Qatar Airways will be the new global airline sponsor of the Uefa Champions League until at least 2030 having agreed an unprecedented two-cycle deal.
The agreement is understood to be worth as much as €490m (US$545m) to €500m overall to the confederation.
The Doha-headquartered airline is understood to have seen off competition from incumbent Turkish Airlines, as well as interest from an unspecified Saudi carrier, to secure the ninth and final global sponsorship position for Europe’s premier club competition.
The deal is expected to be announced in the coming weeks as the initial rounds of this year’s competition get underway and is also expected to cover the Uefa Super Cup, Uefa Youth League, Uefa Futsal Champions League and Uefa eChampions League.
As reported by SportBusiness Sponsorship, Uefa and its exclusive sponsorship agency for men’s club competitions, Team Marketing, have actively targeted the airline category in this sales cycle. They believed that strong levels of competition between brands from the Middle East in particular, would deliver a strong commercial return for club stakeholders.
In agreeing a two-cycle deal, Qatar Airways has managed to lock its rivals out of the category for longer than is customary, as Champions League deals have traditionally been agreed for no longer than three-year terms.
At around €80m to €85m per season, the airline is paying marginally more than second- to middle-tier sponsors like Crypto.com and Mastercard in this cycle, but the long-term deal may well come to be seen as good business as the annual value of other deals in the portfolio increase in the next three-year period.
Heineken is by some distance the highest paying sponsor in the portfolio because of strong competition in the beer category and the amount of media inventory in its deal.
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