Major sports events expected to boost ad spending
With world-class sports tournaments kicking off in the middle of this year, advertisers, marketers and broadcasters are hopeful that ad spending would be juiced up this year after being washed out by the great flood last year.
The European soccer tournament in Ukraine and Poland will put on 31 matches from June 8-July 1, while the Summer Olympics in London will run from July 27-August 12. The new English Premier League soccer season and Germany’s Bundesliga season will start in August.
Rathakorn Surbsuk, GroupM Trading Partner, told The Nation that GroupM believes that global ad spending will grow by 6.8 per cent.
“When we look at the growth by region, North America and Western Europe will grow about 3-4 per cent, North Asia by 15 per cent and Asean will grow about 18-19 per cent, which is one of the world’s fastest growing regions.”
Ad spending growth in Thailand will be about the same as global ad spending growth, at 6-7 per cent, he said.
“Normally, if we have two major sport events in a year, ad spending can grow by double digits easily but the floods in late 2011 had a negative impact on ad spending,” he said.
Martin Sorrel, founder and CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising and marketing services group, has said these events along with the US presidential election could boost Thai and global ad expenditures by as much as 1 per cent this year.
An analyst at CIMB Research said major sports events such as the European Championships and the London Olympics are likely to boost the loading for non-prime-time viewing at ThaiTV3. ThaiTV3 is an official broadcast partner with GMM Grammy, the broadcasting rights holder for the European event.
Surin Krittayaphonphun, executive vice president at BEC, said that during the tournament, the company expects ad income from non-prime-time programming to surge by 25-30 per cent.
Under this partnership, Kobkiat Sangwanich, managing director for GMM Sports and Content Development, expects at least Bt500 million in revenue from sponsors.
Surin said these sport tournaments are expected to stimulate product owners and advertisers to shell out at least Bt1 billion through sponsorships, advertising and marketing events in the second half to promote them.
Ongard Prapakamol, chief commercial officer at TrueVisions, the broadcasting rights holder for English Premier League, said the company expects to welcome one or two more sponsors in the coming season to boost EPL sponsorship revenue by 10 per cent from Bt176 million in the previous season. Last year, TrueVisions had lined up six major sponsors – Coca-Cola, L’Oreal Men Expert, Sony, TrueMove H, Yamaha and Chang.
