History of Football and Sponsosrhip

1. History of Football and Sponsorship

Since the creation of the final football rules in England and its subsequent process of internationalization around the world at the beginning of 20th century, football has become an essential and passion-like element in our society, especially in Europe and South America. The vast majority of cities have its own football team. Big teams such as FC Barcelona, Manchester United, Benfica FC, etc. have millions of fans all over the world. FIFA counts that 270 million people are actively involved in football and the number of supporters is at least 10 times higher . So it is not weird that companies have in football one of the biggest markets to exploit knowing the quantity of people is involved in. As one sponsorship consultant put it "Sport is a universal language that crosses boundaries and elicits a lot of passion. Companies want to associate their brand with such powerful passions, and sponsorship can deliver this" (Bell & Campbell, 1999).

Despite the fact that sponsorship is a key factor in the modern football, it has not always been the same. Football sponsorship dates back from the late 1970s, coinciding with the rise of football popularity in Europe supported by the development of TV. The first brand to put its name on a football shirt was Jägermeister and sponsored the Eintracht Braunschweig, a German football team. To do it, it was necessary to change the regulation of the Bundesliga, the football league of Germany, because it was forbidden to relate directly football teams to external business companies. In the following years, the rest of the Bundesliga teams and other important Europeans leagues adopted sponsorship as a source of revenue . But it would not be until the 1990s when football and sponsorship became two related words. Rosson (2001) stated that the arrival of satellite and cable pay TV brought new companies into the television industry which implied, apart from the increase of TV rights revenues for clubs due to increase of competition among TV companies, that the potential audience of football matches rose exponentially. Football turned into more than a sport, it started to become a business.