Over the last six months (August – February) I’ve used Brandwatch Analytics to research the value of football sponsors in the Premier League.

I searched for both shirt sponsors and kit manufacturers, and tried to find how many times they were mentioned alongside the clubs they sponsored. What the data uncovered was quite surprising.

How we collected the data

The overall aim was to see if there was any correlation between the amount these sponsors paid their clubs and the amount they were mentioned online.

Each mention had to meet two conditions before it was counted. Firstly, the mention had to include the sponsor and the clubs’ name for example Chelsea and Samsung.

Secondly, the club name and sponsor name had to be within 20 words of one another.

The total mentions collected over six months were multiplied by two, to forecast how many mentions each sponsor would receive over a whole year.

Finally, I divided the total mentions each sponsor received by the amount each sponsor paid for their sponsorship. This showed exactly how much money each sponsor paid per mention.

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Chelsea and their kit sponsors Adidas are top, as their cost per mention is just £581.

Umbro, sponsors of Hull City, are bottom as they’re paying almost £30,000 for each mention they receive.

This table allows you to spot the anomalies – those sponsors that pay very little but receive a large return on investment.

Here we see Umbro are paying less per mention than larger kit manufactures Nike do with Manchester United.

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Moreover, it can clearly show which sponsor is over or under-performing.

The average cost per mentions for these sponsors is £5,853, meaning those sponsoring West Brom, QPR, Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, and Hull City are over-paying on the social front.

Unfortunately we couldn’t rank seven of the Premier League sponsorships, as the amount each kit manufacturer paid has not been publicly released.

Shirt sponsors and their value for money on social

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This table looks takes a look at the value for money shirt sponsors received.

The big stand out from this graph is that the sponsors paying the most aren’t generating a comparably high amount of mentions.

In fact, one of the highest spending sponsors, Fly Emirates, is ranked 12th in our table. Also, the top six performing sponsors all pay less than £4m a year.

The unlikely real winners in the sports sponsorship game

However, the real stand out from this research is Crystal Palace and their sponsors, Neteller.

Neteller have generated more mentions than anyone else in the league, despite spending only £770,000 per year. This means they’re spending just £66 pounds per mention whilst every other sponsor in the league spends over £500.

Remarkably, Neteller have generated more mentions than American giants Chevrolet – despite spending £42m less.

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I’ve done a little extra analysis into Neteller’s performance on social and found that out of all the mentions made about the sponsor, 19% were positive.

The average positive sentiment per sponsors is just 8%.

I also analyzed on which day of the week mentions made about Crystal Palace and Neteller were posted. Impressively, mentions were not just posted on the usual match days, they were posted throughout the week.

How did Neteller do this?

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Simply, they used their own social media account to promote their sponsorship with Crystal Palace in a number of ways, including:

  • Offering fans free tickets to Crystal Palace games
  • Giving fans the chance to win a signed shirt
  • Launching competitions to win lunch with Alan Pardew
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Topping all that, in August Crystal Palace allowed them to announce their new manager via their official Twitter account. This strategy has generated a huge amount of online conversation for the sponsor and has made them the best performing sponsor in the league.

Nope, they couldn’t tell us themselves.

Whether it’s selling out or bad practice is up for debate – but it is a warning.

Sponsors can use social to yield immense results from their sponsorship, and you can expect to see for more sponsors follow in Neteller’s footsteps.

At the very least, this research presents a different way to find ROI in sport sponsorship. Traditionally sponsors measured the success of their sponsorship by the amount of TV coverage their team received, or the amount of shirts they sold.

With millions of conversations happening online every day, sponsors and clubs can now start measuring and analyzing how they are being spoken about online and how they compare to others.

If you’re still yearning for more football related social data take a look our blog: Everything You Didn’t Know About Premier League Social Data

Note: All of the data presented in this article was collected by Brandwatch Analytics – a world leading social listening tool.