Unilever signs Sure Men as Sky Sports sponsor

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Unilever has signed a deal with BSkyB for its Sure Men range to become the exclusive sponsor of several Sky Sports News and Sky Sports programmes.

It follows news that cricketer Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff is to become the face for Sure Men Sport and that the brand will sponsor Sky Sports 1 programme, Cricket AM (MW last week).

Sure Men is also set to sponsor Good Morning Sports Fans, Morning Report and Football Tonight on Sky Sports News.

Powerade was the previous sponsor of Good Morning Sports Fans and Morning Report; while The Sun sponsored Football Tonight and Natwest sponsored Cricket AM.

The seven-figure deal will commence April 17 and was brokered with Sure Men media agency Mindshare Invention. It includes 15-second integrated branding in each opening and closing sequence and break bumpers on Sky Sports News.

The bumpers will also feature on Cricket AM, a weekly Saturday morning magazine-styled programme featuring a mix of cricket news and features.

In other activity, there will be online branding around Sky Sports News’ video content and reports on Skysports.com, Football-365.com, Teamtalk.com and Rivals.com.

Included in the deal is online sponsorship of Cricket AM and display ads on Skysports.com. According to Sky, the site attracts up to 10 million unique visitors per month.

The campaign has been produced in-house by Sky Creative. It will also be supported by promotional cricket ticket activity across the summer fronted by Flintoff.

Sky Media head of sponsorship David Shore says: “These shows continue to reach new viewers and clearly the demographics of these audiences means there’s a natural synergy with Sure.”

Sure Men has also become the official partner of the test match grounds for the 2009 Ashes.

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