This week sees the start of the most significant event in women’s football: the women’s World Cup, hosted by Canada. The matches will be hotly contested on the pitch, but off it, brands have tended to be less competitive.
Our agency, Arc, decided to examine the event in more detail using our research tool, SponsorDNA. Our aim was to provide a deeper understanding of the event from a brand point of view – by measuring fans’ interests and interactions.
We found that, in terms of events involved in our study, the women’s World Cup is one of the least popular: 13% of respondents noted their interest in the event versus 56% for the men’s version of the competition. Our research found, however, that the tournament’s fans are, on average, the most passionate.
On top of this, women’s World Cup fans boast high levels of engagement; they talk more with friends and family about the event than average, and make bigger efforts to follow the event live than the average. So the sum of these parts shows this is an event certainly worth taking seriously from a sponsorship point of view.
In terms of existing sponsors of the women’s World Cup, our SponsorDNA tool deemed Adidas had the highest perceived fit, followed by Coca-Cola and then Visa. But while current sponsor Visa scored well, it was actually other financial services brands – not current sponsors – that scored higher in terms of brand fit. The tool, which uses a specific numerical score, found Barclays (+69), HSBC (+61) and NatWest (+60) to be a more appropriate fit than Visa (+44).
Financial services as a category was also perceived as having similar values as the event itself, scoring well in terms of being innovative, responsible and local.
This is just the start. We at Arc are looking forward to unearthing further insights via SponsorDNA to help sponsors and rights holders capitalise on fan behaviours, interactions and perceptions.
Richard Dutton is business development director at Arc
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