Insurance company QBE, the title sponsor of the Rugby Football Union’s Autumn Internationals, will learn in January how far it has reduced the association of former long-term title sponsor Investec with the prestigious series.
QBE Insurance sponsorship manager Nicholas Mott told Sports Sponsorship Insider that QBE’s first season as title sponsor in 2013 reduced Investec’s awareness in association with the event from 16 per cent down to nine per cent.
QBE’s evaluation of this year’s Autumn Internationals is currently under way and will be reported to QBE’s executive committee in January 2014.
Financial services group Investec was title sponsor of the Autumn Internationals for just over 12 years, from 1998 to 2011.
The current deal between QBE and the Rugby Football Union runs for four years, from September 2012 to the end of July 2016.
Last weekend’s match between England and the All Blacks attracted an average audience of 1.03 million on Sky Sports, a division of UK pay-television broadcaster BSkyB. The equivalent figure for England versus Australia two weeks before the All Blacks clash was 599,000 viewers.
This is part of a fuller article on QBE’s sponsorship strategy and processes that is available to subscribers of Sports Sponsorship Insider here: http://www.sportbusiness.com/sponsorship-insider/qbe-insurance-interview-nicholas-mott-sponsorship-manager-qbe-insurance.