We are starting into an exciting sports year with the in UEFA EURO 2012™ in Poland and Ukraine and the London 2012 Olympic Games. adidas will be right at the centre of both events as the Official Sponsor, Supplier and Licensee of UEFA EURO 2012™ and as the Official Sportswear Partner of the London 2012 Olympic Games and the London 2012 Paralympic Games. We are often asked by media, students and consumers how our sponsoring approach to these major sport events works. So here is a short introduction to sport sponsoring at the UEFA EURO 2012™.

At UEFA EURO 2012™ we follow an approach that we internally call a three-pillar-strategy because our brand is present on all three sponsorship levels of the tournament.

adidas’ three-pillar sport sponsoring strategy

The official matchball of the UEFA EURO 2012: the adidas Tango 12

First, our role as Official Sponsor of the event gives us great visibility inside the stadium and all event venues. In addition to this, it allows us to provide the match-ball for the tournament, the adidas Tango 12 (click here and here to learn more about the Tango 12). We also outfit all referees, officials and volunteers of the tournament.

Then, we outfit six of the 16 teams that have qualified for UEFA EURO 2012™. This includes title holder Spain, host Ukraine, Denmark, Germany, Greece and Russia. With that, we have more teams than any other sports brand. While we have long-term contracts with our federations that are not linked to one particular event, these relationships give us great visibility on the field of play. All our teams will wear newly designed home and away jerseys. The home jerseys have already been presented in November last year; the away jersey will follow in early 2012.

Finally, we work together with many of the best players of the continent like Xavi Hernández, David Villa (both Spain – hope David can make it to the UEFA EURO 2012™), Lukas Podolski, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, Thomas Müller, Manuel Neuer (all Germany), Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie (both Netherlands), Peter Cech (Czech Republic), Frank Lampard (England), Nani (Portugal), Samir Nasri and Karim Benzema (both France), Ireneusz Jelen, Maciej Iwanski (both Poland) or Artem Milevskiy and Anatoli Tymoshchuk (both Ukraine) – just to mention a few.

What’s next on the product side?

These athletes will introduce our latest innovations in footwear; the adizero f50 powered by miCoachmiCoach is an adidas product category that has been created to offer consumers of all levels personal coaching with training programmes designed by the world’s top coaches. miCoach aims to make the user a better athlete, regardless of the sport., the new Predator and the new adiPURE. Again, the adizero f50 – aka the first football boot with a brain – is already out since November, the new Predator and the new adiPure will be launched this year.

Of course, we will also communicate our strong relationship with the event, our teams and our players to our consumers in Europe and around world via all communication channels. But our communication strategy is a separate topic and deserves its own blog post as we get closer to the tournament; just as many other topics around the tournament which we will cover here on the adidas Group blog…so stay tuned.

Our three-sponged sponsoring approach to UEFA EURO 2012™ ensures that adidas will be highly visible before, during and after the event. We are very confident that we will achieve new record sales in our football category of more than 1,5 billion euro next year. Without any doubt, our strong presence at UEFA EURO 2012™ will help us to achieve that ambitious goal.

I am already looking very much forward to spending some time in Poland and the Ukraine this summer and maybe we’ll watch a final between Germany and Spain.

Come back later to learn more about our sports sponsoring involvement in the London 2012 Olympic Games.