Poor Citi. Not even sport can provide the beleaguered bank with an escape route from its woes. Just as RBS is coming under attack in the UK for spending £200 million on sponsorship contracts with top sportsmen such as Sachin Tendulkar, Jack Nicklaus and Sir Jackie Stewart weeks before it got a government bailout, Citi is facing flak for a deal with the New York Mets after receiving $45 billion of taxpayers’ money. US lawmakers have criticized Citi for continuing with a $400 million sponsorship deal for the Mets’ baseball stadium even as the bank’s future continues to be in doubt. Citi and the Mets deny that Citi Field stadium will be funded by government money, although some wags reckon the stadium should be called Fed Field.
Perhaps the detractors are missing the point. Maybe the best way for Citi to start stimulating its businesses is to use its connection with the Mets and its star players, such as Jose Reyes, to attract customers.
That’s exactly what ING did after it became involved with Renault, the Formula One team, though in its case the star attraction was the car rather than the drivers. ING would take the racing car through the shopping centres of central and eastern Europe. Hundreds of people would turn up to have their photo taken with the model. Later, having gathered personal details, the bank’s salespeople would show up at the fans’ homes to give them their photo. Then they would begin their sales pitch. As a selling tactic it worked wonders. The bank claims that between 6% and 7% of the people it visited ended up buying financial products – much higher than through other means.
Spanish bank Banesto is also reaping rewards from its sporting connections. Since world number one tennis player Rafael Nadal joined its books in 2007 it has seen a huge increase in customers. In 2008, the bank gained 450,550 new customers (the distribution of 300,000 laptops and 75,000 flat-screen TVs probably helped too); the previous year new customer growth had been less than 100,000.
