More than half of Land Rover and Jaguar’s annual global sponsorship budget will be geared toward Land Rover’s sponsorship of this year’s Rugby World Cup, marking the brand’s biggest sport sponsorship outlay to date.
Both Land Rover and Jaguar are owned by Indian conglomerate Tata Group. Land Rover and Jaguar are thought to have an annual sponsorship budget running into several million dollars a year.
Land Rover’s sponsorship also extends into domestic rugby in England and France, equestrian, sailing and Richard Branson’s space tourism venture Virgin Galactic while Jaguar sponsorship spans across cycling’s Team Sky, the James Bond films and sponsorship of the Bloodhound Project’s race for the world’s land speed record.
Land Rover has been involved commercially with rugby for more than 20 years and is one of six worldwide partners of this year’s Rugby World Cup, which takes place in September in England and Wales.
Jaguar/Land Rover Global Brand Experience Dir Mark Cameron said, "It’s a big deal for us. The values of rugby are so in tune to Land Rover: the integrity of game and the spirit in which it is played."
PERFECT FIT: Cameron said rugby was a much better fit than football, which he says is too “mass-market” and not targeted enough to fit with Land Rover.
Land Rover’s activation around the Rugby World Cup will kick off in earnest in March, and will be partly themed around the children who walk out with the country’s captains at the start of each World Cup match.
Cameron: "The spotlight is on these mascots and tell the story of what the Rugby World Cup means in the local clubs and schools and tell the story of grassroots rugby."
Last year, Jaguar and Land Rover also teamed up to sponsor Prince Harry’s Invictus Games, the competition for wounded servicemen and women.
Cameron said that more dual sponsorship could be on the horizon, providing they are the right fit.
Cameron: “It was our first ever customer facing sponsorship when both brands came together. It is kind of a corporate platform. We might be doing more of it.”
Meanwhile, the October 2014 Virgin Galactic tragedy, which saw the spacecraft’s pilot killed after it broke up in mid-air during a test flight, has not in any way prompted Cameron to consider ditching its sponsorship of the ambitious mission.
Cameron: "We are not the sort of brand that runs for the hills as soon as there is some difficulty. The spirit of Land Rover is about being above and beyond, that it why we teamed up with them, because they are about being at the cutting edge of commercial space travel."
John Reynolds is a writer in London.
