – the latter has now moved ahead of Italy in the world rankings.
Despite rugby’s player safety and participation challenges, there seems little doubt about the growth of the sport and its commercial value (in the short term at least).
Future Jersey Sponsorships
There was a time when selling jersey sponsorships – plastering a logo on the front of a team shirt – was a controversial commercial move.
And this is still the case in most US sports and for the French Rugby Federation (FFR), but the latter is finally negotiating with brands to end its 98-year tradition of logo-free shirts.
Becoming the last the last major rugby-playing nation to do so.
Well even the All Blacks (AIG), Barcelona (Qatar/Rakutin) and the NBA all caved eventually.
Most other rugby union nations were fairly quick off the mark to sign shirt deals once the sport turned professional in the mid-1990s (in fact, the original RFU deal for the England Rugby shirt is effectively still in place as the team’s first jersey logo belonged to BT Cellnet which was bought by current primary partner O2.
The French volte face comes after new FFR President (and former coach) Bernard Laporte made it part of his successful Presidential campaign last year as he pitched the move to help support and fund French grass roots rugby.
It marks a major change for the FFR: after all, just last year the organisation’s head of marketing Bernard Godet told Le Monde that, despite plenty of unsolicited offers, the FFR remains committed to the principle and would not ‘yield to the sirens’ money [and] sell our soul’ as ‘the French shirt is ultimately a kind of flag, not to be tainted with a brand of coffee, or car, or olive oil’.
In mitigation, the FFR has said it will only sign a shirt sponsorship deal to ‘a beautiful French flagship brand’ which matches the team and its values (don’t they all…?)
Quite what EU law has to say about this remains to be seen.
Reports suggest the FFR is seeking between €6m and €10m (£5m to £8m) for the deal: which would roughly match the money for the other two most valuable shirt deal in world rugby signed by England and New Zealand.
The Welsh Rugby Football Union (WRFU) is also seeking a new shirt sponsor deal. The current incumbent, international insurer Admiral, penned its initial multi-million pound, two-year partnership in 2010 and then extended it to 2017.
Despite neither party revealing the financial details of the deal, when Admiral took over from Brains Brewery in 2010 the sponsorship was reported to be worth around £2m.
While Admiral’s deal sees its logo sit on Wales’ senior men’s and women’s team shirts and it also includes additional in-stadium and in-programme and WRFU asset logo and signage benefits, the insurer takes an unusual approach to a national shirt sponsorship in that its primary focus has been on using the relationship primarily to reward and to incentivise staff.
As is tradition for Admiral, a group of more than 100 staff from the 5,200 strong Welsh workforce who have worked for Admiral for 15 years, together with a group who have been loyal employees for 20 years, have been invited to today’s Wales v Ireland clash at the Millennium Stadium.
These benefits include:
> Press conference activity – competition winning Admiral staff are invited to team announcement press conferences throughout the season.
> Staff opportunities to interview players on camera; recreating the access that the world’s media have to the players with footage then shown on Admiral TV via the company’s intranet site.
> Staff are invited to watch the team train and get behind-the-scenes access to national squad training sessions where they can also get up close to the players, coaches and sports scientists and are introduced into all the live analysis going on in real-time as well as the opportunity for photos and autographs with their heroes.
> Player office visits and web chats to Admiral offices in Newport, Cardiff and Swansea see the stars interact with Admiral staff as they walk the floors, offer photos and autographs and participate in live web chats where staff logon to the Admiral intranet site to ask questions and receive an instant reply from their sporting heroes.
> With each new shirt launch Admiral staff get the chance to purchase the latest jersey at a discounted price and pick it up before its launch and to be part of the ‘Army of Red’ launch event where they star in the video and photo launch of the new kit.
> A shirt drop after the launch event sees staff were then given their new jerseys by national team players at Admiral offices.
Admiral staff summer party on the Millennium Stadium pitch
> Train like a player activity: star centre Jamie Roberts took 10 Admiral staff on a tour of the NCE facilities and then took a training session attempting to recreate what the players go through in camp.
> Players regularly take on private tours of the Millennium Stadium and then to a Hospitality Box for a private Q&A session.
> The Admiral Lounge: staff have access to an Admiral lounge during the Autumn where they have free access throughout the game and a taste of the Millennium Stadium’s hospitality experience.
> Frequent ad hoc player appearances at Admiral annual conferences, dinners and the like.
> Admiral Festival of Rugby: Over 200 children from 14 WRU member clubs have twice been treated to festival of rugby activities at the WRU National Centre of Excellence. The teams were all recipients of playing kit made available to them through Admiral’s Community Chest scheme which is a fund set up to provide financial support to Admiral staff and their families involved with local charities, organisations and sports teams.
Of course, both the cost of the France and Welsh shirt sponsorship deals still lag way behind their footballing equivalents.
Tournament Activation Trends
Among the stand out sponsorship activation trends emerging from this year’s RBS 6 Nations are:
New Tech Tactics
Spearhead by several England sponsors, commercial brands in rugby are increasingly using their partnerships to showcase technology and connectivity to bring fans (and customers) closer to the action: recent examples of this approach include O2’s virtual reality and Facebook Live work and Mitsubishi’s ‘Intelligent Motion’ activations.
Closer Ties Between Players & Fans:
Think Vodafone #TeamOfUs IRFU activation where much of the content feels like fans have accidentally stumbled on a private, personal player moments and Aer Lingus’ #HomeAdvantage which turned a team transport deal into a set of personal fan engagement opportunities through initiatives ranging from social media-led activities tailored to each away game – like Conor Murray offering a player’s perspective of a game in Cardiff through Snapchat Spectacles.
More Authentic Sponsor/Team Relationships:
Perhaps because of the authenticity of the sport itself, more and more of rugby’s commercial partners are focusing on attesting to and demonstrating authentic and genuine connections to the teams they are tied to an the sport they back: this does’t necessarily mean a big budget blockbuster campaign but rather one that effectively links a brand or product to the team and its fans – such as Scotland beer sponsor Caledonia Best’s ‘Scrum & Have A Try’.
Growing The Grassroots Game:
From Aldi’s child-focused IRFU ‘Play Rugby’ schools support progamme and its associated 6 Nations ‘Kids Rugby Panel and Land Rover’s ‘We Deal In Real’ grassroots clubs tour , to women’s rugby amateur participation programmes such as the RFU’s #InnerWarrior and the SRU’s #BeTheBestYou.
Leveraging The Lions:
Most commercial partners of the British & Irish Lions – from kit partner Canterbury’s ‘Untouchable Jersey’ to Gillette’s George North fronted ‘The Honest Player’ – leveraged 6 Nations related peak rugby passion by launching their campaigns that will culminate around the summer’s tour of New Zealand.
Health, Safety & Cause Campaigns
Organisations not directly associated to or officially affiliated with the 6 Nations used sky high spectator interest in the tournament to launch corporate social responsibility, community, health and even safety initiatives: notable campaigns in this category include the RPA’s #LiftTheWeight and Aviva’s #DriveSafer.
Activative’s Tournament Top 10 Campaigns
Tissot > #RespectTheRef
Mitsubishi > #IntelligentMotion
O2 > ‘Wear The Rose VR2‘ & ‘Inside Line Facebook Live‘
Aldi > ‘Kids Rugby Panel‘ & ‘Play Rugby‘
Vodafone > ‘#TeamOfUs Four Days In November‘
Rugby Players Association > #LiftTheWeight
Aviva > #DriveSafer App
Land Rover > ‘We Deal In Real – Grassroots Tour’
RFU & SRU > #Inner Warrior & #BeTheBestYou
Canterbury > ‘Untouchable Jersey – Hologram Launch & The Enforcer‘
Links:
6 Nations Championship
https://www.facebook.com/sixnationsrugby
https://twitter.com/SixNationsRugby
