EXCLUSIVE: Emirates reveals massive sponsorship spend

Gulf airline Emirates has revealed what proportion of the company’s marketing budget is spent on sports sponsorship.

In a wide-ranging interview in the latest issue of the Sports Sponsorship Insider newsletter, Emirates' divisional senior vice president of corporate communications Boutros Boutros said that Emirates spends 35 per cent of its marketing budget on sponsorship, with the majority of this spent on football.

Emirates aims to earn $8m for every $1m it spends on sponsorship, Boutros Boutros said.

Football shirt sponsorship “is the most relevant sponsorship,” he said. “If you don’t have the shirt you only have advertising boards and that’s not for us. We like the shirt because it’s connected to people.”

For more on this story, including recent Emirates deals with Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and the New York Cosmos, see the June issue of the Sports Sponsorship Insider newsletter, which was delivered to subscribers on June 21.