Arab airlines rule the shirts

Fly Emirates sponsors as many as four clubs participating in this year’s Champions League, giving them over one hundred million euros annually.

Twenty years ago, the most lucrative advertising space on elite club shirts belonged mainly to carmakers and electronics companies. Today, the chests of top footballers are dominated by Arab airlines. Among this year’s Champions League participants, as many as six clubs have such a partner. Four of them share the same one – Fly Emirates. The Saudi Arabian airline’s logo appears on the shirts of Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Arsenal, and Benfica Lisbon. According to data from marketing company Repucom, sponsorship of this quartet costs them over one hundred million euros a year. Ten years ago, European football hadn’t even heard of Fly Emirates. “Football is, for them, the ideal form of marketing today. Matches of top clubs are watched all over the world,” said sports marketing expert Tomáš Klečka for the Economic Daily.

In addition to the aforementioned quartet, FC Barcelona (Qatar Airways) and Manchester City (Etihad Airways) also have sponsors from the same industry and the same part of the world. The entry of Arab millions into football is directly linked to the arrival of sheikhs at two leading European teams. In 2008, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan acquired 100 percent of Manchester City’s shares. Three years later, Paris Saint-Germain was similarly taken over by Qatari Sheikh Hamad Al-Thani. “The growth of the young population in Middle Eastern countries, the economic growth of the region, and clubs in the hands of Arab owners,” identified sports analyst and football agent Jozef Tokos as the main reasons why sponsorship of elite clubs today is dominated by companies from Saudi Arabia or Qatar. In addition to shirt sponsorship, companies such as Etihad and Emirates pay tens of millions more for so-called naming rights – the right to name football stadiums. In this context, suspicions have arisen that Manchester City’s revenue from this partnership is overvalued. In the past, Arsenal coach Arsène Wenger had warned about often overvalued sponsorship deals of rival clubs.

Looking at the other shirt sponsors of Champions League participants, behind the airlines come representatives of the automotive industry and financial companies. Both sectors are represented in four clubs. The Chevrolet brand, part of the General Motors group, is behind the most lucrative shirt sponsorship contract in history. Thanks to this deal, English giant Manchester United earns more than 74 million euros annually. Second place belongs to the “Red Devils’” rival in the English Premier League, Chelsea, which receives almost twenty million euros less per year from Japanese tyre manufacturer Yokohama Tyres. The automotive sector is also represented by Juventus Turin’s main sponsor Jeep, and German club Wolfsburg’s Volkswagen. (...)