Visit Rwanda: Arsenal agrees £10M-a-year sleeve deal from Rwanda
The new four-year deal, which will run until 2025, is said to be worth up to £10million a year, according to football.london
The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has renewed their ‘Visit Rwanda’ sleeve sponsorship deal with Arsenal football club after realizing the return on investment has more than doubled since the launch of the campaign.
RDB secured a three-year sponsorship contract worth more than £30 million with Arsenal to have the ‘Visit Rwanda’ badge featured on their jersey sleeve, as part of its aim to enhance tourism through partnerships with European football clubs.
However, because to the Covid-19 outbreak, which hampered tourism and football activities, the campaign, which generated up to £77 million in media value from an original £36 million in less than three years, had little influence on the East African nation’s tourism last year.
Prior to the epidemic, the RDB had great aspirations of increasing the country’s tourism revenue. According to their survey, the possibility of tourists visiting Rwanda as a result of the country’s collaboration with Arsenal grew from 35% in 2019 to 41% in 2020. However, the COVID-19 epidemic disrupted international travel on a global scale, causing Rwanda’s tourism revenues to plummet by 76% from $498 million in 2019 to $121 million in 2020.
According to official tourism data, the East African country welcomed 493,734 international visitors in 2020, the majority of them came from Africa, with barely 1,200 from the United Kingdom and 924 from France.
According to the RDB, 851 social media “Visit Rwanda” posts were shared online, producing 110 million impressions, reaching 78.5 million accounts, and attracting 10.5 million engagements.
As several nations’ embargoes have been lifted and international travel has resumed, things are likely to improve for Rwanda’s tourism. Furthermore, according to Ariella Kageruka, Ag. Chief Tourism Officer at RDB, the entrance of Argentinian footballer and world-class star Lionel Messi at PSG is expected to bolster the established campaign and create a new channel for enabling new partnerships.
“When a new partner or signee is brought on board as a result of our partnerships, our campaigns gain more attention. It implies we’ll be able to reach a larger audience with a wider range of demographics “she stated
“Important news has an immediate influence on our messaging; for example, once Messi was signed by PSG, we saw an increase in followers a few hours later. So that’s the kind of leverage we’re still seeing “she continued.
Paris Saint-Germain F.C. is a Visit Rwanda Partner, with the ‘Visit Rwanda’ badge appearing on the back of PSG training uniforms, pre-game warm-up kits, and the sleeves of women’s club shirts.
The club garnered over four million Instagram followers after announcing Messi’s two-year contract (38.7 million to 42.7 million).
