Facebook to jump into soccer sponsorship?

Shockingly enough, it seems that when Facebook isn’t tweaking their privacy policies, or teaming up with CNN to livestream an important event, they’re putting in bids to sponsor soccer teams.

Did I mention that the soccer team is in England? The English national team, to be exact.

Controversial social networking website Facebook are in talks with the Football Association about becoming the new sponsor of the England team.

They are one of four companies pitching for the contract, with the FA hoping for more than double the £20million on the table from England’s long-time sponsor Nationwide.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network with more than 400m users, is showing interest despite the national team’s woeful World Cup. (via The Daily Mail, by way of Sponsorpitch)

Wow. On its face, the partnership between the F.A. and Facebook seems to be tremendously advantageous to the F.A. Facebook already has a variety of available options to either drive fans to a particular point (i.e. through a Facebook ad) or solicit fan opinions (i.e. a fan page or a developed application).  All of these things, and presumably some never before seen Facebook options would be available to the English team were they to be sponsored by the social networking site.

Of course, Facebook does face a few hurdles in their quest to enter the sports sponsorship foray.  Namely, sponsorship competition from other competitors including current sponsor, Nationwide.  There is also a time constraint; England’s next match is on August 11th, and it would make sense to have a new sponsor in play before the match (especially if it is Facebook) for the sake of unveiling and generating attention.

But, yet and still…the idea of Facebook being a player in the world of sports sponsorship…I wonder if we’ll see other social networking sites (i.e. Twitter) potentially get into the mix as well?  If for no other reason than the fact that it seems easy to either generate or increase fan bases due to the fact that user interaction would pre-date the sponsorship deal…

Tags: England, English national team, Facebook, Soccer, Sponsorship

Category: Fringe Sports