Sports manufacturers like Adidas spend hundreds of millions of euros every year on shirt sponsorships. But is it worth it? And has Check24’s ad coup hurt business?
Soccer is a huge, billion-dollar money machine. It starts with jerseys. For some companies, it costs a lot of money to use football as a driving force. The goal is to make your brand more popular, improve your image and win customers. Major sporting goods manufacturers like Adidas and Nike pay hundreds of millions to outfit players with jerseys. In return, their logo can appear on jerseys, and they hope that their other branded sports products will also sell better.
Adidas vs. Nike
Jersey advertising is a very lucrative source of income for football clubs. “Jerseys are considered to be the main items that fans wear to practice. That’s why they play the biggest role in club and national team trade,” says sports marketing consultant Peter Rohlmann. Rohlmann told DW that no other national team receives as many high-profile sponsorship deals for jersey equipment as Germany’s.
Adidas has been equipping the German Football Association (DFB) for over 70 years. As Nike prepares to dig deeper into its pockets, its rival will replace Adidas as supplier from 2027. It is not clear how much these amounts are. All parties are committed to confidentiality, the website said DFB. DFB executive director Andreas Rettig said that they could not refuse Nike’s offer. According to media reports like Handelsblatt, Adidas recently paid around 50 million, and Nike will invest twice as much in the future.
Clubs get even more money
Clubs are paid even more, Rollman says. Adidas has reportedly extended its ten-year contract with Manchester United for around 120 million euros. Adidas even paid about 150 million euros to Real Madrid. These higher figures are due to the fact that these clubs play at least four times more games per year than the national team. In this sense, jerseys can be seen more often on the field.
Rollman is convinced. “No sporting goods manufacturer will be able to make this money through sales.” It’s mostly about image gains. Especially since there is still a danger, especially in connection with the national team, that they will be out early.
“Whether sponsorship is really worth it for companies is questionable more than ever,” analyzes Professor Markus Voeth of the University of Hohenheim. Championship sponsor when they buy goods or services.
Cooperation with major associations has not met the expectations of manufacturers that existed 15 years ago, said Adidas boss Björn Gülden in the Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung (June 9, 2024). “Suppliers are all losing out on these contracts if you look at it purely commercially. At the time, you thought jersey sales would go through the roof, but they didn’t,” Gulden said. “It is logical. Suppose Germany wins the European Championship. Then the whole world will buy Germany shirts. No, it’s mostly the Germans who do it.”
Der Check24-Coup
The Check24 price comparison portal is not one of the main sponsors of the European Championship. By not paying the DFB, Check24 has managed to get into the football business. The idea is to just donate jerseys. It didn’t matter that the official DFB logo was missing. You can see the confederate eagle, the Puma manufacturer logo and the Check24 logo, especially large, on the chest.
Interested parties paid with their data: address, phone, El. The jersey is then delivered to you in the desired size. After nearly five million jerseys, Check24 ended the campaign.
Check24 founder Henrich Blaise told Finance Forward magazine that it was the biggest marketing campaign in the company’s history.
Sascha Reitel of the Free University of Berlin can only appreciate how expensive that is. He estimates that production and shipping probably cost at least ten euros per jersey. “With five million jerseys, we will have at least 50 million euros just for the production and logistics of the jerseys.”
In addition, Check24, among other things, also carried out advertising events on various TV channels. That could add up to €100 million, according to the marketing professor.
Data and media interest for Check24
In return, Check24 is on everyone’s lips, in the media and can be seen in many German bodies. The Check24 app topped the download charts for weeks. And Check24 receives a lot of data. A company can use this directly by reaching out to potential customers. In addition, such data would be easy to sell to other companies, Rollman said.
Check24 offers online price comparisons for insurance, financial services, energy, telecommunications, travel, shopping and other services. The offering is free for users, the company is funded by brokered transactions.
He sees the biggest threat to Check24 if there is no further action, says marketing professor Reitel. “If you don’t have a meaningful follow-up campaign to keep customers loyal, there’s a very high risk that most of this investment will go out the window. People forget the whole thing and there won’t be a customer. loyalty”.
Adidas is still selling well
According to a survey by the University of Hohenheim, one to five people wanted to buy the jersey of the national team. It is questionable whether Adidas sold fewer jerseys as a result of the campaign. The white Adidas jerseys of the national team have been the most popular so far. “The pink shirt is the best-selling away shirt in the history of all DFB shirts,” adidas spokesman Oliver Bruggen confirmed to zdf today. With some jerseys sold out during that time, demand appears to have been higher than expected.