The business of sports has been expanding exponentially over the past few years at all tiers with brands looking at the sector as a key marketing opportunity. Brands across sectors are jumping on the sports advertising bandwagon, having realized the huge audience base that the sector caters to. And, the banking sector is no exception to this.
In the past few years, various banks and financial institutions have taken to sports sponsorships and sports marketing. The biggest sporting events right from the World cups, Commonwealth games to IPL, PKL and other leagues, banks and other financial institutions have been one of the key sponsors or advertisers in all these tournaments. The reason behind this is the community that sports prerogatively is associated with.
Sports in general has a vast audience base across all social groups and especially in the younger age group, giving financial institutions a great opportunity to reach out to their most potential customer base. Apart from this, one thing common between sports and banks are the attributes that customers or fans equate to both these sectors. The sports team, athlete or a league can provide financial institutes key traits such as trust and loyalty. Sports also provide a very high intensity entertainment that invokes raw emotions within the fans , a factor that a financial institution lacks severely. Thus, these institutions can leverage off the key moments and position their brand in a favourable way. The sponsorship also helps banks/ financial institutions to introduce any new policy, feature or new banking services directly to the consumers in a much simpler manner. The branding done at the sports events adds on to the recall value for the banks within the minds of the customers.
Today, the sports sector is experiencing newer developments at all tiers with multiple opportunities coming up in the domestic grassroots sports ecosystem. The grassroots sports community is huge and with more and more tournaments at this level being broadcasted on various OTT platforms the community is only increasing. The sports events happening at this level give an added advantage to the financial institutions as the cost of marketing and advertising is comparatively much lower but the institutions get direct access to the masses and have a better chance at promoting their schemes, policies or services. With SportVot digitising grassroots sports and bringing local sports events to the world, banks and other financial institutions can benefit from a 360 degree marketing program with digital marketing along with on-ground marketing and branding. The opening up of advertising opportunities that directly address the local community is certainly the next big thing for developing the brand position for banks.