Est Cola deal with Manchester City in Thailand typifies market-specific sponsorship trend

As part of the deal, Est Cola has filmed a television campaign with City players that will air shortly. Players will also feature in below-the-line and in-store activations across the cola’s distribution network. Club officials and players are already in Thailand for a week-long activation initiative.

“Thailand is a huge market for the club, which is why we’re delighted to be launching a Thai version of the Manchester City website. Set to go live in July, the new website will satisfy the demand from City’s fans around the country,” said Tom Glick, chief commercial and operating officer for Manchester City.

Asia is a big target market for the English Premier League as it accounts for a significant chunk of viewership of the tournament. “The fact is football is a global game and many companies in local markets are not global but have sizable big target market for English football clubs, as Asians account for a significant chunk of tournament market share in their home market," said James White, senior vice-president for SoutheastAsia at Total Sports Asia (TSA), a sports marketing company. "Why would they not want to have a chance to work with a popular global sports brand in that market."

“[The Est Cola] partnership will not only drive brand growth within the international carbonated soft drinks industry, but also domestically among Thai consumers,” said Dhitivute Bulsook, president of Sermsuk.

According to White, sponsorships, endorsements and promotional licensing are growing so quickly worldwide because they are very effective in achieving specific business objectives of nearly all types of companies. However, he warns that brands need to know who they are going after and what resonates most with the market. “If they are able to get beyond these hurdles, they will then find that including these elements in their marketing will vastly improve the results of their campaigns," he said.

Asian brands’ appetite for football is not just limited to the English Premier League. Big Cola promotes the English Football Association in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. Honda is also active in this space through its new partnerships with Manchester United and Liverpool in Thailand. On the back of its success in Southeast Asia, Big Cola has worked with TSA to secure an FC Barcelona deal in the Americas. Local peanut brand Dua Kelinci has partnered with Real Madrid since 2010. 

In some cases, individual player endorsements also work well. In Asia, Swiss watchmaker Cyma has a deal with Ryan Giggs and Indonesian isotonic drink brand YOU.C1000 has one with Robin van Persie. 

Football clubs are in need of cash due to ever-growing costs, and there are a limited number of truly global brands willing to play fees required for global deals, White said. What’s more, many multinational companies that have global rights deals with clubs are actually focusing only on five to 10 markets for their activations, which does not help clubs' other revenue streams, including merchandise, digital content sales and so on. “In places like the Asean region, where US, Japanese, Korean and European brands don’t activate their club sponsorships year-round, even though football is the number one sport followed by the masses, this leaves certain product categories available for the clubs to sell on a localised basis,” he said.

As for sectors, football clubs have seen huge success in the telecom category. Manchester United has sold this category separately in more than 10 markets globally with Telekom Malaysia bagging the deal in Malaysia.

Banking is another area where clubs provide the opportunity for banks to create co-branded products and because they have only a single market to leverage the rights, the local partner is likely to activate the partnership more in their market than the club’s own global partners. “Imagine selling a single category 20 separate times in 20 countries? If the club averages US$1 million per country, then they can generate much more by going market-by-market than they could from a global deal. This means it is truly a win-win scenario.”

Interestingly, Est Cola only launched in November 2012 and has already captured 19 per cent of the Thai cola market, making it the second-largest cola brand in the country, according to local news reports. Sermsuk, the company that owns Est, previously distributed Pepsi in Thailand. Est is priced similar to Pepsi, and its logo uses the same colour scheme as Pepsi. For its part, Pepsi has since announced plans to open its own bottling unit and will be distributed by DHL.