Studs Up

It’s not possible for me to sum up how glad I am that the first few games of the season have not gone according to plan. As in, at all. Liverpool losing two of their first there, Burnley winning their first two and Spurs getting their best start in 50 years? Nice work, Zeus.

A few weeks ago I posted my Q&A with David Prosperi – VP Global PR at Aon, Manchester United’s new sponsor. He got in touch again last week just to chat and he mentioned an interesting internal program they’ve launched called “Follow the Football”. At a meeting in Chicago to discuss the United deal, Aon CEO Greg Case signed the a ball and kicked it into the crowd, the person who catches the ball had to sign it and state on their internal microsite why they thought the United deal would be good for Aon before passing it onto another employee at another office. The ball has traveled to multiple continents already.

The key word here is “internal”. This is not a PR stunt because, well, other than this article there’s been no media exposure for it. The comments made by employees who catch the ball are on an internal Aon microsite to which I, nor anyone else, have not been given access to. It’s internal press in order to get employees briefed and excited about this deal as well as to help them fully understand it.

I bring this up because working in the football space these last couple years has introduced me to people and aspects of the game I never would have as a fan, and it’s made me into a real advocate of the sport itself. I want to see it grow in every country, I want to see it command the respect of industry and I want to see people expressing their passion through really creative means.

So it makes me happy when a billion dollar, global corporation like Aon is conducting amusing internal programs to genuinely get people talking about football and what it means to them. It’s nice to see that the guys who initiated, according to Durrant’s, the largest sports sponsorship in the world are not merely putting it on ROI-watch and then dusting their hands of it.

The minute ESPN in the US decides to fully back football, it’ll become a top sport in America. I have no doubt of that. With the World Cup coming up and corporations like Aon taking the sport, not just the business opportunities, very seriously I think we’re about to enter a new age of global domination for football.