The Wim­ble­don Cham­pi­onships have strong roots in tra­di­tion, which means they for­go con­ven­tion­al spon­sor­ship and adver­tis­ing mod­els in favor of gen­uine brand part­ner­ships that add val­ue to the event, and for con­sumers. Offi­cial spon­sors must be gen­uine­ly con­sumer-cen­tric, use a spot of cre­ativ­i­ty, and get into the spir­it of the tour­na­ment in order to win mar­ket­ing moments at the event.

Wim­ble­don, which kicks off on June 29 this year, has nev­er been an event for high-pro­file or inva­sive adver­tis­ing cam­paigns. Despite sev­er­al decades now of glob­al tele­vi­sion cov­er­age and broad­cast­ing, which has seen oth­er tour­na­ments embrace lucra­tive spon­sor­ship deals and rev­enues, through­out, Wim­ble­don has remained staunch­ly tra­di­tion­al­ist.

Play­ers, for exam­ple, are required to dress in the tra­di­tion­al all-white col­ors of the tour­na­ment, mean­ing sports­wear brand­ing is low key, and spon­sors of the tour­na­ment have lim­it­ed adver­tis­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty com­pared with oth­er sport­ing events; around the court adver­tis­ing bill­boards are non-exis­tent, for exam­ple.

How­ev­er, that’s not to say that the tour­na­ment does­n’t deliv­er for its offi­cial spon­sors. Last year the tour­na­ment com­mand­ed an impres­sive $65 mil­lion in rev­enue for spon­sors, low­er than that of the U.S. Open and French Open, but sur­pris­ing­ly strong in the over­all total con­sid­er­ing the over­all lack of adver­tis­ing around the event.

Less Is More For Wimbledon Sponsors

The effec­tive­ness of Wim­ble­don’s Spon­sor­ship strat­e­gy lies in its abil­i­ty to fos­ter brand part­ner­ships that feel nat­ur­al and add val­ue to the event.

Rolex, the tour­na­men­t’s “Offi­cial Time­keep­er” since 1978, has man­aged to nur­ture a strong brand pres­ence at the event by embrac­ing tra­di­tion­al val­ues and not overt­ly push­ing its own brand mes­sag­ing, while also pro­vid­ing a use­ful ser­vice at the event.

In fact, the only place you’ll see Rolex logos at Wim­ble­don is on clocks around the venue, and on the offi­cial score­boards.

This brand­ing, how­ev­er sub­tle, is enough for the watch­mak­er to have built strong top-of-mind aware­ness, and a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion with the event. Tim Hen­man voiced this sen­ti­ment when he said of a vis­it to Wim­ble­don as a young­ster “when­ev­er I see the Rolex Crown on my watch it takes me straight back to Cen­tre Court in 1981.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, IBM, the Offi­cial Tech­nol­o­gy part­ner of the tour­na­ment, goes about its spon­sor­ship strat­e­gy not by pay­ing for adver­tis­ing space and bill­boards at the tour­na­ment, but by pro­vid­ing for the sport’s many tech­no­log­i­cal require­ments.

The tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny has designed a brand new web­site in prepa­ra­tion for this year’s tour­na­ment, which pre­miers a num­ber of new dig­i­tal tools to com­ple­ment spec­ta­tors’ expe­ri­ences.

For exam­ple, Slam­track­er pro­vides a com­plete view of the scores and sta­tis­tics of match­es being played. In addi­tion, Slam­track­er checks cur­rent game data against that of pre­vi­ous com­pe­ti­tions, such as oth­er Grand Slams, to pro­vide live insights about match-ups or game sit­u­a­tions.

This year, IBM will add a human ele­ment to their Wim­ble­don spon­sor­ship activ­i­ties: “For the first time [they] are help­ing [Wim­ble­don staff] by noti­fy­ing any­thing of inter­est, such as the fastest ball ever served.” The tech­nol­o­gy relies on a new­ly com­piled data­base of over a mil­lion pages worth of records since 1877 – the year the cham­pi­onship was born.

Equity Through Added Value

For IBM and Rolex, the val­ue of their spon­sor­ship is tied to serv­ing the tour­na­ments tech­no­log­i­cal needs as best they can, and enhanc­ing spec­ta­tor expe­ri­ences of the event as a result. Both spon­sors have served the tour­na­ment for sev­er­al decades con­tin­u­ous­ly.

It’s a sim­i­lar sto­ry for the tour­na­men­t’s oth­er offi­cial spon­sors: Robin­sons cel­e­brates their 80th year as one of the tour­na­men­t’s offi­cial drink spon­sors. For many, the UK-based bev­er­age brand is rec­og­nized as being syn­ony­mous with the cham­pi­onships, which is a remark­able feat when you con­sid­er that Wim­ble­don is not inter­rupt­ed by adver­tise­ment breaks, and as a result the brand com­mands one of the most sub­tle instances of brand­ing, with their logo only fea­tur­ing on the umpire’s chair.

In fact, all of the Wim­ble­don spon­sors add val­ue to the event; From their old­est spon­sor, Slazenger, which pro­vides the cru­cial match balls, to the newest, Jaguar/Land Rover, which will part­ner the tour­na­ment for the first time this year pro­vid­ing the offi­cial cars to sup­port the tour­na­ment. Oth­er brands that make a con­tri­bu­tion include Lan­son, which pro­vide the win­ner’s cham­pagne, and Ralph Lau­ren, which pro­vides uni­forms and attire for the offi­cials.

Stella Artois #herestoperfection

The fact that adver­tis­ing is high­ly reg­u­lat­ed at the tour­na­ment means adver­tis­ers have to come up with cre­ative ways to cre­ate and join con­ver­sa­tions around the tour­na­ment. This year, the best exam­ple of this is from Stel­la Artois, the tour­na­ment offi­cial beer part­ner.

Instead of cre­at­ing an adver­tis­ing cam­paign around their own brand, Stel­la has picked out two sto­ries from the tour­na­ment that exhib­it the theme of “per­fec­tion” – tying into their #herestop­er­fec­tion tagline, which is the tagline for a wider cam­paign by the Dutch beer man­u­fac­tur­er.

The first is an artis­tic doc­u­men­tary of Rufus, the Har­ris Hawk who pro­vides the envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, non-lethal bird con­trol for the tour­na­ment:

The sec­ond tells the sto­ry of Roman Zoltows­ki, Wim­ble­don’s offi­cial tro­phy engraver, who has trav­eled to the tour­na­ment from Poland by car since 1979:

These sto­ries share the suc­cess of some of the tour­na­ments unsung heroes, which is a great way for brands to cre­ate a con­ver­sa­tion around the event while tying it to their own cam­paigns.

Long-Term Partnerships, Long-Term Wins

For many sport­ing events, often it’s a case of sell­ing spon­sor­ship and adver­tis­ing equi­ty to the high­est bid­der. How­ev­er, the Wim­ble­don orga­niz­ers have adopt­ed a slight­ly dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy in devel­op­ing long-term part­ner­ships with brands that add val­ue to the event in a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial way.

And in the minds of con­sumers, this pro­vides a pow­er­ful assur­ance about the val­ue that the brand can add to their lives too. As Michael Mass, vice-pres­i­dent for IBM said in an inter­view: “ser­vic­ing sports is an excel­lent way to show­case what we can do as there is [a need for] seri­ous tech­nol­o­gy behind each event.”

It makes for a excel­lent tour­na­ment expe­ri­ence for spec­ta­tors, and sets the bar high for brands that spon­sor events.

Whether it’s pro­vid­ing tech­nol­o­gy, charg­ing points, Wi-Fi, refresh­ments, or telling a sto­ry of untold heroes at an event, brands that add val­ue for con­sumers, enhanc­ing their expe­ri­ences, can hope to enjoy longer-term wins for their brand.