Emirates - Emirates Ace

Emirates - Emirates Ace

The three main Gulf Carriers (Qatar Airways, Etihad and Emirates), as well as near-regional rival Turkish Airlines, make a huge amount of investment in sports sponsorship.

All four have been involved in major football / soccer tie-ups. Turkish Airlines has even extended this to sponsoring the pre-Superbowl TV show last year, a badging exercise that resulted in a minor controversy.

However, arguably the airline with the most extensive sports sponsorship programme is Emirates. Emirates sponsors major European football teams (e.g. Arsenal and Paris St Germain), the Rugby World Cup, horse racing, cricket, golf - and also tennis.

Most recently Emirates’ sports sponsorship programme came to life during the US Open Tennis tournament, one of the four major ‘Grand Slam’ tournaments during the year.

This August, Emirates created an ‘Emirates Suite’, which the New York Observer said “might be the most glamorous way to see the US Open.” According to the publication, “The suite is designed to look and feel like one of the Emirates’ famously luxurious plane cabins, complete with uniformed flight attendants from the airline greeting those entering the suite.

“This extends to the food and drink aspect of the suite, which is also the only suite to have a private sushi chef at the entire tennis tournament.”

At the same time, Emirates kicked off a social media campaign to support the sponsorship called #EmiratesAce, where tennis fans could nominate their own ‘Ace.’

An ace could be anyone (not necessarily a tennis player), who has helped you in your life. It could be for example be a mentor or a guide, and prizes include flights to Dubai as well as tickets to the finals.

The hashtag had at time of writing received a fairly wide exposure, reaching 124k accounts with 150k impressions (source - Union Metrics).

Key Take-Away

With EmiratesAce, the airline has done two things we always emphasise when discussing sponsorships. It’s made sure a far wider audience than (in this case) hard-core tennis fans know about it. And it has done something to bring the sponsorship to life so it is more than just a badging exercise.

For another effective example of sports sponsorship exploitation, see Etihad’s City2City campaign, which we covered in the May issue.