Supervalu and Centra are two of the long term main partners of the GAA and that relationship is clearly part of a winning mix for parent company Musgraves who announced annual profits yesterday that were up 38 per cent year on year to a figure of €73 million.
Sales at Supervalu, a main sponsor of the All Ireland Football Championship since 2010 and who renewed last year to the end of 2019 were up 2.4 per cent to €2.7 Billion.
Centra, on board with the Hurling Championship since the same time and similarly signed into a long term partnership for the next three seasons at least did even better climbing 3 per cent to €1.59 Billion.
Both brands have the exclusive retail rights to sell tickets to GAA matches through the GAA’s ticketing partnership with Tickets.ie and this provides a key point of differentiation in a very competitive sector.
Rival retailers Lidl, through Ladies Football and Aldi via Rugby and the Community Games have also become deeply engaged in sport a trend we wrote about in our Sunday Business Post column a few weeks back.
A healthy sports sponsorship market is built on a healthy and growing economy and the Irish food retail sector is certainly ticking the boxes in those terms.
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Find out more about our next major event looking at the impact of Sport for Social Good in September 2017.
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