When it comes to sponsoring tennis, particularly the four grand slams, which categories and brands are the most prevalent?

Sponsoring tennis: it’s for the big players

The most striking aspect across the four grand slams, is that the average annual revenue of the main partners is a staggering $25.5bn – even considering the cost of sponsorship, such as Barclays $24m per year deal with Wimbledon and Kia’s $14.4m with the Australian Open.

A general rule of thumb in the industry when looking for companies that can afford the cost of a particular sponsorship is that it represents around 1% of revenue (i.e. if sponsorship costs $1m, look at companies with annual revenue of $100m+). However, for the slams, the figure is much nearer 0.1%.

Sponsoring tennis: it’s fairly traditional

The slams represent a very traditional sponsorship portfolio. One dominated by established blue-chip brands and familiar categories such as alcohol, cars, airlines, watches, banks and credit cards.

This is particularly the case with Wimbledon, whose main partners are heavily represented by drinks brands, while for the US Open it’s traditional financial powerhouses such as American Express and JP Morgan.

Unlike many other global sports such as soccer, cricket and golf, the tennis slams don’t yet have many Middle Eastern (aside from traditional player Emirates Airlines) or Chinese brands or more ‘modern’ sectors such as crypto, fintech or pure-play online retailers that are becomingly increasingly pervasive in these other sports.

For instance when talking about its partners, Wimbledon references retaining the unique image and character by developing long-term mutually beneficial deals with blue-chip brands and not overtly commercialising the grounds. It also limits itself to brands  either essential for the staging of the tournament or improving the quality of the service.

Sponsoring tennis: recent deals

This picture is consistent when looking beyond just the four grand slams, across sponsorship deals signed in tennis over the last 18 months.

Car brands, led very much by Lexus, and alcohol brands have accounted for 25% of deals, followed by banks and consumer tech, such as Chinese brand Haier.

One difference from the slams is the emergence of more Middle Eastern brands becoming involved, such as Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) sponsoring the ATP, WTA and the Madrid Open.

Sponsoring tennis: why?

As with most sponsorships, brand awareness is the most common reason cited by the sponsor for undertaking tennis deals.

This is followed by ‘Social Impact’ (aka to be seen to be doing good) and engaging fans – the latter being particularly prevalent among alcohol sponsors.