Billabong has topped the list of Australia’s most familiar sports sponsors, out-performing a whole host of mainstream brands, according to the latest report from research consultancy Sweeney Sports. Despite declining slightly from 32% sponsorship awareness to 30% from the previous survey, Billabong ranked equal 1^st place with Kellog’s Nutri Grain breakfast cereal.

Rip Curl took out 8^th place with 20% brand awareness, coming in behind powerhouses Nike, Ford and Adidas, whilst Quiksilver placed equal 14^th alongside VB (Australia’s most popular beer), Fosters and Kia.

Results 1^st published on Mumbrella, report the survey involved 1000 telephone interviews carried out late blast year and early this year. The previous survey covered 2006-2007.

Results from the Sweeney Sports survey:

1 Billabong - 30% awareness;

1 Nutri-Grain - 30% +4

3 Nike - 28% -5

4 Ford - 26% -1

4 Uncle Tobys - 26% -1

6 Speedo - 22% +8

7 Adidas - 20% -3

8 Rip Curl - 19% +1

9 Holden/GMH - 18% -1

10 Toyota - 17% +2

10 Emirates - 17% 0

12 Telstra/ Telstra/Big Pond - 16% -8

12 Kellogg - 16% +1

14 VB (Victoria Bitter)  - 13% -2

14 Foster’s - 13% -6 ?14 Kia - 13% -2

14 Quiksilver- 13% 0

18 KFC - 12% +10

18 3/three.com - 12%

20 Gatorade - 7% 0

The Revolution Will Be Webcast

This accomplishment is all the more impressive considering sports media coverage in Australia is heavily dominated by Cricket, Australian Rules, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Soccor (the real football!), all of whom are broadcast live on prime time television. This should add fuel to the fire that the marketing dollars spent online producing the webcasts, have been justified.

Statistics talk. Bullshit walks.

The footy and cricket reap lucrative TV broadcast deals leveraged from official figures measuring viewing audiences. The big question in my books, when will we seen an official body tracking, monitoring and reporting online audience figures for the ASP World Tour Webcast?

This post is tagged ASP, billabong, Quiksilver, rip curl, Webcast