The Beitar Jerusalem Football club, one of the leading professional Israeli soccer teams and a member of the national Premier League, presented its latest sponsor, the binary options broker, iTrade, in a press conference on Thursday. The soccer club reported that the sponsoring agreement with iTrade is for the 2014-2015 season. The binary brand will serve as the main sponsor of Beitar Jerusalem and the deal reportedly costs one million New Israeli Shekels (NIS).
Daniel Schwarz, Vice President of Marketing and the Trading Room Manager of iTrader, commented to Forex Magnates on the value of the deal: "Exposure to Israeli soccer is better than in every other publicity field. For investing in the community through sports there are values that can not be measured by money." He added: "As investment experts, we conducted a thorough examination of the sponsorship world and reached a conclusion that investing in Beitar is the best thing for us to do."
Avner Koppel, Vice President of Marketing at the Football club commented: "The partnership between iTrader and Beitar Jerusalem is a beneficial deal for both sides. We are talking about creating a marketing platform for both of the organizations. We believe that we will continue to cooperate with iTrader in the coming years." However, during the press conference Mr. Koppel had to admit that because of the security situation in Israel, the club had only sold less than a thousand ticket subscriptions this season, the lowest figure in memory, causing disappointment to the team.
Expensive sport sponsorships are an accepted way for firms to build up their brand and signal potential clients that they are well established in their markets, FX brokers being no different. But during these times of low profit margins for the FX industry, the high costs seem to require an explanation, and when in March IronFX paid nearly €3 million to sponsor FC Barcelona eyebrows were raised. Another recent deal was 24Option striking a partnership with the Seria A Champion Juventus.
UGS Capital-Maccabi Tel Aviv Partnership
In this sporting season, USG Capital, a brand of Israeli group youtradeFX, took part in a similar partnership. The Forex broker has engaged in advertising with Euroleague champions Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose predominance in the field makes it to a large extent synonymous with Israeli basketball, the brand retaining country-wide support.
USG Capital has been an official advertiser of Maccabi Tel-Aviv, an accord which has granted it the right to use the team's pictures in ads, together with the prominent visibility of the company’s logo on roll-ups during press conferences. An additional and no less important part of the deal was the company’s special booth in the stadium, a valuable perk for a broker to reward clients or incentivize employees and Affiliates with.
Speaking with Forex Magnates, the company has assessed the merits of the joint venture. In terms of marketing, choosing one of Israel’s leading sports brands meant to reach as wide an audience as possible, creating a national impact rather than the more local one of football clubs. “Sponsoring such a strong brand has a fortifying spill effect for us, and we intentionally chose a brand of this magnitude that speaks to everyone and more suitable for our clientele," it was added.
USG Capital reported that the total cost was well above $100,000, which sounds like a bargain as only the booth rental cost is estimated to be around that figure. USG deems the investment "very successful", and consequently negotiating with Maccabi about maintaining and strengthening the cooperation for the upcoming season.
