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Audi: Sky Sports Official
Innovation Partner

Audi fuels Sky Sports’ most innovative
Cricket format, The Hundred

Audi continues to shape premium mobility through progressive technology and design. Partnering with Sky Sports as its Official Innovation Partner is a natural fit for the Audi brand as both brands are progressive in their fields. The results we have seen so far are fantastic, and we are excited to see how the partnership continues to evolve in 2023.”

Tony Moore, Head of Marketing, Audi UK

Audi: Sky Sports Official Innovation Partner

Audi fuels Sky Sports’ most innovative Cricket format, The Hundred

“Vorsprung durch Technik” is more than a campaign line for Audi; the brand lives progress in all they do. Similarly, Sky Sports’ heritage in innovation stretches 30 years, continually raising the bar for Sports coverage, underpinned by the ethos of ‘believe in better’.

This fuelled the idea for the award-winning partnership – Audi: the first ever Official Innovation Partner of Sky Sports. Together, we developed the “Power Meter” – an innovation that enhanced live coverage of The Hundred alongside an eco-system of brand stories that shifted perceptions for Audi across: EV Leadership, Innovation Leadership, Consideration and Desirability.

views across the cricket and football Masterclass content

more participants viewing vs. Lumen's norms

The Challenge

Audi’s number one priority is to strengthen its position as a leader in Electric Vehicles (EV) and technology. However, the automotive sector is fiercely crowded, and competition is increasing from both traditional and emerging players with the entire EV sector making claims around Innovation and Technology. With these challenges in mind, Audi wanted to identify opportunities to:

1) Increase perceptions of the brand as ‘a leader in electric vehicles’ and ‘a manufacturer of cars with innovative technology’

2) Increase the proportion of drivers who would consider Audi for their next EV

The Solution

Sky Sports has been a market leader in innovation for over 30 years, with a wide breadth of coverage and a fierce passion for enhancing the viewing experience of fans. Our audience insight revealed that Audi drivers were 20% more likely to watch Sky Sports than the average UK adult so we knew the alchemy was right to bring together these two progressive brands in an industry first: Audi became Sky Sports’ Official Innovation Partner.

Launched in 2022, the award-winning partnership brought the best of both brands’ values to life, and gave Audi the opportunity to co-create innovations and provided the platform to tell a relevant brand story. We didn’t want Audi to just advertise around the innovations or badge-up existing properties; it needed to be authentic and credible.

The “Power Meter” Plan

We launched with our first ever co-branded technical innovation the “Power Meter” across our Men’s and Women’s coverage of Cricket’s most innovative format – The Hundred. The “Power Meter” was a tech innovation using state of the art cameras, situated across a Cricket field that generated algorithms to instantly measure speed and accuracy of a ball leaving a cricket bat (out of a score of 100).

This score provided fans of Cricket real insight and data on the accuracy and power of a ball strike in the fastest and most pioneering version of Cricket. The bigger the score, the more likely it would register as Six runs scored. The “Power Meter” not only enhanced the enjoyment of Sky Sports’ live coverage, feeding fandom in a relevant, attention-grabbing way; it also provided Audi with a springboard for greater storytelling, which we could amplify via a bespoke multimedia plan across TV, On Demand, Digital and Social.

In collaboration with Audi, PHD and BBH, we created multiple storytelling assets fused with a comprehensive media plan to drive further awareness and excitement for the innovation partnership including:

An always on co-branded 20” hero creative featuring the best of Sky and Audi launched across our Linear and VOD platforms prior to The Hundred.
A bespoke Sky Sports-produced Behind The Scenes explainer video, allowed fans to dig a little deeper into Audi’s EV leadership story and go behind the curtain of the partnership.
Targeted digital and social masterclasses, with seamless Audi brand integration across cricket and football, featured A-list sporting talent including Eoin Morgan and Chris Jordan from the world of Cricket, and Mason Mount alongside winning Lioness Beth Mead, to deepen engagement and extend reach.

And, the partnership was further enhanced by providing Audi access to key matches across The Hundred, to support their retail and customer relationships.

The Results

The involvement of an Electric Audi, alongside top talent from football and cricket, connected Audi with Sky Sports’ huge audience and increased perceptions of Audi as an innovative brand. And, showcasing the EV itself throughout the Masterclasses told Audi’s story in a new way to a new audience, increasing Audi’s perception as an EV leader. So far, the results have surpassed expectations, ensuring that we’ll continue developing new, ground-breaking technology with Audi across yet more of Sky’s Sports coverage in 2023.

The partnership significantly increased the understanding that Audi has innovative technology; is leading in electric vehicles, and is a brand that people are willing to pay more for, for those exposed.

Amongst those exposed, Sky Media’s brand evaluation showed an increase in consideration for the Audi brand and an increase in desirability during the pre- and mid-wave surveys.

The partnership campaign had a significant impact on perceptions of Audi as “prestigious”; making it the number one EV choice amongst those exposed.

The creative and content have been highly successful at positioning Audi as “innovative”, “forward-thinking”, “modern”, “progressive” and “up to date”.

The “Power Meter” achieved a final attention score that outperformed most desktop video display formats, despite a more restricted time to view.

The Masterclasses delivered against brief with over 4.7 million views across the cricket and football content.

The partnership won Best Use of Tech Innovation at the UK Sponsorship Awards and was highly commended for its Research, Measurement & Evaluation, where our ground-breaking eye tracking technology saw 1.3x more participants viewing vs Lumen’s norms (measuring the attention funnel of digital integration).

Client Testimonial

“Audi continues to shape premium mobility through progressive technology and design. Partnering with Sky Sports as its Official Innovation Partner is a natural fit for the Audi brand as both brands are progressive in their fields. The results we have seen so far are fantastic, and we are excited to see how the partnership continues to evolve in 2023.”

Tony Moore, Head of Marketing, Audi UK

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