Over the past decade, sports sponsorship has become a key component of the online trading marketing tool kit, as brands capitalise on the unique marketing platform to achieve a range of goals including brand awareness, brand perception and user acquisition.

In this article, SportQuake shares our insights on the trend, identifying the key reasons why brands continue to invest and what may be next for online trading in sport. For more information, get in touch with the SportQuake team.

Online Trading and Sports Sponsorship: The Story So Far

It’s now 13 years since FX Pro made themselves famous by becoming the first online trading brand to buy sports sponsorship, catapulting themselves onto the world stage with Premier League shirt sponsorships of Fulham and Aston Villa back in 2010.

Industry adoption was still low, however, when Plus500 became front of shirt sponsor of Atletico Madrid in 2015 and it wasn’t until 2018, with eToro’s landmark Premier League wide sponsorship, that things took off. Today, a record 62 online trading brands will spend $163m across a wide range of sports sponsorship strategies and inventory in 2022/23.

Within this, football is the dominant spend, reflective of global online trading marketing briefs aligning with where the audience is being delivered by the most popular sport in the world, but other sports are increasingly being used to help brands with different challenges.

For example, when Indian operator Upstox was looking to drive growth, it was natural to go to cricket (India’s #1 sport). Similarly, when Plus 500 was looking to increase coverage in the USA this year, it was natural to turn to the NBA (Chicago Bulls) and F1’s resurgence has seen investment from online trading brands follow the audience in the same direction.

A Global Brand Building Platform to Reach Audiences Worldwide

As is well storied, sport has boomed over the last two decades, transforming into a global entertainment business where the top teams and players are known and loved by people across the world, with billions tuning in to watch them in the world’s biggest competitions each year.

This entertainment platform extends far beyond competition days though, underpinned by a unique, relentless content schedule, revolving around a heady 24/7 mix of live events and lifestyle content, all created and distributed on a global basis through team, player, streaming and user generated platforms.

These multiple engagement opportunities, spanning TV, digital, social and experiential have made sport an incredibly attractive platform/ proposition for advertisers to create impact and drive growth at scale quickly and cost-effectively vs other media. Both at a global and regional level.

The Key Strategies for Sports Sponsorship Success

With 100+ online trading brands having now invested $500m+ into sports sponsorship over the past 10+ years, clear robust trends and proof points have emerged around how budget is deployed, preferred sports sponsorship strategies and how brands are using sports to drive success.

Uniform sponsorship was the original go-to strategy for the early adopters 2010-15 with FX Pro and Plus 500 focusing on high-profile branding opportunities to drive global awareness. However, as the market has grown and sports platforms have developed (particularly digitally) the majority spend is now around Global Partner strategies.

Global partnerships have become popular because they provide online trading brands with access to the key marketing rights of branding, globally recognised IP and access to large digital content creation opportunities at a more attractive entry level than the biggest sponsorship packages where prices have boomed (front of shirt, sleeve, stadium naming rights).

Libertex’s partnership with Bayern Munich is one example of this approach at work.

An Exclusive Marketing Platform To Acquire and Retain Users

Sports sponsorship’s capabilities have developed far beyond awareness, with strong proof points around the impact it can have on a brand’s user growth.

Businesses in the online trading space are commonly combining global sports sponsorship with performance marketing spend to efficiently get their message out there bigger, better, faster, including driving sales. Growing the market, as well as taking market share.
eToro are an industry leading case study of this. Since 2018, the brand have invested in sport, starting with Premier League sponsorship in 2018 and growing to also include wider European football leagues and international rugby.

This strategy has given eToro an ‘always on’ platform, including brand presence at weekly Premier League fixtures, as well as extensive digital rights to drive added awareness and conversion online. By leveraging sponsorship throughout the sales funnel (below), this activity has contributed to game-changing business results, increasing eToro’s number of users from 10m in 2018 to 31m in 2023.

Looking Ahead: What Will Happen Next?

Online trading’s ever-increasing investment in sports sponsorship shows no signs of slowing down. To highlight three key trends, we expect:

- More global sports sponsorships as multi-market brands continue to capitalise on iconic IP and media buy to deliver key marketing objectives across the world

- More regional sports sponsorships as brands supplement their main global activity with localised strategies to drive results in markets of particular interest

- The digitisation of sport prompting more investment in sports outside of football to deliver specific demographics (e.g. long-form streaming (Netflix’s Drive To Survive) has introduced F1 to new & lucrative Gen Z audience)

As the sector continues to mature, brands are finding increasingly intelligent ways to effectively reach their target audiences. Expect more of this in the coming years as the marketing platform provided by sports sponsorship becomes even more valuable for online trading brands.