Brand presence on jerseys shows the rise and fall of tech giants

It's a mark of brand success for any company willing and able to pay a high price – an honor that costs millions, and in return, your company's logo appears on the TV screen. of millions of viewers every week.

Sponsoring a football club is more than just a business transaction. It's about using the most watched sport in the world – the sport of kings – to promote your brand. Having your company logo on the jerseys of teams like Liverpool or Real Madrid means aligning your brand with a global symbol. And for decades too, that's been the strategy used by up-and-coming tech companies to seek fame.

Behind that honor and glory, however, lies something that has yet to be revealed about the entire tech industry: as you trace the history of these commercial transactions over the decades, you will see, not only Individual companies, everything from autos to consumer technology to betting sites – all seem to want to jump into the sport immediately, signaling a rise or a desire to dominate. global market where football is part of everyday life.

For example, it is no coincidence that cell phone companies switched to sponsoring football clubs at the beginning of the new millennium. With handsets becoming increasingly common and 3G approaching, companies like Samsung and Vodafone have wasted no time paying record sums for some of Britain's most successful clubs.

Japanese consumer electronics brands were among the first tech companies to participate in jersey sponsorship. Their logos adorned the jerseys of clubs from England to Italy throughout the 1980s and 1990s, reflecting the growth of those companies in the wider world: these were the decades of dominance. by Walkman and Game Boy.

Some of those companies were household names before they sponsored English football teams; Others have used it to secure their place as a global brand. Believe it or not, Samsung Mobile was just a small player in the world of handsets when it started its Chelsea shirt sponsorship deal in 2005. But just 10 years later, late 2015. Samsung is already the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. (Chelsea also had certain successes during that time.)

However, not all sponsorship deals are successful. Rakuten, one of Japan's leading e-commerce platforms that put a logo on the jerseys of one of the most famous football teams, hasn't been able to do much for them in expanding their brand overseas. And Kejian, a mobile phone maker, may have thought they'd done something great by signing up to sponsor Everton, who signed two Chinese players as part of the deal. . Kejian was founded in 2013, but the sponsorship deal was still groundbreaking: at the time, the company only sold its phones in China. Kejian may be the first company to use an English football club's jersey to target audiences halfway around the world, but it won't be the last.

Kejian's idea may seem counter-intuitive, but the Premier League is a global product: the league claims matches are shown in "188 of the 193 countries in the world recognized by the United Nations."

In the 2010s, another rapidly growing technology sector took advantage of this: online betting companies. By the end of the decade, half of the tournament's 20 teams have betting logos on the front of their jerseys, many of which are for companies targeting audiences in Asia.

So which sector will dominate the 2020s? Educational tech platforms are starting to take an interest, as seen with Colombia's Platzi, sponsor of Spanish La Liga team Granada, and Indian unicorn Byju's, sponsor of Kerala Blasters.

But if you look at the wider sports world, the answer is clear: cryptocurrencies. From the NBA to Formula One, crypto logos are everywhere, and football is no exception. The Binance logo adorns the Lazio jersey, while fellow Italian club Inter Milan has a second blockchain-based shirt sponsor.

It is not yet clear what impact the market crisis will have on crypto companies and whether they will have money left over for popular sports sponsorships. But the history of the past decades shows that there is always another group of tech companies willing to pay,