University Golf Sponsoring: Social Media Reach

The critical question in sponsoring negotiations is what the sponsor gets in return. "Well, gratefulness!" is usually not considered the best answer. What sponsors mainly want to see are estimates regarding their marketing reach, i.e. the total number of people seeing the sponsor's logo in the context of the sponsored event. Most sponsors focus exclusively on contacts made through traditional media, such as newspapers, magazines, TV . Students Matchplay is a university sport event and as such an ideal platform for all companies that want to address us, i.e. young golfers, university students and alumni in particular. So why not try to measure the marketing reach through our no.1 media, the internet, the "shooting star in media consumption" as Deutsche Bank Research puts it? 

We did a little research. Since social media is the buzzword in the moment, since word-of-mouth marketing  has the biggest impact with respect to credibility, and since Facebook happens to be the No.1-website for us university students, we calculated the "Facebook Reach" of our English Arden Qualifier. Here are the results: All participants at the English tournament have a total of more than 37.000 Facebook friends. The most socially connected golfer among them is the captain of the University of Manchester with nearly 900 friends. The most connected team are the golfers from the University of Durham with some 2.600 friends. What does that mean? Well, with all photos marked and all wall posts made Facebook-members in or around Durham and Manchester should be well-informed about the Students Matchplay via their friends' newsfeed or direct profile views. And have most likely also seen the involvement of our sponsors.  In technical terms: these 70 or so golfers can become your brand ambassadors, dear sponsor!


Sponsors might be interested to know, how well connected we are within the world gold community. To give you an idea, these 37.000 Facebook-friends can play golf fairly well. 39 of them finished among the Top 60 of the 2009 British Amateurs. They make up 75% of the participants of the BUCS Men’s South East Regional Qualifier 2009. It’s the same with the Students Matchplay Finals in Germany. The total Facebook-reach of all golfers and staff is a bit over 41.000. Although the tournament is bigger than the one in England (~100 compared to ~70 golfers), non-English students are obviously less connected on Facebook. That doesn’t come as a surprise. Facebook entered the German and European market only as late as spring 2008. The golf expertise among this group is also quite high. You will find 80% of all German Premier League Golfers and the whole German National Golf Team here. 

It’s interesting to compare that with the official German University Golf Championships. Their 59 participants have a Facebook-reach of less than 10.000.