Sport Industry Group

05 Mar 2010

Mark Gunter, group retail director at Morrisons, talks exclusively to Sportindustry.biz to discuss the reasons behind the decision to back the England 2018 World Cup bid.

How do Morrisons plan to leverage the deal and what in-store promotions are you planning?

At the moment we haven’t got anything cast in stone but what I can tell you is that we will look to get at least two million customers to sign up and support the bid from 8th March, which will help demonstrate the strength of public enthusiasm for England to host the tournament – but the mechanism for this has yet to be decided.

Could you outline the rights of the contract?

Well it certainly gives us the ability to use the logo and all the trademarks so Morrisons will look to advertise this. I would hope to see the logos and trademarks in Morrisons stores across the UK.

This is Morrisons first foray into sport, why football and why now?

It’s probably not so much about the football but more about the bid and bringing the tournament to England. We are not sponsoring the team therefore its more, on our part, seeing what we can do on a local level to bring that bid back to England.

If the bid is successful will you be looking to become an official partner of the World Cup?

I don’t know we need to talk that through nearer the time. I think that we are interested in helping our customers show how they support the bid, it gives them an opportunity to sign up to support the bid, which is difficult for many organisations to deliver that which is why we thought we would join in.

When you think that you’ve got our staff and 10 million customers knowing that they can play a part in bringing the World Cup to England – it’s really exciting – especially because we should do well in South Africa.

Will you be looking at teaming up with other official partners to offer affiliate deals?

We’ll speak to some of the other partners and coordinate some activity to make sure we generate interest across the UK, but it won’t be a deal as such it will be more cooperation. We have already had a word with BT about doing that.

Do you think we have a good chance of winning the bid and who do you think is the main competitor?

I think we have got an excellent chance of winning the bid. I think that Spain and Portugal are probably the biggest rivals, but with that being a joint bid it might be a bit more complicated so it puts us in pole position.

Click here to Back the Bid with Morrisons.