Euro 2020: The Influence of Athletes on Sponsors

As one of the most entertaining summers of football reached its climax earlier this month with heartache for the most inspiring English side in decades. There was another topic nothing to do with the game that made headlines and caused a ripple affect around the globe.

The impact of players and sponsorships on this tournament began in a post-match press conference after Portugal defeated Hungary in the group stages, where Cristiano Ronaldo entered the press room and replaced the carefully placed sponsored Coca-Cola bottles with a water bottle, advocating the choice of healthier options to his global following.

The following day, Coca-Cola’s share price dropped by $4 billion, from $242b to $238b, and whether this was solely down to this act from the Portuguese star is in the air, nevertheless it is a demonstration of certain athletes influence on their following, and leaves a conversation to be had with sponsors as to whether the perception of their brand should be thought of more when they choose to sponsor an event as it could have a damaging effect on the business.

In addition to this, following France’s victory over Germany a few days later; Paul Pogba: a practicing Muslim, took questions from the media and removed two bottles of alcohol-free Heineken because anything to do with alcohol is forbidden. This caused UEFA to make the decision to rid Heineken bottles from the scene whenever a Muslim player is being interviewed, damaging the potential brand awareness they could have gained from the tournament.

These events grabbed the attention of the globe and caused a knock-on effect in the sporting world. Examples include Scottish star John McGinn poking fun at the situation where he exclaimed ‘Any Coke?’ when walking into his press conference, while Italian midfielder Manuel Locatelli followed in Ronaldo’s footsteps and removed the fizzy drinks from view. Furthermore, this has also occurred in the UFC where champion fighter Israel Adesanya has a habit of removing the sponsored Monster Energy drinks from the table at his press conferences, and while his moves do not have such a negative effect on the company and is more to do with his outgoing nature rather than an attack on the brand, it is still a discussion to be had of whether the drinks brand will like that kind of behaviour associated with them.

In UEFA’s last-ditch effort to stop this from happening, in some conferences they stuck the bottles down so they could not be moved and in others they replaced the physical bottles with edited versions so they could not be removed. This helped the sponsors maximise their brand awareness from the tournament, however had the damage already been done?

Finally, Heineken failed to make a statement on the situation and Coca-Cola responded by saying that ‘everyone is entitled to their own drink preferences’, this begs the question is any publicity really good publicity or will brands think twice before sponsoring a major sporting event in the future?