There are few things in the world as commonly loved as sports. The popularity of sports has caught the attention of marketers, as the size and popularity of sports has grown, the marketers have made sports the centerpiece of marketing campaigns for decades. It started in the 1870s in the form of Tobacco cards that introduced the baseball players of that era. The actual sports marketing has been observed in the last 70 years with the increase of television coverage and in the beginning of the 21st Century social media hit all over the place. The biggest advantage of sports marketing is that it allows marketers to reach out to everyone in the world where people don’t even know that brand or language but eventually they do as they support that particular sportsmen or a team wearing that brand.

Emirates has been very much involved with sports sponsorship, which has been successful over the years. They started with sponsoring the first powerboat race that was held in Dubai, 1987. Sponsorship has been quite vital in the airline’s marketing strategy. They have been sponsoring for the last 20 years in sports including Tennis, Rugby, Cricket, Golf, etc. they mostly aim to choose the sport that has a lot of traveling to do. It helps them because some particular sportsmen have a large team to be taking along and the first choice would be Emirates. His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates Airline & Group says, “We believe sponsorship are one of the best ways to connect with our passengers. They allow us to share and support their interest and to build a closer relationship with them.”

Emirates and Arsenal have a ground breaking partnership by making a new deal for their shirt partnership of £150 million (Dhs750.2m), one of the biggest deals in the history of the game. The agreement has been made for 5years until 2018/2019, which makes it one of the strongest and most recognizable partnership in world sport. Emirates has not just made a shirt sponsorship deal but has also taken the rights to name Arsenal’s home ground into Emirates Stadium in North London. The stadium would be named as Emirates Stadium until 2028.

Source: http://www.amazon.com. Photo by Peter Dawson. License: All Rights Reserved.

Emirates and Real Madrid, big names and big brands come together after they made a deal for shirt sponsorship of the Club until the end of the 2017/2018 season and made a new slogan “HALA MADRID! HALA Tomorrow!”. One of the emirates A380 craft will be displaying a large Real Madrid decal over the next six months that would be travelling to 36 different countries.

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“The Club has been a key catalyst in the growth of our brand and business in Spain and we are confident that the new shirt sponsorship will continue our momentum of integrating our brand with the iconic Real Madrid brand, generating authentic fan experiences around the world,” added H.H. Sheikh Ahmed.

Emirates has been named the “Most valuable Airline Brand” and after all they have the football legends Pele and Cristiano Ronaldo as global ambassadors for the airline, starring for their Emirates global campaign to connect sports fans around the world.

Source : Emirates.com