Mladá Boleslav, April 30th, 2012 – The 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship will mark the 20th anniversary of ŠKODA as official main sponsor. This is a jubilee without precedent in sports world championship sponsoring history and has even been recognised by GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS as ‘the longest main sponsorship in the history of sports world championships’.

ŠKODA has been supporting and fostering ice hockey for twenty years. The ŠKODA logo in the central circle on the ice, perimeter advertising as well as vehicle displays next to the ice rink have all been visible symbols of ŠKODA as a main sponsor of IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships since 1993. ŠKODA’s brand name on helmets and jerseys of Czech, Slovak and other teams is also a part of the sponsoring effort, as are numerous audience activities off the ice

“Ice hockey fits perfectly with ŠKODA. Our involvement with this fascinating sport has held a key role in our sponsorship strategy ever since the beginning of our success story in the early 1990ies. To this day, it has been contributing markedly to strengthening ŠKODA’s image and popularity on the international markets”, explains ŠKODA CEO Winfried Vahland. ŠKODA intends to keep on growing worldwide in the years ahead and to raise its sales to about 1.5 million units per year by 2018. “In order to achieve our targets, we want to grow primarily on international level. This means it is only sensible for us to make a long-term commitment to sponsoring one of the world’s best-known annual sports events,” is how the ŠKODA CEO sets out the rationale behind the company’s involvement in ice hockey.

ŠKODA has already prolonged the contract with IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships until 2017.

Data and facts about the 20-year history of ŠKODA’s main sponsorship:

Longest main sponsorship in history of sports world championships
At 20 years of existence, ŠKODA’s official main sponsorship of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship is the longest extant main sponsorship in the history of sports world championships and has even been recognised as such by GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS.

Contract extended to 2017
Concluded ahead of the 1993 IIHF WM in Germany, ŠKODA’s main sponsorship contract was recently extended to 2017.

Ice hockey support at all levels
ŠKODA has been intensely supporting ice hockey since the beginning of its strategic involvement with the sport twenty years ago, cooperating closely with the IIHF on ice hockey world championships, for example. ŠKODA also supports national ice hockey federations and leagues.

WM’s annual advertising reach equals more than 195,000 TV commercials
Thanks to ingenious and continuously optimised placement of ŠKODA’s advertising media in the field of the TV camera’s present, ŠKODA was in the picture for an average of 66.01% of TV broadcast time during last year’s IIHF. At peaks, such as when both teams playing displayed ŠKODA branding on their helmets and jerseys, visibility rose to as much as 78,76%. Taking total broadcasting time into account, total media exposure for the ŠKODA brand was 1,628.5 hours, which is equivalent to 195.400 30-second TV commercials.

Excellent market coverage thanks to sponsoring
The main strategic rationale for ŠKODA is IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships’ excellent coverage of ŠKODA’s main markets in Europe. More than 58% of ŠKODA’s worldwide and almost 85% of ŠKODA’s European sales occur in countries to where the IIHF WM is broadcast. Also, 58% per cent of European sales alone come from the ten countries with the largest proportion of WM watchers including ŠKODA’s key markets Russia, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Innovative sponsorship activities
Over the course of its 20 years as a main sponsor, ŠKODA has provided ideas and know-how for innovative advertising and its optimisation again and again. Many of these ideas have become the standard in many ice hockey arenas. This includes ‘under-ice’ advertising, its execution as textile inlays, use of highly pure osmosis water for the ice surface and ringside placement of cars are some of the activities first realised in ŠKODA’s partnership with IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships.

ŠKODA WM fleet circles the globe 125 times without a single technical breakdown
At every IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, 40-50 ŠKODA cars carry officials and guests from one location to another. In total, ŠKODA’s WM fleet covered more than five million kilometres in the past 20 years, which is to say they circled the globe 125 times. In all these years, not a single trip was interrupted by a technical defect in a ŠKODA.

For more information:
Evžen Krauskopf, Communications
P +420 326 811 784
[email protected]