A special column article by Professor Simon Chadwick

Changes at this year’s EUROs

It has been a week since the EURO 2024 Final, while the discussions still continue. This year’s UEFA European Championship is likely to have drawn a cumulative television audience exceeding five billion people globally. Alongside this, hundreds of millions more will have read or posted about the tournament on social media platforms. As such, the EUROs has reinforced its position as one of the world’s leading sport mega events, as well as being a football championship that stands comparison with FIFA’s quadrennial World Cup.

The tournament was marked by the debut of Georgia in its first international competition, as well as the emergence of a new generation of players. Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams starred for Spain as their country lifted the tournament trophy, whilst England’s Jude Bellingham, Germany’s Jamal Musiala, and Turkey’s Arda Guler also stood out.

Following a pandemic hit EURO 2020 (which took place instead during 2021), allied to the unusual format adopted for that edition of the competition (games were played in different countries to mark the tournament’s sixtieth anniversary), this was the first time the EUROs had been played according to a conventional format since 2016. As such, we might label this as European football’s first GenZ national team competition.

GenZ consumers are an intriguing group of consumers who were born and brought-up with the internet, digital technologies, social media, and consequent hybrid modes of consumption. Whether in a stadium, at home or on the move, GenZ consumers like to be connected, have online choices, and use the best available hard and software through which to engage with their favourite sports.

One consequence of such changing consumption habits is that UEFA and its sponsors increasingly work together in a way that adds value to consumer experiences. Most of the sponsorships at the EUROs were therefore linked to products that contributed to fans’ engagement with the tournament. Whether booking a flight to attend the competition, paying for services, or watching goals on a screen inside the stadium, the portfolio of sponsorship products contributed to enhancing fan experience.

Allied to this, fans, consumers, and UEFA itself increasingly expect sponsorships to serve a social purpose. Hence, relationships with the likes of Hisense are expected to be more than just commercial deals, indeed they are required to address issues such as grassroots football development, diversity and equality, and the contribution of business and sport to environmental sustainability.

©️Hisense

Notable changes of Chinese brands

In 2016, Hisense made its debut at the UEFA EUROs as the tournament’s first ever Chinese sponsor. Hence, this home appliances giant would be one of the most representative references when we give an assessment on Chinese brands’ performances at the UEFA EURO 2024™.

For Hisense, there is no doubt that the company has now established itself as a regular and prominent member of the European football community. For anyone who regularly watches national team football – either in a stadium, at home, or elsewhere – they will be familiar with Hisense.

They will perhaps have seen pitch-side LED board carrying the company’s name, or else have looked at its jumbotron screens inside stadiums. Or maybe they encountered Hisense activations such as television adverts or the promotions that were run by the company in fan zones across Germany.

Hisense, having set out to become a prominent member of the global football community since 2016, now faces some new challenges. Building a coherent brand narrative is one of them, another is reinforcing the brand’s personality, a further challenge is sustaining a trustworthy reputation.

Hisense’s brand narrative appears to be based around trustworthiness, reliability, and consistency, which its sponsorship as the Official Screen Provider for VAR has helped to accentuate.

Trustworthiness, reliability, and consistency should pervade everything that Hisense does, as they are quickly becoming an important part of the brand’s personality. So, whether running promotions in fan zones, providing on-pack product promotions in stores, or advertising on television, Hisense’s brand personality must always shine through.

Moving forward, Hisense must double-down on building this narrative, the company’s relationship with the UEFA Foundation will help in this regard. An embodiment of who and what Hisense is trying to position itself as being is the ‘Faith in Young Champions’ campaign, which ran in conjunction with the company’s EUROs sponsorship.

As a public welfare initiative, this campaign involved deploying state-of-the-art display robots emblazoned with the Hisense logo enabled hospitalized children from 22 countries to virtually connect with EURO 2024 matches, fulfilling their dreams of attending the event despite physical limitations.

Hisense’s activation is consistent with the growth of purpose-led marketing that increasingly characterizes sport sponsorship programmes. It is vital that Hisense and other Chinese brands keep their brand narratives in a sustainable and persuasive manner. Fans and consumers like to know that sponsoring brands are committed to the long-term and are not simply engaging in short-term, profit oriented deals.

Kylian Mbappé, the well-known France striker, connected remotely with a young football fan through Hisense's innovative robot ©️Hisense

Conclusions

Sponsorships are an effective way of raising brand awareness, enhancing brand recall, and strengthening consumer engagement with a brand.

Following a mega event such as the EUROs, sponsoring brands may benefit from image transfer whereby fans and consumers associate sponsoring brands and their products with the same values and reputation as the event that is being sponsored.

One therefore imagines that Hisense’s close association with UEFA and the EUROs will have enhanced the status and reputation of the company, its brand, and its products in the minds of football fans and consumers.

EURO 2024 has already been marked by the company having a more prominent, visible, and confident presence at the tournament after its exploration for years. This marks growing sponsorship maturity on its part, notably the way in which positions and talks about itself allied to the notion that such sponsorships should contribute to consumer experiences of such mega events.

It also appears that, just as illustrated in its “Hisense, more than a brand” slogan, Hisense is determined to ensure that associations with UEFA help drive user-centric innovation, whilst also contributing to the well-being of communities around the world.

Indeed, given the EUROs is a truly global event, Hisense and UEFA have been increasingly attuned to one another’s needs.

©️Hisense

About Professor Simon Chadwick

Professor Simon Chadwick is a consultant, advisor, researcher, writer, speaker, and academic with three decades of experience working across the global sport industry.

His work focuses on the geopolitical economy of sport, with a particular emphasis on Afro-Eurasia. Chadwick has worked with some of the biggest names in sport, including FIFA, Formula E, Adidas, Coca Cola, the Association of Tennis Professionals, FC Barcelona, Manchester United, UEFA, Nielsen, the European Clubs Association, Ping, and the Asian Football Confederation.

Simon makes regular media appearances and has appeared live on, provided comments to, or written articles for the likes of Al Jazeera, the BBC, Caixin, CGTN, China Daily, Cinco Dias, CNN, Deutsche Welle, the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, France 24, La Repubblica, NHK, The Economist, the Times of India, TRT, the Wall Street Journal, and Xinhua.

He has taught at several of the world's most prestigious business schools, including the University of London in Britain, Emlyon in France, IESE in Spain, Otto Beisheim in Germany, Tsinghua in China, COPPEAD in Brazil, Waseda in Japan.

The professor has written numerous articles, books and research reports for the likes of Forbes, Sloan Management Review, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, European Sport Management Quarterly, Forbes, Thunderbird International Business Review, Mastercard, Newsweek, Reuters, Time, Routledge, and Financial Times Prentice Hall.