La Liga giants Barcelona and Real Madrid are the ‘most powerful’ sponsorship properties in club soccer, according to a list generated by real-time sponsorship valuation engine POWA Index.
The list, which was released as a point of comparison with this year’s Deloitte Football Money League, which ranks teams according to their annual revenue, shows that the two highest earning clubs in the world are also the most valuable to brands from a sponsorship perspective. Like Deloitte’s study, the POWA Index sponsorship rankings also has English outfit Manchester United in third place.
A total of six Premier League clubs appear in the top 20 of the POWA Index list compared to eight in Deloitte’s study, with Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool also featuring.
The POWA Index top 20 also includes three teams each from Brazil’s Campeonato Brasileiro Série A Turkey’s Süper Lig, while Boca Juniors are the only representatives from Argentina’s Superliga.
With a POWA Index score of 97,362, the study would suggest that La Liga champions Barcelona are nearly seven times more powerful as a sponsorship property than Turkish side Besiktas, the team ranked 20th, who have a score of 13,938.
The rankings also suggest that last year’s Uefa Champions League finalists Spurs, German champions Bayern Munich and Manchester City all overachieved from a financial perspective in 2019, given that the three all rank higher in Deloitte’s study than they do in the POWA Index list.
Michael Flynn, chief executive of DataPOWA, which operates the POWA Index, said: “Not only are the top three football clubs the most powerful sports marketing platforms and the most successful from a revenue perspective, POWA index also identifies them as the top three club sponsorship platforms across all sports globally. Only the NBA, a governing body, is seen to have an average yearly POWA score that is just ahead of the two La Liga teams.
“The inclusion of five South American and the three big Turkish teams highlights the importance of football globally, and the opportunities for brands outside of the biggest leagues.”
The POWA Index list is generated using data from over 3,000 teams, leagues and events around the world. The engine claims to analyse more than 2.4 trillion data points a day across 60 unique data sets to then create a score composition for each sports property.
Barcelona and Real Madrid are the ‘most powerful’ sponsorship properties in club soccer
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