The owner of bwin has hinted that the online sports betting brand’s shirt sponsorship of Real Madrid will not be renewed next year.
bwin has been the main sponsor of Real Madrid since 2007, in 2009 inking an extension to the end of the 2013 season worth a reputed €20m-plus a year to the Spanish football giants. The deal has proved instrumental in helping bwin build a market share of around 20% of the online sports betting market in that country ahead of the activity being licensed and regulated by Spanish authorities from this May.
However, in response to a request for an update on the status of the company’s various sponsorship deals from analyst Vaughan Lewis of Morgan Stanley, bwin.party co-CEO Norbert Teufelberger said at yesterday’s full-year results presentation:
“We believe our brands are fairly well established, especially our sports brand, in Europe. So we don’t necessarily need that any more. We still have a year to go with Real Madrid, which we like a lot because of the opening of the Spanish market, it’s a ‘nice to have’. Will we extend that contract? Well, I’d rather not…”
Teufelberger suggested yesterday that the company’s larger sponsorships, such as that of Real Madrid and for the second tier of Italian football, which saw it renamed Serie bwin - up for renewal this summer - may fall victim to the online gambling group’s ongoing rationalisation of marketing spend away from costly offline branding initiatives.
“What you will see on the sponsorship side is that we have started shifting away from fairly expensive shirt sponsorships over time to digital partnerships, but I don’t want to talk too much about it. We are in the midst of negotiating a few of those deals. I guess once we announce those, we will come back to you. But again, overall it’s going to be a reduction in spending, and we are going to spend it more online than offline.”
bwin and Real Madrid last year successfully fought off a legal challenge mounted by land-based operator Codere, accusing bwin of illegal competition and advertising in Spain. The so-called “Real Madrid” clause, written into an early draft of the Spanish Gaming Regulatory Act, subsequently stated that sponsorship agreemeents between sports teams and online gambling operators entered into before 1 January 2011 would be accepted until the first licences were handed out.
