C4 in new £4m StepStone deal

StepStone, the online recruitment website, has renewed its &£4m sponsorship of Channel 4’s sports programming for a second year.

StepStone’s media buying agency, Booth Lockett Makin, negotiated the deal.

StepStone was appointed as the sponsor for C4’s sports programming in May last year (MW March 16, 2000), following Volkswagen’s (VW) decision to pull out of the sponsorship deal.

VW held the sponsorship for two years, but did not renew its contract because it felt the sponsorship had served its purpose (MW February 10, 2000).

The StepStone brand will continue to feature on all of C4’s sports programmes, including the channel’s racing and cricket coverage. C4 owns the live broadcast rights to most of England’s domestic test matches, which it snatched from the BBC in 1999 in a &£103m four-year deal.

StepStone, formerly Jobshop, which launched in the UK in November 1999, offers online recruitment services in the Nordic countries, the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and Italy.

The Norwegian-owned online recruitment company, which is facing intense competition from the likes of Totaljobs.com and Monster, is believed to have spent &£75m on pan-European advertising last year.