• Of the $82m tourist boards are committing towards the sports industry in 2021, over $70m is targeted to the European market, with rights holders in major European sport leagues seen as the most effective driver for tourism promotion.
• 16 of the sector’s 20 most valuable sponsorship agreements are with European rights holders.
• Arsenal FC’s sleeve sponsorship agreement with Rwandan tourist board Visit Rwanda represents the most lucrative agreement across the tourism board sponsorship sector, at a reported $13.44m annually.

With GlobalData estimating $82m in value for 2021, the tourist board sector is a common feature in the commercial profile of rights holders, with clubs and federations around the world often boasting a travel, tourism or destination partner among their sponsorship portfolios. The total value of current tourist board agreements with rights holders, over the entire length of their contracts, reaches over $172m, with deals typically signed on a one-year recurring basis, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Patrick Kinch, Sport Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The current tourist board sponsorship landscape sees the majority of tourist board spend driven towards the European sports market, with rights holders receiving over $70m in agreements in 2021. This suggests that tourist boards worldwide see Europe as both a primary tourist market, and also the best platform on which to market their destination, with sport properties in the Premier League, Eredivise, MotoGP and Bundesliga all seeing tourism partnerships in their portfolios.”

Brand spend is fairly evenly split between tourist boards based in Africa, Asia and Europe, with tourist boards in these continents contributing between $22-24m to total sector spend. This highlights the significant pushes Asian and African tourist boards are making in encouraging tourism, largely from Europe, to their respective destinations.

Kinch continues: “Large parts of the travel and tourism industry have been decimated by the pandemic, with numerous sectors within this industry, such as the airline and hotel industry, facing sweeping job losses and huge drops in revenue as lockdown measures have placed restrictions on international travel.”

With vaccines being widely considered as the best route out of the pandemic, tourist boards, which largely rely on government funding, are still committing to the sports industry as a means to market their respective destinations in the hopes that the 2021 summer provides a greater freedom on international movement than 2020.

Kinch adds: “With tourist boards typically being government funded agencies, rights holders are more likely to receive a guarantee on their sponsorship fee agreements, compared to private companies who have been at a greater risk of bankruptcy during the pandemic, making the tourist board sector a reliable partner to the sports industry.”