At this late stage we should be looking at breaking up the sponsorship opportunities.

Magic weekend
Playoffs
Grand Final

And gift the rest of the regular season to a charity or charities maybe on a monthly basis.

Its a world cup year and no league sponsor.

I would seriously consider auctioning magic weekend sponsorship with tickets etc on ebay.

The PR could be interesting.

How much additional business did Stobart get?

Partners is just a fancy word to 'big up' a sponsorship and make it sound somehow more important or perhaps, they feel it's more likely to give the impression that it's not just a sordid financial deal, but that we have a deeper, more altruistic engagement with our 'partners' than with a mere sponsor.....as if!

Thing is, don't partners usually offer freebies to the companies involved? The whole "official supplier" sort of deal?

I don't know how much business they got, but they got plenty of coverage on TV, radio etc.
Certainly more exposure to TV and radio listeners, than people who may have been lucky enough to see an elusive Stobart lorry AND grasped that it was promoting Super League and then actually bothered to do anything about it.

And what was that worth to Stobart?

Partnership = Little if any money changes hands....various "contra" deals and "CPA" arrangements.
Sponsorship = someone has paid for the right to be associated with.

If anyone thinks Foxy,Brut or Heinz have paid up front they need their heads looking at.

I was a deal that had the dubious distinction of being practically worthless to all involved. I imagine the lawyer who drew up the contract is the only one who made a profit from it. One of the most ridiculous deals ever seen. Apparently the final decision wasn't even the RFL's fault ( though of course had they had the skill, marketing expertise and general charm to find a better sponsorship deal in the first place it would never have been considered) - the mind boggles at who on earth thought it had any value whatsoever.

Are you serious ?

Are you suggesting that the more beans that are eaten in Wigan will mean the RL club will get more money?



How will they work it in Hull?

Whilst that may be true in some cases it isn't in all. Man Utd for example have loads of companies listed on their Official Sponsors web page and most of them are described as partners despite at least some of them paying out decent money.

Calls to the Samaritans are allegedly up by over 12% compared to last year, so yes... we need them more than they need us.

Well we certainly need them more than we need you!!

And that's only from the staff at Red Hall.

I would suggest it is 100% true in this case....we will see when the accounts for the last 2 years come to light.....£1.7 million from Engage in 2011........wonder what 2012 and now 2013 will show?



United....seriously? Estimated "unique" fans in the Millions globally...I would go so far to say they got more TV viewers in asia alone when they beat villa for the title earlier in the week than SL gets in a season.

A more useful comparison would be with the list of sponsors on the other codes website.....the RFU also calls them "partners and suppliers" and declared £15,300,000 in sponsorship revenue in their 2012 accounts.....the RFL in 2011 declared £1,858,404 in sponsorship revenue.....

Foxy Bingo, Brut and Heinz Big Soup are at best contra deals.....they access the RFL database, the RFL gets to access theirs......and not a lot else will happen.

A more useful comparison would be with the list of sponsors on the other codes website.....the RFU also calls them "partners and suppliers" and declared £15,300,000 in sponsorship revenue in their 2012 accounts.....the RFL in 2011 declared £1,858,404 in sponsorship revenue.....

And that is why change is needed yet the same people spout the same drivel whenever the RFL or its exclusive behind closed doors ways are shown for what they

Exposure !

Although the profile of SL is somewhat less than Premiership Football, the principle behind there being a sponsor is the same.
The sponsor's name is used every time the league gets a mention, which "improves" their profile and the organisation, in return, receives payment for the naming rights.............................but not in RL.
The sponsor got a regular mention and RL got diddly squat and in the process reduced its perceived value for future seasons.

How much more business did it get Stobart?
How many customers switched their logistics to Stobart as a result of Stobart's SL sponsorship?
If we can answer that we can answer how much the sponsorship deal was worth to Stobart.

how much was that actually worth to them in ££££ though? Lots of people might have heard of Stobart who hadn't previously known them, but how many of those people were convinced to change their road haulage provider to Stobart.....?

A better point to ponder is, how much is Stobart's commercial revenue stream worth (i.e. Stobartfest, t-shirts, models trucks) in terms of public value and perception, considering they have a prime time terrestial TV slot and RL doesn't.

The point is, that Stobart were rolled out as sponsors in a deal that was worth an alleged £2 million to the sport and in return Stobart's had a few of their vehicles (14 iirc) adorned with pictures of SL players and in return the had the naming rights for the sports premier competition.
Maybe this was good business by the RFL , as we have nothing this season but, the deal was cut short last season.
Although nobody will ever know the figures for how many more people now follow RL, compared to how many more people are aware of the Stobart brand but, I leave this for you to decide.
A stunning bit of business, followed by something even better ???
Surely, the sponsorship of SL should be at the top of the priority list, for our masters at Red Hall and yet we can't get a major sponsor on board.
People in the real world would lose their jobs if they couldn't achieve their main objective at work and be replaced by someone who could.

Something like that is notoriously hard to measure. It's not [iimpossible [/ito try to gather some data, but in any year there are 100s of reasons a firm's sales go up and down so specifically separating out the effect of brand exposure is very inexact indeed. (incidentally the difficulty of measuring the results of broad marketing is a reason Google Adwords is so popular and successful - it's measurable, and you pay for 'success'). Something like the Stobart deal would be hard to evaluate numerically, but there are expert analysts who can help by using huge amounts of historical data from other deals. However, in this case, I would guess that they didn't pay it much attention, for the reasons that a) it was unlikely to be *harmful* to the brand, so no worries there, and b) it cost virtually nowt! ( so why worry about it? )

The mere fact that it cost virtually nowt suggests that nobody at Stobart thought it was worth a great deal.

Indeed they would. Part of the skill of keeping your snout in the trough is making sure that your main objectives, if you bother to describe them at all, are so impossible to actually pin down that nobody can hold you to them. That way, you can put out a press release everytime you display a basic competence, which is enough to convince life's hopelessly bewildered, like Smokey, that all the other stuff - the stuff that you'd be expected to deliver in the real world - doesn't matter that much.

The new partnership with Brut for next season seems a good match tho