Heineken renews Champions League sponsorship

Heineken has agreed a three-year renewal of its global sponsorship deal with the Uefa Champions League, SportBusiness can exclusively reveal.

As previously reported, the firm was understood to be in advanced negotiations with the European governing body and its exclusive sponsorship sales agency Team Marketing, with fellow current Champions League sponsor Mastercard also on the cusp of renewing.

The Dutch brewer is now understood to have signed the contract with Uefa and an official announcement about the extension is expected soon. It would become the second brand to renew its Champions League ‘Global Sponsor’ rights after PepsiCo announced a renewal in July, also exclusively reported by SportBusiness.

The agreement covers the next Champions League cycle from 2024-25 to 2026-27 and means the brewing company will have had an association with the competition in some shape or form since 1994.

The company’s Amstel brand sponsored the tournament from that point until the main Heineken brand took over the rights in 2005. The Uefa competition, previously known as the European Cup, was rebranded and reformatted as the Champions League for the 1992-93 season.

It remains to be seen if Heineken will also renew the sponsorship deal between its zero-alcohol Heineken 0.0 brand and Uefa’s second-tier club competition, the Europa League, which is combined as a package with the third-tier Europa Conference League.

Heineken was also a Euro 2020 sponsor, the second tier of the federation’s national team football programme, and is a top-tier Uefa Women’s Football Partner, the uppermost tier in its women’s football sponsorship programme. Uefa is currently in the market for Euro 2024 sponsors while the Women’s Football Partner deal is not due to expire until 2025.

Team Marketing has the remit to sell the global sponsorship rights to all Uefa club competitions for the next cycle while CAA Eleven is the exclusive sponsorship sales agency for national team football. TRM Partners, the sponsorship sales agency owned by Two Circles, supports the confederation’s search for sponsors for its women’s football programme.

Flat fee
SportBusiness understands Heineken is paying a similar sum on a per-annum basis to its previous three-year deal with the competition.

The brand is known to have been one of the highest-paying brands in the Champions League sponsorship portfolio and sources said the flat fee ought to be seen as a course correction to bring its deal closer into line with other sponsors.

Team Marketing is facing increased revenue targets for the Champions League based on the heightened media value of the competition as format changes expand its total number of matches and teams taking part.

To help meet the targets, Uefa’s Champions League sponsorship offering for the next cycle will include one additional top-tier Global Sponsor position and a new secondary ‘supplier-style’ tier, designed to appeal to technology brands or companies who lack the financial clout to take a top-tier package.

Uefa and Team are aware that affordability is becoming an issue for some brands, so part of the thinking behind the new slots is that they will spread the burden of meeting the new sponsorship revenue targets.

Set against this, sister title SportBusiness Sponsorship reported PepsiCo’s deal to be worth around 20 per cent more than its agreement in the last three-year cycle. The uplift is partly explained by the company securing an enhanced package of rights that includes the player hydration rights and pitch-side exposure for its Gatorade brand.

Sources said the company was keenly aware of interest from Coca-Cola in sponsoring the Champions League, with one suggesting the rival brand had come closer than ever to snatching the rights from PepsiCo. But SportBusiness Sponsorship has been unable to determine exactly how advanced discussions got with the competitor.

There is also understood to be an uplift in Mastercard’s renewal, which is thought to have been agreed in principle and is now at the contracting phase.

In April it was revealed Uefa had also accepted three offers from brands in relation to its Europa League and Europa Conference League packages but the identities of the companies in question has yet to be revealed.