Europay International - the payment system that includes the Eurocard-MasterCard credit cards, Maestro debit card, eurocheque, and Cirrus international debit card network brands - declined to detail the amount it agreed to pay the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to become an official sponsor, but said it was substantial.
"It's millions of dollars," Marc Dumortier, head of brand marketing and sponsorship for Europay, said. "It's not peanut money."
He declined to provide further financial details.
The decision to be a sponsor of the European Football Championship in 2000 followed Europay's successful sponsorship of the 1998 World Cup.
"If you take as a benchmark World Cup '98, for every dollar we put in the European members threw in another $2," Dumortier said. "For us that's a fair benchmark to say yes" to sponsoring Euro 2000.
In addition to marketing efforts by Eurocard-MasterCard as a 1998 World Cup sponsor, Dumortier said that 175 banks in 16 European countries undertook further programmes. The banks placed more than 70 million inserts in customer card statements and issued 122,000 affinity World Cup Pele cards, he said.
"Our goal (for Euro 2000) is to have more than 90 million statement inserts. We want to have more affinity cards issued," Dumortier said.
Although it is difficult to determine how many of the 122,000 World Cup affinity cards issued would have been issued without the sponsorship promotion, Dumortier said Europay is confident that the deal was effective.
Euro 2000 will be jointly hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands, the first time that the European Football Championship will be hosted by two countries. The event will kick off in Brussels on June 10, 2000, concluding in Rotterdam on July 2, 2000.
The final draw to decide which groups of countries will compete against each other will be held in Brussels on December 12, 1999.
Euro 2000, to be played in eight cities throughout Belgium and the Netherlands, is to be the largest European football championship ever, with 16 finalists playing in 31 matches.
Reuters
