Te concluding session of the day investigated how brands can harness football’s cultural power, where the real value of sponsorship lies, and how data and technology are reshaping fan engagement at speed. Moderated by Jenni Baker, the discussion brought together voices from every corner of the ecosystem: Peer Naubert, Jem Maidment, Jamie Fox, and Niki Beier.
Right from the kick-off, the panel turned to a theme which would repeatedly rear its head: that of scale and emotion. “Around 50 per cent of the world’s population are football fans,” explained Peer Naubert. “It’s woven into almost every culture on the planet. Wherever you go, football gives you a way to speak to everyone.”
For brands, he said, that universality is gold. It means almost any target audience, in almost any market, has some connection to the game - whether that’s weekend five-a-side, a local club, or watching the Champions League with friends.
Jem Maidment framed it in more human terms. For him, football and music are the UK’s two great emotional currencies. “Many of the greatest moments of my life are linked to football,” he admitted, only half-jokingly apologising to his family. “And if you talk to my son, it’s the same - football and live music. To be part of those moments as a brand is unbelievably powerful.” Tat blend of reach and raw feeling is what sets football apart from most other media environments.
Despite rising sponsorship prices, the panel pushed back against the idea that football has become prohibitively expensive. “I’m always surprised by how few brands actually engage in football,” Maidment said. “Pound for pound, it’s still one of the most effective places to invest your marketing budget.” When he compares it with other channels - out-of- home, premium TV, broad-reach digital - football still consistently delivers a unique combination of scale, attention, and emotion.
Jamie Fox brought the operator’s perspective to that value equation. At FDJ, football isn’t just culturally dominant; it’s commercially central. “It accounts for 50–60 per cent of our sportsbook turnover,” he explained. “If you want to reach a mass audience quickly, football is where you start. It’s the core entry point to the platform.” For him, the sport is both a magnet and a gateway, drawing people into the ecosystem and then enabling cross-sell into other products.
But simply buying inventory in football is no longer enough. Te panel was unanimous: the days of logo-slapping are gone.
“Tere’s far more to it than putting your logo on a shirt,” opined Niki Beier. “Sponsorship ROI emerges when you connect emotionally charged moments to meaningful actions.” In other words, the value comes from activation - from what you do with the rights, not just the rights themselves.
Naubert pointed to advances such as virtual advertising, where LED pitch-side boards can be digitally overlaid and localised for different broadcast markets. A German water brand doesn’t need to buy global exposure; it can buy presence in precisely the territories it cares about, at the exact moments that matter. Tat makes campaigns more efficient, more targeted, and more relevant without losing the emotional punch that only live sport can provide.
For Utilita, football sponsorship has been both a long-term brand builder and, in the right context, a powerful performance lever. Maidment described how, for years, the primary goal was brand awareness: “For me, 90 per cent of it is still about brand building,” he said. “We’re not a huge, heritage utility. We needed people to know who we are first.”
However, in certain regions, they’ve used football partnerships to drive hard sales. One campaign in Scotland, he recalled, smashed its target by more than 20 per cent and paid back years’ worth of sponsorship value in just a couple of weeks. It was a reminder that, when brand and timing align, football can be ruthlessly effective.
Yet not every experiment worked. Maidment told the story of a highly targeted campaign with Glasgow Rangers that, on paper, was flawless. Te brand used sector data, industry databases and club insights to identify households that looked like perfect Utilita customers, then sent lavish, personalised packs.
“We were walking around in an orgy of self-congratulation, thinking this is the greatest campaign ever,” he recalled to chuckles from the audience. “And it failed miserably. Te reason was simple: no one knew who the hell we were. We tried to run before we could walk. Te best targeting in the world won’t work if your brand recognition isn’t there yet.”
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