The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has revealed that the Visit Rwanda shirt sponsorship of Arsenal Football Club has been worth £36m in brand value in its first year.
A three-year partnership reportedly worth £30m was agreed in May 2018 for Visit Rwanda to become the Premier League club’s shirt sleeve sponsor and official tourism partner.
SportsProMedia.com reports that the deal has given Rwanda a 5% tourism boost in visitors from the UK and has already recouped the initial £30m investment, according to analytics from Nielsen, Blinkfire Analytics and Hall and Partners.
RDB chief tourism officer Belise Kariza said: “Before the signing of the partnership, 71% of the millions of Arsenal fans globally did not think of Rwanda as a tourist destination, at the end of the first year of the partnership half of Arsenal fans would consider Rwanda as a destination to visit.
“In terms of overall value, the partnership so far, in year one, is worth £36m or over Rwf36bn. This number is based on TV viewership and social media. We can definitely say it has paid off.
“I think really on the visibility it is paying off. It is also paying off in terms of people visiting from the UK. In 2018 we had a five per cent increase in visitors from the UK market only.”
Arsenal-Visit Rwanda sponsorship deal in numbers
As reported by SportsProMedia.com:
- 3: years for the deal
- £36m: brand value in year one
- 1.7m: tourists visited Rwanda in 2018 because of brand exposure
- 4.3m: interactions over social media and other activations for content created
- 100%: increase in subscribers for Visit Rwanda’s YouTube channel
- 72%: boost in Twitter followers
- 577%: boost in Instagram followers
- 5%: increase in UK tourists in 2018
Image: arsenal.com