When there is a World Cup or Premier Leagues or any other major sports tournaments of the sort, we common people think only of the game and where it’s being held. Less attention is given as to who the actual sponsor of the event is. Large multinational companies however compete with each other and are spending millions to acquire sponsorship rights for these events.
Despite the fact that these large multinational companies spend millions and millions to obtain the official sponsorship rights in order to create global awareness of their brands, some others are not even sponsors but benefit greatly from such tournaments.
These non-sponsor companies are often immediately associated with the event resulting from the fact that they hold similar sponsorship rights of other events and consumers directly link these brands to a sport or event, known as the halo effect.
Studies showed that Germans mentioned Mercedes as the official sponsors of the EURO 2016, whereas, they are not sponsors of the tournament. They are, in fact, sponsors of the German Football Associations, and are therefore falsely linked by the Germans to be the official sponsors of this tournament.
Another research was conducted on a group of 1,000 UK citizens who were following the Euro Cup, being asked who the sponsors were. The poll showed that people listed more non-sponsors than the actual sponsors.
