Amazon’s title Ironman deal puts sports brands on alert

American e-commerce giant Amazon has taken its first plunge into sports title sponsorship as the new headline partner of the Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.

The race, which takes place October 13, has been named the ‘Ironman World Championship brought to you by Amazon’.

The e-commerce brand also gets rights as the race’s ‘Official Sports Nutrition Retailer’, giving participants access to a selection of nutrition products, including items from Ironman’s Official Nutrition Partners CLIF Bar and Gatorade.

While it is unclear why Amazon has chosen the Wanda Sports Holdings-owned Ironman event to enter the sports sponsorship market, other sports properties will be looking on with keen interest.

Amazon’s market value climbed to over $1tn last week, the second-highest in the world after tech giant Apple.

Amazon currently uses sports sponsorship to promote Amazon Web Services, its highly-profitable cloud computing business, which is a major sponsor of NFL and Formula One. Beyond that, the brand’s sponsorship activity has been sketchy to say the least.

Last year, Amazon’s mobile department secured a one-year agreement to sponsor North American esports team NRG Esports.

In 2014, Amazon bought multiple 30-second spot ads during the 2014 NCAA tournament in which Amazon was named as an Official NCAA Partner.

For more on retail sector sponsorships see Sport Sponsorship Insider’s Data Report, published last week.