The bright sailing future

Offshore Challenges has gathered massive support for their new event, The Barcelona World Race. One of the quotes that really stands out commercially is this from Keith Glasspoole, Sponsorship Research, IPSOS: - We measure periodically the general interest of the public in various sports. Things like football obviously come out on top but interest in sailing doubled before and after Ellen MacArthur [record attempt] and the Olympics. The other thing is brands are trying to get exposure around events - we measured spontaneous association of B&Q with Ellen MacArthur as nearly three-fifths of the public and that is more than three times what you would expect for an established Premiership football sponsorship. So it really was a huge level of awareness. When you have that level of awareness and exposure, it is not surprising that interest in the sport generally rises.

 

- Even the people that don’t actually win the race overall will have made a fundamental achievement – and so that type of endeavour you can rub off positively on brands regardless of what individual sailors might achieve.

 

-          With ocean racing these days people can actually see the events taking place and unfolding in their living rooms, this puts it more online with other international sports and it’s this which makes it an even more attractive proposition for international brands, says Glasspoole.

 

So what are you guys waiting for? Get out there…