We've Got Your Back - Premiership Rugby League sponsorship '24/'25 season

For our third Premiership Rugby League sponsorship season, Funding Circle brought strategy & activation in-house for the first time. Our small-but-mighty team delivered the ‘We’ve got your back’ campaign, from strategy to production and media planning.

Our content series ‘The Team Behind The Shirt’ created authentic, engaging videos featuring 3 top Premiership players (Sam Underhill, George Ford and Ellis Genge) who run businesses, and the support that enabled them to succeed on and off the pitch.

We developed creative in-house using bold new brand assets that brought our new masterbrand proposition ‘Business finance that backs you’ to life. The campaign tapped into 6 Nations rugby interest and the upcoming Women’s Rugby World Cup to reach 36m rugby fans across print, social, digital, email and podcast. Culminating in a brand activation at Twickenham, where fans enjoyed 10k packets of bespoke popcorn from a business we backed with finance.

Overall the campaign increased sponsorship reach by 14%, and reduced cost-per-reach by 34% vs previous year. Key brand metrics improved with 21% growth in consideration, 4% growth in spontaneous awareness, and 10% growth in trust y-o-y.

We set out to prove sponsorship could be as efficient as ATL, and econometrics shows the campaign was ~30% more efficient than our best performing TV campaign. Taking the campaign in-house has increased efficiency, meaning we can invest further in sponsorship, and improved the way we work with our partners at Prem rugby, putting us in a great position to start our 4th season stronger than ever!