Category Sponsorships are an increasingly important revenue stream for sport and a means of business targeting a very specific area of their business.
The latest high profile deal in international terms is Samsung’s partnership as the ‘Official Consumer Electronics and Smartphone Supplier to the England team heading to Brazil for the Fifa World Cup finals.
As part of the deal every player in the squad will travel out with a Samsung Galaxy S5 pre loaded with a variety of software including medical and performance monitoring apps.
Perhaps more importantly in ‘buzz’ terms the company will doubtless be hoping for players to be taking and sharing photo’s like the Ellen de Generes ‘selfie’ from the Oscars that was taken on a Samsung device.
It will bring reward for the brand in terms of being seen in the hands of role models in sport at a time when there will be intense scrutiny of every aspect of their lives on and off the pitch over a period of six weeks.
Samsung will be limited in how they can overtly promote the deal as they are outside the official FIFA sponsors list. Sony is the official electronics partner of the World Cup.
In the coming weeks Sport for Business will look at individual brands and how they are approaching the biggest sporting event of the year.
Samsung are already active within Irish sport as partners of the Samsung Night Run and technology partners with Leinster Rugby.
The deal echoes that which Microsoft signed with the British and Irish Lions rugby tour to Australia last summer.
