"Sony Mobile will be the global partner with Orange for the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament"

Mobile operator Orange is sponsoring this summer’s UEFA EURO 2012™ tournament but it’s not a one-off as its support of African football testifies to. Monty Munford kicks off a look at the operator’s African love affair.

Sony Mobile will be the global partner with Orange for the UEFA Euro 2012 tournament.

Earlier this week mobile operator Orange announced that Sony Mobile wil be its global handset partner for the upcoming UEFA EURO 2012™ tournament in the Ukraine and Poland.

While the event has been overshadowed to a certain extent by the London Olympics such sporting spectacles are a huge opportunity for handset makers and operators to build communities and use the world’s bizarre fascination with football to build up their brands.

In this case the two companies will run online competitions, in-store promotions and live events giving football fans ‘hundreds of opportunities’ to win tickets to the games, Xperia smartphones and ‘other great gifts’.

While very similar things have been said about every World Cup for the past 12 years, there’s no doubt that mobile campaigns do very well during football tournaments of this kind. Expect EURO 2012™ to do the same for Orange and Sony Mobile, especially its Facebook competition.

What is possibly more interesting, however, is Orange’s commitment to world football, not least its on-going support of African football and the subsequent growth of the company’s business in that continent.

Earlier this year the company sponsored the Orange Africa Cup of Nations that took place in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, a competition that brings together the leading African footballing countries.

The sponsorship augments awareness of the Orange Football Fan Club, a mobile platform and community space that the company has launched in 10 countries that include Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Madagascar and Uganda.

The Fan Club provides information on all the world’s national football leagues as well as the Cup of Nations with games and animations that enable subscribers to share content and that ‘footballing passion’.

According to Orange, they now have more than 150,000 African customers using the service generating millions of text messages, and no doubt, decent revenues to the company. Value-added services such as Credit Goal give airtime rewards if a customer’s team scores a goal or that customer has predicted their team’s victory. Not so good if you support Manchester City.

All of which underscores not only the company’s commitment to African football, but the continent itself. Orange now has operations and mobile licences in more than 20 countries with EMEA territories accounting for 75 million customers. Its Orange Money service in Africa now has three million users and more than 12% of where it operates, more than 12% of the company’s total customer base has opened an account.

Orange are not alone in realising that Africa’s fascination with football means access to huge engaged markets. At the end of Q1 2011 the Perform Group bought goal.com, a football community site that at the time had nearly 20 million registed users.

The company has since focused on Africa with operations in the Big Five countries of Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South African and Egypt. Goal.com has 20 separate editions in 15 countries and recently launched its first African localised service in Nigeria partnering with Heineken and RIM to do so.

“We have always been aware of audiences in this market and the acquistion of Goal.com was important in this strategy. We are demonstrating that in Africa football initiatives attract brands and deliver customers,” said Daryn Wober, MD Global Business Development for Perform Group.

Major brands such as Orange and Perform Group are proving that they can score in Africa, it’s just such a shame that England’s underachieving footballers are unlikely to do the same at the aforementioned UEFA EURO 2012™.