Footy Fever: A Golden Opportunity for Advertisers

There’s been no shortage of brilliant sporting moments for advertisers to get their teeth into this summer, and the England team’s successful journey to the men’s Euro 2024 final this Sunday is the biggest moment yet.

AA/WARC is predicting £50m worth of ad spend on TV spots and BVOD services such as ITVX, so the national team’s progress seems sure to have a positive effect on many media owners including out of home and radio, as well as online formats such as social media and instream video.

WARC’s monitoring of UK ad spend over the last four decades shows TV is typically the main beneficiary, with spend rising 8.5% on average during a summer Euros.

More than 20m people tuned in to see England’s victory over the Netherlands on Wednesday night as the semi-final became the most-watched programme this year.

“The Euros present a unique opportunity for advertisers, with the size of that opportunity largely proportional to the performance of the England team in particular,” James McDonald, Director of Data, Intelligence & Forecasting at WARC told us. Scotland’s involvement in the group stage will have lifted ad spend north of the border this year too, he added.

With such a captive audience, brands and charities started their campaigns early in June to maximise the opportunities of the season.

Here’s a quick recap on some of the campaigns we have seen…

As lead sponsor of the England team, EE tackled issues such as racism and homophobia in ‘Hate, not in my shirt’ by Saatchi & Saatchi. It asked the audience to stand against hate in a TV ad set to Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Also by Saatchi, the British Heart Foundation paid tribute to the young football fans lost to heart disease in a powerful OOH campaign ‘England Til I Died’. Ads that set out to champion social good also included ‘Coming home? That’s up to you’ by New Commercial Arts for Battersea Cats and Dogs Home, which tapped into both the Euros and Wimbledon.

Meanwhile, Specsavers took their ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’ campaign up a notch by translating its famous slogan into 24 languages ahead of the championship, with full-page national print ads and OOH executions.

Adidas brought in The Beatles with a version of the memorable football chant ‘Hey Jude’ to send a message of support to midfielder Jude Bellingham and team. And to celebrate Ollie Watkins’ winning semi-final goal, Walkers and VCCP swiftly turned around a creative ‘In the Bag’ to run across print and social the day after the win.

Advertising’s interest in sports is not just for the men’s Euros, however. At Cannes Lions, the world’s biggest festival of creativity, in June, conversations had a strong sporting theme – with our UK Advertising Exports Group holding events with Lioness and entrepreneur, Mary Earps, who urged brands to make the most of the opportunities offered by prolific rise of women’s sports.

UK Advertising also took the England theme to the Croisette with our ‘106 lions on a shirt’ campaign, created by VCCP, to celebrate the UK ad industry’s number of wins at Cannes Lions last year while nodding to the Euros 2024.

We will all be cheering the England team on to victory this Sunday night, and our special summer of sport continues with advertising sure to give a welcome boost to the Olympic and Paralympics later this month.