It’s not often you get to sponsor the Irish national soccer team for a sum less than €10,000 but that’s what’s on offer in this first week of our new feature ‘Starters for 10’.
Before our friends in Three fall off their breakfast stools this isn’t the national team of Martin, Roy and Robbie. Instead it’s the first seven a side team to represent Ireland at international competition level.
The small sided soccer industry in Ireland is massive and growing with a database of 50,000 playing weekly at venues such as Astro Parks and Astroleagues.
Opportunity
Inter7s.com are the group behind today’s offering. They were approached by the Asociation Espanola de Minifutbol to enter an Irish team in the first ever ‘4 Naciones de Futbol 7’ tournament taking place in Valencia in Spain between June 24th and 26th.
The Spanish, Portuguese and Italian National teams will provide the opposition and include a number of former professional players in the Spanish La Liga.
The tournament will be live streamed and negotiations are taking place about being televised.
Costs
The players at this level are amateur and give their time freely towards training and playing. The overall cost of travelling to the tournament, accommodation, kit and meals will come to €6,500. This will be met by the players fundraising themselves and Inter7s.com is contributing in order to raise the profile of the game.
Full or partial sponsorship would go a long way to meeting that cost and in return would provide branding opportunities on the front of the shirt and training kits for the squad, PR and communications opportunities throughout the build up and the tournament itself, as well as the opportunity to build a longer term relationship with the potential of home international matches and tournaments.
Three reasons why this could be seen as a good deal:
1. The PR advantage of supporting Ireland in international competition can be used as a story ‘bigger than the sum of its parts,’ as indeed we did ourselves in our opening line.
2. The playing population is large enough within a tough to reach demographic of largely young male consumers who according to research are hard to find but absorb sponsorship messages better than most.
3. It’s the start of what could be a big growth area and the organisers will be strongly motivated to provide strong support and content through streaming and social as well as physical media around the venues where they will train and play.
Contact
Emmet Switzer at Inter7s.com is the man to speak to. If you want to get in touch contact us today and we will make the introduction.
Are you involved in sport and looking for a sponsor?
If you are a sporting organisation that is part of the Sport for Business community this weekly feature is an opportunity to showcase your initiatives, with a sponsorship ask of €10,000 or less, and potentially open doors to those within our 10,000 strong regular readership. Next week we turn to an initiative in Gaelic Games…
Contact us today if you would like to feature in the future.
