A new sponsorship strategy for the Champions League winner

MILAN, 8th June 2010 –The strategic guidelines for Inter’s business activities in the coming years were defined after a deal was signed by F.C. Internazionale and RCS Sport for the exclusive management by the latter of the club’s sponsorships.

At the end of an extraordinary year, culminating with the team’s victories in the Coppa Italia, Serie A and the Champions League, Inter are aiming to enhance their partnerships with sponsor companies that associate their name with the Champions of Europe with even more values and visibility.

The strategy that Inter and RCS Sport are preparing to launch takes as its starting point the prestigious results achieved by the team in recent seasons as well the values that the club has been able to form around the team and its many projects through the years: one of many is their large investment in the youth sector, making the Inter brand a true ‘Lovemark’, as evidenced by data, data that is also partially associated with the club’s sponsors.

For example, thanks to multiyear sponsorship deals with Inter, Pirelli is the top non-sports brand in terms of spontaneous recognition for companies that sponsor football teams, trailing only Adidas and Nike, two global sports brands. The 52% spontaneous recognition for the Inter-Pirelli pair is higher than that of any other club.

According to international sports marketing research and consulting firm ‘Sport und Markt’, there are 380 million supporters in the world that follow Inter, with 180 million of these who say that they are truly passionate about the team. In Italy, 64% of Inter supporters say that they prefer the products of the club’s sponsors over other products that have the same price and offer the same quality: this too is an extremely significant finding and is evidence of the strong link that binds Inter supporters to everything that is ‘Made in Inter’, i.e. the group of businesses, initiatives and events the surround the Champions of Europe.

This is not only a result of the team’s successes, which at the recent Champions League final included a live estimated audience of about 130 million, more than the 2010 American Super Bowl (106 million); other initiatives also play a crucial role in these impressive figures, such as Inter Campus, which for years has been evidence of Inter’s image as a club that represents values that go beyond the realm of sports in over 22 countries worldwide.
The value forecast for the brand exposure of Inter’s partners on Italian television on July 31, 2010 is 175 million euros (Nielsen data – 161 million euros in April).

These considerations, together with the belief that Inter represent an extraordinary communication vehicle and reflect the high value of Italian-made goods throughout the world, have driven the club and RCS Sport to adopt an innovative commercial strategy whose main points include the reduction of the number of companies able to become part of the team of sponsors from 60 to 25, the use by top sponsors of the most important players for their promotional initiatives and an improvement to hospitality activities aimed at enhancing the value of these initiatives by clients.

“The drive and opportunities created by the club’s sports-related results and the forthcoming implementation of the financial fair play concept compel us to increase our concentration on the performances of all business activities,” said Inter Sales Manager Vittorio Alongi. “We are aiming at a 40% increase in two years for sponsorships, thanks to an optimisation strategy that will allow for greater economic returns due to new opportunities for sponsors to exploit various advantages.”

RCS Sport CEO Giacomo Catano says, “As Inter’s advisor, RCS Sport has shared their new business strategy since the very beginning. We believe that a broader and more profitable optimisation of these business partnerships inevitably involves a reduction in the number of partners, as well as targeted initiatives to share all of Inter’s important values with these companies.”

INTER’S FIGURES
TURNOVER IN 2009 FISCAL YEAR

€ 232,600,000

TOTAL AUDIENCE FOR CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL

130,000,000

MEDIA AUDIENCE ON SKY 2009-2010 SEASON

1,001,297

MEDIA AUDIENCE ON MEDIASET PREMIUM 2009-2010 SEASON

713,306

AUDIENCE ON RAI1 COPPA ITALIA FINAL INTER – ROMA

11,600,000

AVERAGE ATTENDANCE AT HOME MATCHES AT SAN SIRO STADIUM

55,149

STADIUM ATTENDANCE RATE
*Highest in Italy

80%*

FANS WORLDWIDE

380,000,000

INTER.IT: PAGES VIEWED IN MAY

61,000,000

SINGLE USERS IN MAY

14,000,000

ONLINE STORE TURNOVER ON THE DAY OF THE FINAL IN MADRID

€ 440,000