Popular games such as football, golf, tennis, basketball, cricket, yachting and car-racing have evolved into international events with a huge following, creating gigantic marketing potential for the organisers. The organisers of popular games such as FIFA (football), PGA (golf) and so on organise and manage the events in such a manner to extract maximum value from others who want to exploit the marketing potential the events offer.
Let us look at various streams of revenue to the organisers. The first line of revenue is sponsorship fees. This includes the right to display the sponsor’s trademark inside the games venue, the right to use the event identifiers on articles made by the sponsors (eg Kia, Coca-Cola) or the right to use the event identifier in association with a service (eg banking, credit card), or placement rights (eg next to tee boxes in golf courses – Rolex).
The second line of revenue is gate collection. Even here the printing of tickets may be sponsored – the ticket bearing the trademark of the sponsoring party.
The third source of revenue is exclusive supply of products for the games, such as footballs, tennis balls, shuttlecocks and fuel. The supplier of the articles has the right to describe itself as the "official supplier" to promote its articles and advertise itself as the exclusive provider of such articles.
The fourth source of revenue, and increasingly the most lucrative source of revenue, is exclusive right of recording and broadcasting the event over television and radio, and possibly over the Internet in the near future. The broadcasting rights are given to regional and national broadcasting networks. All copyright in respect of recording and broadcasting the games are retained by the organisers or licensed to specific entities.
Lastly, the organisers also grant exclusive rights to manufacturers to make and sell merchandise of mascots or products bearing the event identifier in return for payment of a royalty fee.
The organisers have a broad stream of revenue, namely: sponsorship fees, gate collection, exclusive rights to product use in event, broadcasting rights and merchandising rights.
Even the drinks consumed by the players during the game are sponsored, with full advertisement value taken advantage of. Here the advertisement of the trademark is not advertisement of the product, like what appears in a TV commercial, but the trademark or product is inherently associated with a successful player. What further convincing message can be produced, if not for a world-class player using the advertiser’s product?
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