New CEO of Jumbo, no more sponsorship

[redir]

Kind of surprised about this one. New CEO must be a bean counter or something. I guess it could also be an upward spiral of costs too. With top notch riders you need top notch salaries. But still...

And it's more than just cycling.

Jumbo confirmed to cease sponsorship at end of 2024, if not earlier

Jumbo, the co-title sponsor of the Jumbo-Visma teams, is set to pull out of sports sponsorship by the end of 2024 at the latest, the Dutch supermarket chain’s new CEO, Ton van Veen, has said.

Jumbo is also due to cease backing the Jumbo-Visma skating team, Van Veen told the Dutch newspaper AD, as well as its sponsorship of Formula 1 racer Max Verstappen.

The company’s contract for the cycling teams is due to expire at the end of 2024 and will be respected, Van Veen said. But he added that if another sponsor wanted to take over sooner, Jumbo would be happy to bow out.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jum...if-not-earlier

[rice rocket]

I agree with him.

Sports sponsorship is useless, especially for a very local brand.

[charliedid]

Similarly Lidl Grocery will now partner with TREK as Segefredo Coffee departs.

[72gmc]

The prior CEO was into sports, so I’m not surprised that the commitment left with him. I’m a bit surprised that they’re also dropping the speed skating sponsorship, because that seems to be a very Dutch thing.

[Mark McM]

Corporations sponsor sports teams to get name recognition. It is a general rule of thumb that the name recognition from sports sponsorship has its biggest impact in the first few years of the sponsorship, with waning additional benefit in subsequent years. So it is not unusual for corporate sponsorships to last only a few years, before tapering off or ending.

[2000m2]

I've wondered for a long time why the money losing United States Postal Service sponsored a cycling team that mostly raced in Europe.

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by 2000m2

I've wondered for a long time why the money losing United States Postal Service sponsored a cycling team that mostly raced in Europe.

The USPS was running a surplus during the years it sponsored cycling.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...us-Deficit.png

[rice rocket]

Originally Posted by charliedid

Similarly Lidl Grocery will now partner with TREK as Segefredo Coffee departs.

Lidl is at least international, and growing.

Jumbo is hyperlocal. They serve a footprint smaller than the state of Pennsylvania.

[Dude]

Also USPS was looking to compete internationally with fedex/ups/dhl so they sponsored an euro sports team.

AND they got $5mil of their sponsorship dollars back after he settled with them.

[e-RICHIE]

Originally Posted by Dude

Also USPS was looking to compete internationally with fedex/ups/dhl so they sponsored an euro sports team.

AND they got $5mil of their sponsorship dollars back after he settled with them.

Right.

Their then-new Global Priority project needed an international presence, hence the cycling sponsorship. They wanted to compete with DHL and its ilk.

[2000m2]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

The USPS was running a surplus during the years it sponsored cycling.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...us-Deficit.png

Originally Posted by Dude

Also USPS was looking to compete internationally with fedex/ups/dhl so they sponsored an euro sports team.

AND they got $5mil of their sponsorship dollars back after he settled with them.

Originally Posted by e-RICHIE

Right.

Their then-new Global Priority project needed an international presence, hence the cycling sponsorship. They wanted to compete with DHL and its ilk.

Thanks for clearing that all up for me. Makes more sense now.

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by tomato coupe

The USPS was running a surplus during the years it sponsored cycling.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...us-Deficit.png

Shouldn't matter whether or not they were running an aggregate surplus or deficit, only whether or not the sponsorship increased their profitability at the margin.

Not specific to the cycling sponsorship, but GAO looked at the 1992 Olympic sponsorship and concluded that USPS thought it was profitable, but GAO was skeptical of USPS's accounting. The cycling sponsorship probably followed a similar pattern.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/ggd-92-8r.pdf

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by prototoast

Shouldn't matter whether or not they were running an aggregate surplus or deficit, only whether or not the sponsorship increased their profitability at the margin.

I think the mention of the surplus during the US Postal team years was in direct response to this part of the question:

I've wondered for a long time why the money losing United States Postal Service sponsored a cycling team that mostly raced in Europe.

As to whether or not the sponsorship was worthwile can be harder to judge, due to many intangible knock-on effects.

[tomato coupe]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

I think the mention of the surplus during the US Postal team years was in direct response to this part of the question:

Yep.

[redir]

I imagine that the money that a company uses to sponsor a team comes out of their advertising budget. Put it to you this way, I never heard of Jumbo before so it obviously worked. Of course there isn't one here in Virginia but still. I can imagine too that any company only has so much money for advertising too. But the last few years of Jumbo in cycling was a kind of 'Where's the Beef' or 'how many licks' level of success in advertising.