Brazilian football club Cruzeiro has signed a new main shirt deal with Renner Bank to promote its ‘Digi+’ operations brand.
Under the deal, Digi+ will remain on the team’s shirt for one year and a co-branded bank offering will target new accounts with Cruzeiro fans.
In setting a goal for the partnership with the club, João Urbaneja, president of Renner Bank, said: “One million accounts in the first year would be acceptable.”
The team’s board said it had discussed the partnership with a number of financial institutions for the project, but closed with Renner for its commitment to creating a brand that was entirely personalised.
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The business model is similar to that presented by Corinthians with Banco BMG earlier this year.
Renner Bank takes over as main shirt sponsor at Cruzeiro from Brazilian public bank Caixa Econômica Federal.
When Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was elected in October last year, he vowed to kick Caixa out of sports sponsorship for good, calling the use of public money to promote the bank “absurd”.
In 2018, Caixa was the shirt sponsor of 25 clubs in the Brazilian Série A and Série B, investing more than €30m (R$127.8m) across the two leagues.
Caixa is the third-largest bank in Brazil in terms of assets and one of the five largest in Latin America.