Aer Lingus did not need planes to be flying high at last night’s Irish Sponsorship Awards as they carried off the Sponsorship of the Year gong for their partnership with Irish Rugby.
It was also a solid boost for the sport which was well represented at the Awards. P{adraig Power and Padraig Slattery, both of whom played a key role in Ireland’s bid to stage the 2023 Rugby World Cup were putting their best feet forward and celebrating wins rather than losses, as always has to be the way in a sporting context.
“This is a great accolade and a reward for all the team that put real effort into making our partnership work so well,” Paul Buckley of Aer Lingus told us last night.
The Sponsorship of the Year backed up the Award they won earlier in the night for the Best Sports Team or Athlete Sponsorship, nudging out strong competition in this category from Lidl, Three and Allianz among others.
There was also double success for AIG, fresh from flying Aer Lingus over to the Fenway Classic at the weekend. John Gillick and Rebecca Claffey were on stage twice to pick up Awards for the Best Sponsorship Brand and the Best Sponsorship Team among Brands for their work through the year across GAA, Tennis, Golf and more.
The Best Sponsorship Team from an Agency perspective was won by Sport for Business’ hosts for the night Livewire. That makes a nice double for us having been guests of Teneo PSG last year when they won the same award.
“We did not expect this but it is a great reward for a great team of people,” said Livewire Head of Sport Noel Martyn. The award will take pride of place early in the new year when the team moves into brand new offices on Windmill Lane.
The Award for Best Sporting Event Sponsorship went to Littlewoods Ireland for their first year as partners of the GAA All Ireland Hurling Championship. Backed up by strong support through Legacy Consultants this was an award that a year ago could only have been imagined.
Vodafone Ireland is into year two of its partnership with the Irish Rugby Team and they were double winners last night as well picking up the first award of the night for Best Use of Digital and following that with the Best Multi-Platform Sponsorship Award both for the highly regarded #TeamOfUs campaign.
Three Ireland were bouncing back from the disappointment of Ireland’s failure to qualify for the World Cup next summer by landing the Best Use of Social media Award and Sponsorship Manager Karl Donnelly was keen to stress to us that the relationship with football runs deep and that there would be some exciting activations and innovations across the sport during the course of 2018, with or without Russia on the horizon.
Heineken’s Jim Geraghty was on our table as well last night and pleased to pick up the Award for Best use of Radio or Podcast for the work they did with Off The Ball around the Heineken Ireland Rugby Club.
Aviva picked up the best Grass Roots Sponsorship for the FAI Junior Cup and Amy Lynch won the Rising Star in Sponsorship Award beating off stiff competition from Sinead Finnegan at Teneo PSG. Paddy Carberry at Vodafone and Sarah Geoghegan at Virgin Media Solutions.
There was success in other categories for Bord Gais Energy for the Best Use of PR; for Accenture in the Best Arts or Cultural category, Sona and TG4 for the Best Low Budget Sponsorship around coverage of Ladies Football; for Aldi, Energia and Live Nation on a night where the industry came together to mark another year of jobs well done.
AIG, Vodafone, Heineken, Littlewoods Ireland, Aviva and Livewire are among the 230+ members of Sport for Business.
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In 2018 Sport for Business will host 20 events linking sport and business in ways that make a difference to how we all do such a great job, as well as producing our Daily News Digest covering the commercial world of Irish sport.
