Most marketing Directors, brand consultants don’t think of ROI in terms of media mentions.

They may as well be speaking two different languages.

Without approving the current legal situation of the event and neither Alinghi’s or BMW Oracle Racing’s attitude, we must admit that the event has raised its level with Alinghi and ACM from 2004 to 2007. There is probably a lot to improve but I disagree with the usual comments surrounding the event, the budgets and the ROI.
– NO sponsor paid hundreds of million Euros even to the big teams. The truth is probably a maximum of 50 million Euros, which represents 12.5 Million Euros per year maximum (which is the budget of a middle range cycling team).
– ROI is measured like in every sport and is probably higher for “small” teams sponsors. At least I can speak of Areva which has spent 12,5 million Euros split over two years and probably spent in total less than 20 million all included for a ROI in media mentions of 150 Milion Euros (Comperio Resarch). Some can argue that these studies can always be discussed but why should it be in the America’s Cup and not soccer or cycling, where companies seem not needing to justify their investment because it is commonly admitted that this kind of sponsorship is guaranteed success…

– Things like hospitality and internal communication have also to be considered as part of the ROI, as it is specially efficient for a sponsor in the AC, because an AC team is working like a company and has many similarities with usual business and employees’ day to day life (We hosted more than 4,000 employees and customers on site and the Areva internal fan club reached 12,000 registrations!). Please let me know what kind of values you communicate and special relationship the sponsor builds and justifies with its employees and customers when sponsoring a soccer or cycling team?
– It is often considered as a billionaire’s hobby but it is a piece of cake compared to soccer where Manchester and Chelsea alone cumulate 2 billion Euros of debts covered by their owners! If Formula One did not have the richest industries behind it (cars, oil & tyres) the sponsors could not afford the real price (If 10 boats are disappearing from the race in the AC, the F1 season is limited to 2 or 3 competitive teams, while the others are struggling).

To conclude: more deep researches shall be made on the marketing of the AC rather than only rely on journalists’ reports which are often reproducing the same ideas since decades.

America’s Cup is not the Olympics or the Soccer World Cup, but is at least competing with all the other international events behind, with its own strengths and targets. It is still virgin in many areas and has there for a lot of development potential compared to other sports especially in those days where sustainable development becomes a priority.

If you consider the real figures it offers much higher ROI than many sports, and is affordable. And it has no competitors in terms of excellence and prestige.

Still, there are 2 further questions that fall out from this…

One, why is sailing sponsorship so much more easy to come by in Europe than North America (at all levels)?

And two, do other events like the Volvo Ocean Race and Vendee Globe (both are around the world races, the Volvo being with a team of 11 or so, the Vendee is single handed and non-stop!) really generate the marketing return / exposure some claim? I’ve even seen some mention that the last Volvo event received a “sponsorship of the year” or some similar award in Europe.

Thanks

In this case, I would agree with you that the awareness case isn’t so strong here for brand building as these are known brands. However, target customers may well have a strong emotional connection with the property here and that could work well with a planned sponsorship activation programme for a sponsor.

I would not dismiss it so readily without some more hard evidence.