Daire Whelan/Business of Sport With Vodafone extending their sponsorship of Manchester United for another four years for £36 million (an increase of £6 million on their previous four-year deal with the club), global sponsorship is expected to hit an all time high of $26.2 billion in 2003 - up 7.4 per cent from $24.4 billion in 2002.

Although sponsorship now dominates our sporting landscape, from team jerseys to official beers, banks and brokers, it still only commands a mere 4 per cent of the total worldwide communications market. Of the $780 billion spent each year, advertising is the dominant player, attracting 48 per cent of the market share.

But, according, to Ardi Kolah, one of Europe's leading sponsorship consultants and author of Maximising the Value of Sponsorship, sponsorship will continue to grow at the expense of advertising. Expected future growth over the next few years for sponsorship will be in the region of 20 per cent compared to just 4 per cent for advertising. Furthermore, sport sponsorship is expected to rise to $31.5 billion by 2005.

Vodafone's sporting sponsorships are high profile in this country, from the Clare hurling and football teams to GAA summer camps, as well as the All Star awards and the international tour to Australia, and most recently, the broadcast sponsorship of Underdogs on TG4 - all to the tune of almost €3 million per annum.

Globally, they are most visibly associated with Manchester United, the Australian rugby team, the England cricket team and Ferrari. But, some might question the hundreds of millions spent on sports sponsorship, asking if their latest deal with United represents true value for money.

A spokeswoman for Vodafone Ireland points out that, as a large brand with a need to communicate to a large customer base, sport delivers the best reach on a euro for euro basis,

"Sponsorship is about the fusion of two brands - the transfer of the emotions about a sport or an event, to an opinion about the brand that is supporting it," he said.

We can question sport's over-reliance on sponsorship money and wonder if such money has corrupted values in sport today, but the reality is no sport can exist without financial support from sponsors.

Soccer, for example, consumes more than it gets from gate receipts and must look to outside sources for extra revenue.

TV is refusing to pay the large amounts of recent times and advertisers are realising that TV advertising is not as effective as it was so, in its place, sponsorship has become the major earner for clubs like Manchester United.

According to Kolah, the reason for the growth of sponsorship is its long-term nature as against the short-term medium of advertising.

Multi-year deals with sports teams and organisations mean the brand and association will have time to settle and adapt over time. In addition, he says, sponsors are seen as having a dialogue with their audience in comparison to advertising which is seen as being primarily a push medium.

But he cautions, it is still very much a David v Goliath battle for dominance of the global communications market between sponsorship and advertising. However, sponsorship is gaining the upper-hand.

dairesport@eircom.net

Remember Gaelic Football 2004 and how the GAA gave the development contract for the Sony game to an Australian company? Remember how they said it couldn't be done at home? And remember how they tried to play down the commercial significance of such a game being released on the Irish market? Well, yesterday, a new Rugby League computer game for the Australian market was released to a frenzy of record-breaking sales.

Rugby League is a poor third behind Aussie Rules and Rugby Union for popularity in Australia and when the notion of developing a specific computer game for the sport were first mooted three years ago, it was seen as a laughable suggestion.

However, Sebastian Giompaolo, managing director of Australian company Home Entertainment Suppliers, was determined to see if it would work and got New Zealand programmers Sidhe Interactive to work on the project.

"This arena is usually reserved for large overseas companies," Giompaolo explained. "We knew that Rugby League could make a great electronic game and I'm very proud that a small Australian company has been able to bring this project to fruition."

The company may have been relatively small but the size of the task in taking on and reproducing Rugby League's unique moves and tackles was enormous.

But after two years in development the game was finally produced and released to huge hype and interest, with Electronic Boutique, one of the largest international retailers of video entertainment games having pre-sold more copies of Rugby League in its Sydney store than for any other title sold by EB internationally.

Have Adare Productions hit the jackpot with Underdogs? Is the reality-football format to be the next Big Brother? Underdogs producer Evan Chamberlain thinks their show could become an international success and as preparations get underway for the finale tomorrow when the Underdogs team take on Tommy Lyons's Dublin at Parnell Park, interest has never been as high.

"I have never seen such interest in a programme," says Chamberlain. "Before we even started filming, people were asking us about it and now that we've reached the final game it has reached fever pitch."

Ronan Ó Coisdealbha, head of TG4 Sport, says they are delighted with the programme's success and he points to viewing figures of 200,000 for each episode between the first showing on Sunday evenings and the repeat on Monday nights while 260,000 watched the November 30th and December 1st episodes.

Costing around €150,000 to make, the series has not been cheap for TG4 or Adare but the format has now proven itself. Already they're looking at producing a hurling Underdogs for next year, and even at exploiting the international market. British, European and even American TV markets will all be looking at Underdogs and seeing if it can be adapted to their own chosen sport.

Ticket sales for Sunday's game are selling well and the programme makers are hoping for a 10,000 sell-out on the day, but tickets are still available from Ticketmaster.

GoFigure

63,000: The price of All-Ireland success for Kilkenny's hurlers after auctioning the cars they won to pay for their winter holiday.

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Man Utd 262p: The year 2003 ends on a high for MUFC investors after a 52 week low of 37p.