Will Manchester City’s new supersized LED display help brands?

YouGov
February 23, 2021, 9:18 PM GMT+0

English Premier League Club Manchester City is installing a “supersized” LED display around the perimeter of its pitch with the aim of boosting the value of the Etihad Stadium’s pitch-side media space.

Thanks to YouGov Sport brand recognition software, we can quantify how much impact the new display will have for brands.

The two-tier display can be used in a variety of ways, but we’ll focus on the impact of branding across the two boards. YouGov figures have been produced by monitoring a sample of data for three of Manchester City’s key brand partners.

Monitoring of the Supersized LED Board location showed Brand Visibility, the percentage of time a brand logo is captured in a broadcast, will remain consistent with the single tier LED board. Our monitoring showed a nominal decrease of 0.7%.

The Brand Impact Score — YouGov’s proprietary brand exposure valuation — for the supersized board also remained similar, with a 3.9% decline in comparison to the current single tier boards.

The increased size of the branding on the bigger board resulted in fewer instances of the branding being captured. Our results showed a 34.5% decline.

Whilst this is an innovative use of LED display systems, the introduction of larger boards may not have the big impact advertisers may expect. Our results showed that the two key metrics used to apply values experience a negative impact, albeit a very small one. In the case of LED boards, then, the case for bigger being better is not yet proven.

Image: Manchester City

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