BBVA, Spain’s second-largest banking group, has invested
a further €60 million ($92.9 million) in its sponsorship of the
Spanish professional football league, the Liga de Futbol
Profesional (LFP), a move which will see the bank become the title
sponsor of the Spanish top flight division for the first
time.

The deal is the latest in a long line of bank-football
sponsorship programmes. Last September, Spanish rival Santander
announced a five-year title sponsorship deal with the premier South
American club football tournament, the Libertadores Cup. The LFP
league deal will bring BBVA a similar level of exposure in Latin
America, where it is the most widely followed foreign sports
competition.

The agreement represents an upgrade of BBVA’s existing
sponsorship deal with the LFP, which began two years ago and saw
the second division of the LFP become known as Liga BBVA. That
moniker will now be applied to the first division for the next
three years, with the second tier becoming known as Liga Adelante,
or ‘go for it’, the phrase which has become BBVA’s company
motto.

While BBVA is beginning to target Asian markets for growth,
having doubled its stakes in two banking subsidiaries of Citic
Group, the Chinese conglomerate, last month (see RBI 593), Spanish-speaking markets
continue to underpin the bank’s business strategy.

BBVA believes the Liga BBVA will have an average of 4.3 million
TV viewers each match day in Spain alone, with 650,000 domestic
viewers following the Liga Adelante. That will provide the bank
with increased domestic exposure, vital during a year in which
Spanish bank loan growth is expected to fall back from the 20
percent plus levels seen in recent times.

But the deal will also play well on a global stage, not least in
Latin America, where BBVA plans to double its business by 2010.
Football sponsorship is increasingly playing a key role for
financial institutions in emerging markets; BBVA chairman and CEO
Francisco Gonzalez is endeavouring to position BBVA as “the soccer
bank”, but he is not the first to attempt to harness the sport’s
popularity.

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The financial terms of the agreement are comparable in size to
the £65.8 million ($129.46 million) contract renewal signed by
Barclays in 2006, which provided the UK group with a further three
years as title sponsor of the English Premier League. Absa, the
South African bank in which Barclays has a majority stake, has also
placed football high up the agenda, sponsoring the South African
Premier Soccer League as part of a five year sponsorship deal
(see RBI 587).