Experience is everything: inside Mastercard’s sports sponsorship strategy

With The Drum’s Sports & Fitness focus in full swing, we wanted to understand how the payments giant builds, manages and derives value from an exhaustive and diverse sponsorship portfolio spanning golf, tennis, baseball, rugby, sailing and beyond. So, during Cannes Lions at the Mastercard villa, a temporary monument to the brand’s fondness for grand activations, we met Beatrice Cornacchia to learn more.

As senior vice-president for marketing and communications in EMEA, Cornacchia is one of the key players involved in developing and delivering Mastercard’s sports strategy. And it’s a strategy that has shifted markedly from being primarily concerned with brand awareness to now being much more preoccupied with brand experience.

In the early days, Mastercard used sports to communicate its global presence. “Sport was the main common language that everybody was speaking, so for us, it was a way to say, regardless of where you are going, Mastercard is going to be with you,” Cornacchia said.

She acknowledged that this approach was “merely a brand play,” but it helped convey that Mastercard was everywhere, an essential aspect of brand-building during those formative years. As consumer expectations evolved, so did Mastercard’s approach. The brand shifted from merely showcasing its presence to offering otherwise impossible-to-obtain experiences. Today, this represents the key plank of the brand’s sports playbook, which we set out below. Here’s what Cornacchia told us the brand looks for in deals.

Exclusive experiences are essential

Experiences, or ‘Priceless Experiences’ in Mastercard parlance, have become the cornerstone of the brand’s sponsorship activation strategy in recent years.

These experiences can range from the humble, such as giving proud parents heartbeat monitors as their children walk out as mascots with their idols during Champions League matches, to the profound. During the 2019 Champions League final, Basmah Nawaf Alshnaifi, a young girl from Saudi Arabia with a passion for football, was given the opportunity to be the first female Saudi mascot in the Champions League. With player mascots being an exclusive Mastercard asset, this gave the brand storytelling license.

For Cornacchia, being able to negotiate exclusive opportunities for such experiences is a critical part of negotiation with sports bodies and rights holders. “We believe in a win-win situation,” she said. “So I don’t think that needs to be beneficial only for us; the partner has to find the same kind of benefit”.

Be in it for the long haul

The partnership with Uefa’s Champions League is now in its 30^th year, and much has changed on and off the pitch since Ajax took home the trophy during Mastercard’s maiden season sponsoring football’s premier club competition.

In a world of often fleeting sports sponsorships, Cornacchia keenly advocates long-lasting arrangements that allow both the brand and the sporting partner to build trust and understanding and learn from mistakes. Her message to others is don’t expect everything to go right immediately. Just as for sports teams, success can take time to build.

“It’s human, because when you start to know someone, it may not be perfect year one. Then you start to understand how this is working, which are the common values and how to go in the same direction.”

Regional matters as much as global

It is tempting to think about a brand the size of Mastercard in only global terms, but the marketing team embarks upon a market-by-market study to understand the top ‘passions’ among consumers. Sport consistently ranks among the top eight passions anywhere in the world, but which sports reign supreme differs wildly by market.

That’s why, depending on where you are in the world, some of Mastercard’s sponsorships can seem obscure. The Hahnenkamm Races might not be a household-name event to everyone, but to those familiar with the treacherous nature of the Kitzbühel downhill ski course in Austria, Hahnenkamm means everything.

“As I always say, marketing is a science, so we are always starting from data,” said Cornacchia. “So that’s why we are sponsoring skiing, golf, tennis, hockey… We are really sponsoring all the sports that are relevant to that market.”

Mastercard has often used its sporting properties as a high-profile platform for product launches and demos, so an “openness to innovation” is not so much desired as required on the part of partners. This spirit of innovation also extends to where Mastercard’s sponsorship will take it, including esports and its partnership with League of Legends. It has used its foothold in gaming to launch the Mastercard Gamer Xchange in Asia Pacific, allowing consumers to use their rewards points to gift gaming currency across popular games from their bank or loyalty program app.

On venturing into these new arenas, Cornacchia again cited the data. “We will do whatever the consumer tells us is the right thing to do,” she said.

Measurable impact

Mastercard does not disclose how much it spends on sponsorship but its Champions League deal alone runs into tens of millions of dollars per season. Cornacchia compartmentalizes the impact of this vast outlay into two categories: brand equity and “what our CFO is fully focused on – return on investment.”

For big events like golf’s Arnold Palmer Invitational or the Champions League final, Mastercard uses its internal data to provide a granular assessment of how the brand’s products are being used, especially in environments where using Mastercard cards or apps offers customers benefits. “We saw an incremental uplift in food and beverage and in hotel accommodation while the Champions League was happening,” Cornacchia said of the tournament’s showpiece final in London in May.

“I’m not saying it’s simple, but it’s clear you to quantify the brand equity that you’re building, and all the financial impact that that specific event is bringing, in addition to being a brand that your consumers love. Now, brands are not looking for awareness any more, at least not a global brand like Mastercard, right? What we want is to be loved by our consumers.”