On the final day of the Premier League’s transfer window, and with the inevitable final day deals still to come, total spend for the UK’s top 20 clubs has already surpassed £500m.
Indeed, on a day typically known for frenzied activity and last minute deal-making, total spend for the UK’s top 20 clubs could reach £600m.
Premier League teams take in significant revenues from broadcast deals and merchandise, but an increasingly important source of money in the UK is venue naming rights.
In the Premier League the most prominent examples of this approach are Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium and Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.
Companies are forking over vast sums of money for the naming rights for mass spectator venues, but what sort of brand benefits are they getting as a result?
Following the North London derby between Arsenal and Spurs on 1 September, which took place at Emirates Stadium, we have used YouGov’s social media analysis tool, SoMA, to measure what impact a major Arsenal home game had on the Emirates brand on social media.
We can see that on both Twitter and Facebook, far higher number of users were exposed to the brand on the day of the game.
On Twitter the number of users that heard a mention of Emirates on the network increased from 3.9% on 31 August to 21.7% on 1 September.
There was a similar uplift on Facebook with the number of UK users that heard about the airline increasing from 0.48% on 31 August to 2.1% yesterday.
The crucial aspect for Emirates is whether this additional attention, particularly in the social media space, translates to increased consumer brand perception.
While we could expect awareness to increase, we are going to monitor Emirates on YouGov’s brand perception tool, BrandIndex, throughout the season, to assess whether these spikes in awareness really benefit the brand and consumer perception more generally.
