An Appraisal of the Event Marketing at EURO 2020
Executive Summary
The purpose of this appraisal is to highlight the successes of EURO 2020’s marketing plan, specifically in certain sectors, but also point out the parts that were overlooked, causing issues for the event organisers, UEFA.
Introduction
Marketing is defined as ‘the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably’ (CIM, 2005).
More specifically, event marketing is defined as the process by which event managers gain an understanding of their potential consumers characteristics and needs in order to produce, price, promote and distribute an event experience that meets these needs and the objectives of the special event (Bowdin et al, 2011).
The event attendee looks for a ‘lifestyle experience’ (Allen et al, 2011) and desire something that they will remember as interesting, memorable, and exciting. This is more commonly referred to as the emerging ‘experience economy’ (Pine and Gilmore, 2011), they mention how there has been a paradigm shift with what certain consumers want, this has shifted from a product economy then to a feature, then brand and now an experience economy. The consumer values the overall experience of an event and expects more than just the base product.
The European Championships are a football tournament held every four years between members of UEFA (Britannica, n.d.). EURO 2020 was a unique version of this tournament due to several factors. It was held across the continent for the first time in the competition’s 60-year history, with 12 host cities in total (UEFA, 2021). It was also held the year after it was scheduled because of the COVID pandemic (BBC Sport, 2020).
Appraisal
Positive Marketing Elements
Keeping the Same Branding
EURO 2020 was extremely unique as forementioned because the competition was held a year after it was initially planned to occur (BBC Sport, 2020) and yet the tournament’s branding and marketing was still the same and was not edited to be ‘EURO 2021’. The event organisers UEFA explained that this was decision was made after thorough internal review but was kept as its original branding because it allowed UEFA to still celebrate the 60-year anniversary of the European Football Championship which began in 1960 (UEFA, 2020). This helped keep the integrity of the championships, so it makes it easier for them to keep marketing the same quadrennial format in the following tournaments.
They also kept the same name because it will serve as a reminder for many years to come of how the whole football world came together to support each other during the COVID pandemic (UEFA, 2020) which was good for the PR of the event as it is a token gesture to show that they actually do care about the wellbeing of their fans, which made people more inclined to watch the event as they felt valued as fans and people and felt engaged with on a more personal level.
The final reason UEFA gave to keeping the same branding was because they made a commitment to making EURO 2020 sustainable and not to generate additional amounts of waste, as a lot of branded material had already been produced by the time of the tournament’s postponement (UEFA, 2020). A name change for the event would have caused a lot of waste and would have been awful for the environment. This move helped attract a different audience to the event, those who are keen to protect the planet but are not majorly interested in football may support the event and spread a positive message, increasing engagement and support; both fiscally and socially. This is reinforced as a recent global market trends study has said that the number one trend in marketing over the next few years will be related to the planet and creating sustainable business practices (WARC, 2021).
Managing 12 Host Cities
For the first time in the history of the European Championships, it was held across Europe, having 12 host cities in total (UEFA, 2021) and the only time that this was remotely similar is in 2000, 2008 and 2012 where there were two different host nations (WorldSoccer, 2020). This will have affected the ‘Who’ element of the 5 W’s event concept (Bowdin et al, 2011) as there were many different local stakeholders because of the amount of host locations, across 12 countries. They would have had to market to many different audiences, even though they would have to do this anyway, it was different because they had to also sell seats in every country so not just attract an audience for passive consumption.
Even though EURO 2020 had the lowest average attendance since EURO 1992 (Lange, 2021), this was caused by COVID restrictions in countries differing, so this is not the best statistic to view their marketing success. However, they still managed to get huge audiences to lots of games including a 67,173 attendance in the final (Soccer Blog, 2021) plus there was a live match cumulative event audience of 5.2 billion with a live average match audience of over 100 million, in over 229 territories (UEFA, 2021) which accentuates the success and global reach of the tournament.
Adding to the Event Experience
As Pine and Gilmore have stated, consumers want more than just a base product at an event, they want an experience (Pine and Gilmore, 2011). One way that UEFA did this for the EURO’s was the Volkswagen sponsored ‘tiny car’ that delivered the ball in certain games, starting off with Italy vs Turkey in the opening match (Gott, 2021). This was an example of viral marketing, as it caused social media, in particular Twitter, to go crazy, and has its own account, amassing 21,400 followers and becoming a verified account (Twitter, 2021). This links to the three E’s of marketing: entertainment, excitement, and enterprise (Hoyle, 2002) as they are adding to the event because they are adding elements to make it not just about the football matches, but also extra entertainment factors. UEFA will also benefit from this move being successful as the sponsor of the car Volkswagen will be extremely pleased with the positive word being spread around their sponsored product, thus UEFA could gain more sponsors for future events such as the Nations League or other European Championships.
Another way that UEFA added to the event experience was through ‘Skillzy’, the official mascot of EURO 2020 (UEFA, 2019) and they found a way to engage a new, younger audience to this as the cartoon like mascot attracted a younger audience to view and engage with the event. People were encouraged to send a video to UEFA of their best freestyling skills for a chance to display their abilities in one of the 12 host nations. This was accompanied alongside freestylers Liv Cooke and Tobias Becs (UEFA, 2019) who will bring a younger audience to the event, so they are maximising the audiences they are engaging with to increase views and revenue of the event, and potentially turn them into lifetime consumers of other UEFA tournaments.
Digital Marketing
UEFA were very successful in their digital marketing with their various social channels, which is a fantastic marketing strategy in 2021 as there are a total of 4.2 billion users of social media globally, which is over 50% of the global population (Hootsuite, 2021). On social media this was the most engaged EURO’s ever, as there were 7.5 billion interactions and views of which two billion were generated by official UEFA accounts (UEFA, 2021), this focus on digital and social platforms can be linked to the event content section of the four realms of event experience model (Reic, 2017).
One way they did this was create a TikTok account, which is the fastest growing social app for newer audiences, as it has had 41.3 million downloads in the last year in the US alone, compared to Facebook which has had 250,000 downloads in that same timeframe (Wallaroo, 2021).
The EURO 2020 TikTok account is currently sitting on 6.5 million followers, with 108.9 million total likes, having more followers than the official accounts of England and France’s national team (TikTok, 2021). This was an effective use of marketing in the maturity element of the product life cycle (TheStreet, 2021) as it introduced a new audience to the event, a younger audience as 60% of TikTok’s users are between the ages of 16-24 (Wallaroo, 2021). They increased their engagement with comments and posted frequently to keep audiences involved with the content and made them want to tune into the event on every occasion.
This could tie in with the event relaunch phase of the product life cycle as this TikTok account has already been rebranded to a EURO 2024 account (TikTok, 2021). UEFA have successfully connected with a global demographic digitally and intend to keep them and grow it even further so their next event can be as successful. They are also keeping up the engagement levels like they were during the tournament, and this combined with the rapid growth of the social platform will make exponential growth likely.
UEFA also created an official EURO 2020 app which had live coverage, goal notifications and personalised content (UEFA, 2021). It was extremely successful with over 10 million downloads on the Google Play store alone with a 4.7 out of 5 rating with over 164 thousand reviews (Google Play, 2021) so it was extremely well received, and just like the TikTok account, it has been developed for a different event purpose, this time the UEFA Nations League.
Gamification
Also in this app was the Fantasy Football feature (UEFA, 2021) where players could compete against their friends in private leagues and score points on the players’ performances in the tournament. In terms of the levels of event product (Robinson et al, 2010) this would be classed as an augmented event product, essentially an added extra for the consumer. This is linked to the gamification of football, as it creates more touch points for consumers to engage with.
There was also a tournament predictor within the app for consumers to use (UEFA, 2021) and another aspect of gamification being evident is the PANINI UEFA EURO sticker book, where consumers would purchase stickers of players, managers and badges etc to complete the book (PANINI, 2021), which increased awareness of the event and generated lots of revenue for the organisers of the event, potentially from a younger audience, who could then turn into repeat consumers and participate more in future tournaments and events.
Negative Marketing Elements
Health and Safety Issues
Although EURO 2020 had a largely successful marketing campaign, there was a huge crisis on the day of the final. Before England played Italy in the evening, Wembley stadium was packed and ended up getting rushed by ticketless fans, attempting to force themselves into the stadium, and some were seen jumping over barriers and grappling with stewards and police (Lee et al, 2021). This caused major issues before the game as it would not only cause fears of overcrowding the stadium in terms of social distancing, but there were some worried that this would cause the match to be cancelled. It was also bad for PR as it highlighted the issues of holding the tournament in so many countries, as some said this was because security was overlooked somewhat.
Another criticism the tournament faced was to do with rising COVID cases. Specifically, after the group match between England and Scotland at Wembley, there was a surge in COVID cases in Scotland of 1991 who had specifically attended EURO 2020 events (Stewart et al, 2021). This overshadowed a lot of the great PR the tournament had received in its early stages, with many wanting the event to be played behind closed doors.
Athletes Influence on Sponsorships
After a Portugal match in the group stages, Cristiano Ronaldo was chosen for the post-match press conference, he removed two Coca-Cola bottles (Garcia, 2021) then advocating to his devoted fans the importance of healthier choices. The day after this, the market value of Coca-Cola fell by $4 billion (Garcia, 2021), which is significant as they were a major sponsor of the event and lost a tremendous chunk of money and suffered adverse PR from this. This stunt may make potential sponsors think twice of putting their products in places where athletes can influence, as this has shown that their impact is much bigger than most anticipated. This could cause a future loss in revenue for UEFA as sponsors may hesitate as they have seen what happened to Coca-Cola.
Conclusion
In this appraisal, we highlighted the success of the marketing plan for UEFA EURO 2020, specifically within the digital sector and playing on sustainability. Whilst also acknowledging some negative aspects that briefly overshadowed this overwhelming positivity, revealing how no matter how rigorous a marketing plan is, things out of your control can always go wrong, but it did not have an overtly negative impact on the tournament.
