Europe’s best sponsorship campaigns celebrated at gala ESA Awards ceremony
The great and the good from Europe’s sponsorship industry gathered in Central London last night at the 15th annual ESA Awards ceremony, to recognise the best sponsorship campaigns of 2020/21.
More than 350 sponsorship and sports marketing leaders gathered at The Brewery, to celebrate prizes awarded across 25 categories at the 2022 ESA Awards ceremony.
The big winner on the night was Dreams whose Olympic sponsorship of Team GB and Paralympics GB at Tokyo 2022 was recognised by a panel of international experts as the prestigious ‘ESA Sponsorship of the Year’, while also winning ‘Sport Sponsorship €1M-5M’ and ‘Best Use of Branded Content.’
Demonstrating the diversity of nations in the room, Teneo Sports Advisory (Ireland) won Agency of the Year – Single Nation. Stark’s sponsorship of Ari Huusela, the first Nordic participant in the Vendee Globe, won ‘ESA Best of Europe’ for Finland with their campaign ‘Strong Tailwind.’ Norwegian brand OBOS was a double winner on the night, winning both ‘Music Sponsorship’ and ‘Arts and Culture Sponsorship’ through their partnership with The Norwegian Opera & Ballet (Something is happening at Ulven).
HEAD HERE FOR THE FULL LIST OF WINNERS
As a result of the pandemic there were large numbers of entrants for the category ‘Best Use of Virtual Experiences’ with ‘The O2 in Fortnite featuring easy life’ winning the best ‘Newly Created Event’ sponsored by vVenues.
Other pandemic-based campaign winners were ‘Best Ethical Response to COVID-19’ won by Musgrave and the GAA with ‘SuperValu, Centra & The GAA – Club Together’. ‘Best Use of PR’ was won by Energia’s ‘Get Ireland Growing 2021’ and ‘Best Newcomer’ was won by M&C Saatchi delivering ‘Dettol Up:Play On.’
Boutique creative agency WeAreFearless. triumphed in the coveted Agency of the Year – Pan-Europe category. Other notable winners were Toyota’s ‘I Am Team GB’ delivered by Mediacom, winning the ‘Event of The Year’ sponsored by Dataflow Events and Paralympics GB winning ‘Rights Holder of the Year’ sponsored by caytoo.
The ceremony was hosted by Sene Naoupu, an Ireland women’s rugby international who was listed by The Irish Times as one of the thirty most influential women in Ireland.
Winners were chosen by a rigorous, two-step judging process overseen by a 78-person judging panel of sport, media, arts, culture and entertainment leaders from ten nations. Head here for a video explaining more about how the ESA Awards is judged.
ESA Awards committee Chair, Jackie Fast, said:
“The European sponsorship Industry was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is a testament to all our entrants for the 2022 ESA Awards of how diverse and nimble we are as an industry. There were so many inspiring campaigns for our judges to oversee, making their job harder than in any other year to date!
It is our mission at ESA to unite, inspire and grow the sponsorship industry and thanks to all the agencies, brands and governing bodies who entered this year’s awards, I can say with hand on heart, that we have achieved this here tonight.”
ESA Chairman, Andy Westlake, said:
“On behalf of ESA I’d like to congratulate all the worthy winners of the 2022 Awards, you have all demonstrated spectacular creativity in sponsorship across Europe, in what has been a very tricky couple of years for our industry. With special mention to Dreams for taking home the esteemed ESA Sponsorship of the Year.
I’d also like to thank our ESA Awards sponsors and partners DataPOWA, Sponsorium, CSM Live, caytoo, Dataflow Events, vVenues and SPORTO Magazine for their support this evening and of course our judging panel who worked diligently over many hours to pick our winners.
Finally, without the support of our members, the ESA Awards wouldn’t be the event it has become. I’d like to thank you all for your continued support.”
–ENDS–
For media queries, please contact:
Henry Robson
Marketing Communications Manager – ESA
Email: marcomms@sponsorship.org
