Style -- 4 days ago
Words: Robin Swithinbank
So, it’s goodbye Barclays Premier League, hello Premier League. At a press conference held at Piccadilly’s Café Royal in the presence of Leicester City manager Claudio Ranieri, the Premier League confirmed it was doing away with title sponsors – currently Barclays, previously Carling – and replacing them with a raft of ‘official partners’. Barclays, Nike and Electronic Arts have already signed up, and they were joined today by luxury Swiss watch brand TAG Heuer, which becomes the league’s official timekeeper and official watch from next season.
TAG Heuer has planted its flag firmly in football’s centre circle with this deal, building on existing partnerships with Germany’s Bundesliga, the USA’s Major League Soccer, the Chinese Super League and, as of last week, this year’s Copa America.
When asked what was behind the move, TAG Heuer’s UK Managing Director Rob Diver replied: ‘Question is, why haven’t we done it earlier? Football is a game of great passion and we’re excited to be involved. For me, it’s a dream come true.’ Football is fertile ground for advertisers, the Premier League in particular – according to the BBC, games are broadcast into 650 million homes in 175 countries.
The basics of the deal are that TAG will get to brand the time when it pops up on our TV screens during games, as well as the electronic substitution boards, and that the referees will all wear TAG Heuer Connected watches, the Swiss brand’s Intel-powered, Android-operated smartwatch, announced in November. ‘I hope there will be many substitutions and much added time,’ said Jean-Claude Biver, TAG Heuer’s Chief Executive, speaking via live link from Hong Kong, where the deal was announced simultaneously.
TAG Heuer has been on a feverish mission to take the brand to new audiences since Jean-Claude Biver took the reins a couple of years ago, sinking money into a string of celebs (among them Cara Delevigne and David Guetta), a series of high-profile Alpine events and last weekend’s London Marathon. It even sponsored the Coachella music festival earlier this month. Its links with motor sport, established in the 1960s, continue after it recently ended its 30-year relationship with McLaren and moved along the pit lane to Red Bull.
Details of the deal have not yet been made public, but as with television rights (which have soared to £5.1bn over three years), the numbers will be going up. Barclays first sponsored the Premier League in 2001 in a three-year deal worth £48m, a figure that rose to £120m for the title naming rights that expire at the end of this season.
Claudio Ranieri, whose side are poised to take an unlikely Premier League crown as early as this Sunday, was praised by Biver for creating ‘a piece of history’. Asked whether he could ever have imagined being in this position as the season began last August, Ranieri replied: ‘It never came into my mind. It’s unbelievable what has happened this season. We started just to save the team. But now we are there and we want to fight until the end.’
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