Rugby continues to dominate the sports sponsorship landscape in Ireland with new research from ONSIDE revealing seven out of the top 10 most admired sponsors have prominent partnerships in the sport.
Following on from Ireland’s men successfully retaining their Guinness Six Nations title and ahead of potential record-breaking fixtures for Ireland’s women against Scotland and Leinster’s men in the Investec Champions Cup, ONSIDE’s latest Quarterly Sponsorship Review has highlighted the broad strength of rugby as a sponsorship platform for consumer-facing brands.
Leading IRFU sponsors including Vodafone, Guinness and Aldi all feature prominently within the top sports sponsors while Bank of Ireland – which recently renewed sponsorships of all four provinces and also has a partnership with the IRFU – is joined in the top 10 for the first time by another sponsor of provincial rugby, Laya Healthcare.
ONSIDE Director of Intelligence and Insight, Kim Kirwan explains: “The major rugby sponsorships are really cutting through with consumers in Ireland so it’s no surprise that we’ve seen several key long-term renewals in recent months.”
Kim Kirwan - Director of Intelligence & Insight
The start of 2024 was buoyant for sponsorship in Ireland with the number of deals from January to March up 15% on the same period in 2023. A growing portion of these focused on women’s sport, up from 1 in 5 during the same period last year to 1 in 4 this time around.
Kirwan adds: “We’ve seen notable deals involving female talent in the first quarter of 2024. KPMG have joined Allianz as a sponsor of Rhasidat Adeleke while both Aer Lingus and Lucozade Sport have signed up female rugby stars as brand ambassadors.
The leading non-sports sponsors in the same ONSIDE Ireland Quarterly Sponsorship Review were Three and Electric Ireland, unchanged from Q4 2023, with supermarkets retaining their place as the dominant sector in non-sports sponsorship.
ONSIDE’s Quarterly Sponsorship Review has been running since 2016 in Ireland and since 2021 in the UK, serving as a barometer of consumer interest in sport and non-sport sponsorship.
