Samsung's Sponsorship Deal

The market researchers at TNS Global—a leading sports research company that provides information to over 300 sponsors—just released a case study confirming the sponsorship benefits for the Samsung Mobile brand in its pairing with the Chelsea Football Club. The full report is available here, but I’ve extrapolated some key points of interest:

Every month tabloids and newspapers print more than 100 photographs showing the Samsung logo or brand.

A Chelsea home game exposes viewers to 800 seconds (13 1/3 minutes) of Samsung.

Twenty-two percent of all soccer fans associate Samsung with a team, while 38% of Chelsea fans associate Samsung Mobile with an English Premiership club.

Samsung’s share of cell phone sales from August to January 2006 were double those seen for the same period in 2005.

Seventy-seven percent of Samsung Mobile users are quite or very likely to continue using the brand.

Of course the report doesn't comment on what Samsung paid for the sponsorship rights, but chances are they’re pretty happy. Chelsea FC’s support in London at the end of 2006 was nearly double what it was three years previously, and Chelsea is currently ranked third in the Premier League. On top of that, the cost of the 13.33 minutes of TV advertising might cost Samsung over a million dollars per game, were the company to pay for it 30 seconds at a time. (Calculated at $50,000 per 30 seconds, plus $350,000 initial production costs. In the US, TV ads could be 3 to 10 times that cost.) And that’s not even taking into account the 100 print photos/month, the value of which depends mostly on placement and circulation.