Hardly anyone knows jersey sponsors in Swiss football

 Although jersey advertising in football is one of the most image-boosting sponsorship measures, this marketing tool does not achieve the usual successful results in Switzerland compared to other European markets. A study conducted by Sport + Markt among Swiss football fans aged between 15 and 69 shows that the presence on the chest of a Super League footballer does not necessarily lead to a high level of brand awareness, even among football fans. In the study, 600 Swiss people with an interest in football were asked whether they knew the shirt sponsor of a club mentioned to them. The results were largely sobering. When looking at the club-based survey of shirt sponsors, Novartis, sponsor of cup winners FC Basel, is the lone leader with 19 percent awareness. Novartis is followed by TUI, the shirt sponsor of champions FC Zurich, with a low nine percent awareness. The situation is different when it comes to awareness of the sponsors of foreign clubs: The shirt sponsors of FC Barcelona or Liverpool, for example, each achieved eleven percent awareness in the survey. The weaker quality of the national league means that fans tend to look abroad, and Swiss clubs often lack even the national team players as crowd pullers.
In Switzerland, however, with its high sponsorship density, the large number of sponsorship commitments in the Swiss football scene also seems to put a spanner in the works for jersey sponsors. In the run-up to Euro 08, the main sponsors, who are present on several sponsorship channels, are currently attracting a lot of attention. "In addition, new international brands such as Carlsberg have joined Swiss football in the last three or four years. These big brands advertise in a network, not just with jersey advertising," says Boris Hedde, Senior Consultant at Sport + Markt, to Pressetext.ch.