Emirates Airline’s Louise Mathis on establishing new goals with football

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  • High World Cup profile: Pele with a model of an Emirates plane sporting the Brazil colours.

    Emirates Airline’s commitment to football sponsorship is well-documented.

    Over the last 10 years, the Dubai-based carrier have established partnerships with Real Madrid, Arsenal, AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, Hamburg and Olympiakos.

    But perhaps their biggest and most important deal, in a global sense, was becoming the official airline of FIFA in 2006 before being just one of six official corporate partners a year later.

    Here, Sponsorship Manager Louise Mathis discusses just why the relationship is so important to Emirates and the positive effects of the multi-million dollar deal.

    How important is the World Cup to Emirates?

    Our relationship with FIFA dates back to 2006 when Emirates became the first airline sponsor of the World Cup.

    Since the competition in Germany that year, our involvement then moved to South Africa for FIFA in 2010 and Emirates is with the football fans in Brazil.

    FIFA is one of our most prominent international sponsorships, enjoying a global stage so it is a valuable marketing tool.

    We also know that the beautiful game has the power to unite like no other sport – and connecting people and their passions is a very big part of what we do.

    How did being a FIFA partner come about? What was the process behind it and is there a degree of competition from rivals in terms of becoming a FIFA partner?
    In 2004, Emirates started discussions around a FIFA sponsorship.

    Like any commercial opportunity, there is rivalry, and given the prominence of the FIFA platform, competition is intense.

    Discussions led to negotiations and in 2006 Emirates became the first airline sponsor for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

    The deal was just for one term, but was then extended to include the 2010 and 2014 World Cups in South Africa and Brazil.

    Can you outline the benefits to you as a brand?
    From the early Emirates of the 1980s until now, sponsorships have been a vital part of the airline’s marketing strategy.

    We genuinely believe sponsorships are one of the best ways to connect with our customers and key to the growth and reach of the brand.

    With the Hello Tomorrow brand platform in place, we are firmly on a course to becoming a top global lifestyle brand.

    In terms of benefits, we conduct regular media evaluation on our sponsorship assets, which is carried out externally by a third party supplier.

    This looks at a number of factors, but mostly focuses on the value of television exposure.

    We would normally expect somewhere in the region of a 6-1 return on our sponsorships – that is Dh6 worth of exposure for every dirham invested.

    We also carry out studies in different markets to determine how effective the investment has been from an awareness and engagement point of view and whether we need to do more to produce the right results.

    It’s important to remember that this is about much more than the financials – it’s about the partnerships that we create around the world and about bringing people together to discover, enjoy, and share enriching experiences.

    There can be few greater examples than FIFA.

    How busy have your planes been over the past three weeks? 
    Demand for our flights to Brazil is particularly strong over the World Cup period with daily services to both Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

    Can you tell us a bit about the history of when you started flying to Brazil, what was the thinking behind it (was it linked with the World Cup etc)? 
    We started flying to Sao Paul, Brazil in 2007 – our first gateway into South America and in fact the first time the Middle East had been linked with a non-stop flight to Brazil.

    Research had shown that Brazil was one of the under-served markets of South America in terms of available airline seats and the potential supported an initial six times a week flight to Dubai where passengers could connect with our extensive network down into Africa and across to the Far East.

    The new route, starting with a Boeing 777-200LR, helped relieve pressure in the market on seat availability, particularly for business travellers, while opening up a new corridor for tourism traffic and trade, both to and from the UAE and beyond.

    Back in 2007, it was not known that Brazil would be hosting the World Cup or the Olympics so our considerations were based on commercial and economic data at that time.

    Now, seven years on, Emirates flies to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro with Boeing 777-300ERs, each capable of carrying 23,000 kilogrammes of cargo and over 400 passengers.

    With the Olympics also in two years’ time will you be adding extra flights?
    This is an exciting time for Emirates in Brazil and the immediate priority is to ensure we deliver our award winning service to all those travelling to Brazil for the World Cup.

    The daily flights to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro will also help to support travellers heading to the Olympics, and whether those flights will be sufficient will be reviewed further down the road.

    For those who do fly with us to Brazil, there will be no shortage of entertainment on the way, with up to 1,700 channels of movies, TV programmes, games, music and even a dedicated FIFA channel on our in-flight entertainment system called ice.

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