Power Players: From Euro 2020 to the Olympics, Sponsors Compete With Athletes’ Own Brands

Coca-Cola spent hundreds of millions of dollars sponsoring Euro 2020. It spent years preparing for one of the world's most watched soccer tournaments after the Summer Olympics and FIFA World Cup. Coke's iconic logo sat among European soccer’s brightest stars; it even had bottles of its flagship cola on the postgame podium. Then, the unexpected rejection happened. And then another. Ultimately, another beverage sponsor was yanked away from the cameras. These slights, naturally, migrated from broadcast to social media. And now, sponsors face greater uncertainty with the spectatorless 2020 Tokyo Games later this month. At a pre-match news conference, Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo—in front of a backdrop featuring the logos of Euro 2020 sponsors Volkswagen, TikTok and FedEx—grabbed two of those svelte, contoured plastic Coke bottles and moved them aside, gruffly suggesting that the world drink water rather than sugary beverages. Italy’s Manuel Locatelli followed Ronaldo’s lead and replaced the Cokes with a bottle of water. Another Euro 2020 sponsor, Heineken, had its (non-alcoholic) bottle removed by France’s Paul Pogba, a devout Muslim who refrains from sponsoring alcohol brands or products. Damage control (and prevention) Though Euro governing body UEFA eventually told players to knock it off, the damage had been done, with observers suggesting, erroneously, that Ronaldo’s actions tanked Coca-Cola’s stock price. Zack Smith, a sports public relations consultant in Los Angeles, said Euro 2020 could have shielded products and logos from athletes sponsored by other brands. However, he added that advertisers should communicate with organizers to decrease friction with stars. “Brands should do their homework before a big event—and read the press-conference room in the moment, especially if an athlete is sponsored by a competitor,” said Smith, whose clients include Olympic sponsors Procter & Gamble and Ralph Lauren. Star athletes warned event sponsors about their conflicting interests nearly 30 years ago. When Michael Jordan won the Olympic gold with the Dream Team in Barcelona in 1992, he draped an American Flag over Team USA uniform sponsor Reebok’s logo in deference to his patrons at Nike. According to T. Bettina Cornwell, academic director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business, an athlete’s brand typically suffers when their marketer doesn’t match up with an event’s sponsor. But that’s only if the athlete keeps quiet or organizers don’t force the issue. “When misalignment jumps to the foreground, as it did when Ronaldo preferred water at the Euro 2020 press briefing, it instantly changes the sponsorship dynamic,” she said. “In that case, the outcome was largely in favor of the athlete in rejecting a brand incongruent with his current image.” A world of Jordans—and headaches Event sponsors now live in a world full of Michael Jordans who now have multiple social media platforms. Ronaldo and his teammates on Italian Serie A club Juventus have 591 million followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. That’s more than six times as many as Juventus has itself (97.3 million), according to Horizm, a Switzerland-based digital-focused sports marketing firm. Similarly, Argentine superstar Lionel Messi and his teammates have 406.6 million followers to their employer FC Barcelona’s 236.4 million. “Athletes are now becoming real rights-holders themselves, so they have their own voice” said Pedro Mestriner, Horizm’s CEO. “Ronaldo did his thing because of his own beliefs, but in the end, he was being sponsored by other brands that nothing to do with Coke.” Euro 2020’s 17 sponsors paid a total of $2.5 billion to attach their names to the events. The biggest sponsors at the Tokyo Olympics paid about $300 million for four years of sponsorship rights. However, Ronaldo’s amassed $1 billion in career earnings, made more than $60 million a year in his latest deal with Juventus and attracted sponsors including Nike and Herbalife (hence the water). We’d say he’s his own brand, but his CR-7 brands of shoes, underwear, cologne and hotels say that for him. Greg Via, a former sports marketing executive for Olympic sponsor P&G, has handled endorsements from Tiger Woods and Roger Federer through the Gillette brand. He also worked with Jordan in a previous role with Gatorade. He’s seen athletes’ marketing power cause headaches for sponsors who don’t employ them. “When Michael [Jordan] was on your brand, I mean, he would go out of his way," Via said. "He would have a Gatorade bottle in his hand, he would wear Nike—the NBA plays with Spalding basketballs, but he had deal with Wilson and in commercials, he would have a Wilson basketball.” As a result, sponsors have learned to integrate with athletes’ own brands, to their mutual benefit. This year, for example, brands including Sweetgreen and Nike supported tennis star Naomi Osaka’s decision to withdraw from the French Open and Wimbledon to focus on her mental health. Ricardo Fort, who handled global sports marketing for Olympic sponsors Coca-Cola and Visa, sees growing athlete starpower as a plus for both athletes and brands—if they’re willing to cooperate. “The athletes are media companies in their own terms now,” said Fort, now a consultant and Horizm advisor. “So if you are doing things the right way, and if you're treating the athlete the way they deserve to be treated, chances are they are going to be loyal and they're going to talk about you beyond the contractual requirements.” Making it work So how do event sponsors and athletes keep their brand battle from getting ugly? Via and Fort concur: It’s all in the contracts. While at Gatorade, Via once had to call the basketball team Orlando Magic to get their future Hall of Fame center, Shaquille O’Neal, to stop bringing All Sport, the Pepsi-made beverage he endorsed, to a Gatorade-branded bench. At Gillette, Via and his team wrote specific shaving requirements into Tiger Woods and Alex Ovechkin’s contracts to accommodate Woods’ goatee and Ovechkin’s Stanley Cup playoff beard. Fort, meanwhile, suggested that brands like Coca-Cola consult with teams and event organizers to enforce consequences for players who mess with contractually obligated product placement. Oregon’s Cornwell, meanwhile, said such penalties can backfire on brands. “Working together with athletes and organizations is admittedly [difficult] but to rely on policing by sanctioning bodies is to invite controversy,” Cornwell said. Furthermore, brands may want to rethink strategies like putting bottles on podiums. When events and sponsors can target specific audiences through social media, it makes little sense to rely on static, billboard-style advertising. Horizm’s Mestriner wondered aloud why, in the 21st Century, brands paying hundreds of millions of dollars would market an event using 20th Century strategies. “Tell me now who remembers the brands in back of Ronaldo that day?” he said. “There are 20 brands on the backdrop there.” But if an event sponsor is stuck in its ways, there’s one last resort for brands that get kicked around by the likes of Ronaldo: kick back. As mentioned earlier, it’s a world full of Jordans: Go find your own. “Find a brand-friendly athlete at that event of similar stature—even said offender’s rival, if possible—to organically weave their love and use of the product into post-match pressers,” Smith said. "Reference the offense, have fun, but have this new spokesperson underline: it’s sports—don’t be so serious.” Soccer Players Like Cristiano Ronaldo Hold a Special Kind of Influence Over Brands