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Football sponsorships are an important part of the modern sport. For most top players, sponsors are a major source of income and help them to make a living from the sport.
But sponsoring players is not just a fun game for brands. Brands expect a high return on investment when spending millions on players like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Kylian Mbappé.
Shoes, jerseys, shirts or even watches. All of these products that football players wear on TV are expected to become symbols & drive consumers towards purchases.
But most of the time, measuring ROI of sponsoring players is not easy – as no consumer will ever tell a brand when checking out: “I just bought that shirt because of this player”.
Hopefully search engine data are a great proxy to consumer purchase intention – and monitor the true impact of football players sponsors on public interest and ultimately product sales.
The Trajaan search listening platform detected more than 4400 queries related to football boots – in French language.
Our semantic analysis engine managed to isolate players, brands, features and also topics that consumers naturally search online on platforms like Google, Bing (chatGPT!) or Amazon.
More than 1 million search queries about football boots are made every month in France since January 2023. Total addressable market (TAM) has doubled since early 2019.
Queries mentioning top players like Messi or Mbappe – without mentioning brands like Nike or Adidas – naturally represent great prospects that are nurtured because of the player. Justifying high investment in sponsoring these players.
No wonder brands like Nike, Puma or Adidas get more and more interested by football boot sponsoring – raising also attention from challengers like Kipsta or even traditional sport retailers like Decathlon.
French consumers were locked down at home in Q1 2021, because of Covid-19, explaining the drop in online searches for football boots – similar to what happened in other markets like air travel.
Following Q2 2022, interest for football boots sponsored by top-players like Mbappe, CR7 (Ronaldo) or Messi has never stopped increasing in France.
But arriving or even performing in Ligue 1 does not explain a boost in public interest for branded products.
On the opposite, success gained in international events like the World Cup does provide a lot of recognition & wants for specific football boots.
The real peak of online searches for ‘Leo Messi boots‘ has been recorded after he won the 2022 World Cup with Argentina in December 2022.
Nike remains the unchallenged market leader in 2023 with a share of search volume of 42.3% (branded search only), behind Adidas.
While search volume is still much lower than Nike, Adidas or Puma, online searches about New Balance football boots are rising faster than others (+110% in 2023 vs. 2022) – making it a potential future serious challenger in the football boots market.
Smaller brands like Kipsta, Mizuno or Umbro are still struggling to increase their brand awareness – as consumers are not really searching for these brands spontaneously.
Making the impact of sponsorship even stronger on search volume – as Nike, Adidas, New Balance and Puma are the three brands investing in marketing operations with players.
“Only 8 players in Ligue 1 are not sponsored by Nike, Adidas or Puma”
Aggregated search volume in January 2023 for football boots with specific features is 320k. It is 3x higher than search volume for football boots with player names like Messi or Mbappé.
Sure the impact of sponsoring is real and can be measured with search data.
But brands must not forget that their primary target is consumers searching for products with specific features. Google is definitely the main gateway to discover brands & marketplaces selling products suiting their needs.
Major 2023 search trends in France for football boots features (in search volume growth):
To turn these online searchers into consumers, brands have no choice to be visible on search engines like Google.
Either by promoting their own website in organic search results or with paid search campaigns.
Or by getting listed by marketplaces that trust all the best positions in Google or Bing Search, when consumers search for specific product features.
Decathlon is the best positioned website in France for unbranded search.
But its leading position is still challenge by other players on specific topics – especially for advanced features like moulded or screw-in football boots.
We offer you to connect with our team, before granting you access to our demo platform.
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