MUNICH: Bundesliga club RB Leipzig, also known as the Leipzig Bulls, have announced a 3-year contract renewal with the premium German automobile brand Porsche, which will continue as the club’s official mobility partner.
Porsche’s parent company and a brand on its own merit, the Volkswagen Group stands to hold the advertising rights for the Bulls that will serve as a dual benefit for the car maker. At the club’s home ground, the Red Bull Arena, Volkswagen and Porsche’s branding can be seen on LED boards.
Besides this, Porsche’s fleet of cars will be utilized by players and officials of the clubs for travelling for all matches. The partnership that had its origins in 2014, is now seen as a crucial commitment by the company to keep as its workforce has increased over the years to 4,100 employees in the city of Leipzig.
Porsche’s CSR angle also extends to their motto of “Turbo for talents”. It will be supporting Leipzig’s official football school and promoting the game to underprivileged children. The brand will also continue to sponsor the “Leipzig Quarterfinals”, an annual junior tournament, in which numerous young people from the entire region have already participated.
Oliver Mintzlaff, managing director of RB Leipzig, commented on the development:
“We are very happy that with Volkswagen and Porsche, we will continue to have two absolute premium partners by our side. Porsche and Volkswagen have joined us in the first Bundesliga and we want to continue and develop our successful and strategically important cooperation there.
“We have seen in recent years how fertile and fitting this partnership is for us, and are looking forward to the future, in which, of course, we want to develop other great concepts that contribute to our youth promotion, our philosophy, our values and to Leipzig fit,” he said.
“We started our engagement at RB Leipzig 2014 for second division times and looked forward to the promotion in 2016, as well as the strong sporting achievements in the Bundesliga with the runner-up in 2017 and two European Cup qualifiers. The partnership is therefore a success story – but not only sporty: For us, sponsoring is an important pillar in the Bundesliga and it also strengthens the position of the Volkswagen brand in the entire region,“ Thomas Zahn, head of Sales & Marketing Germany of the Volkswagen Group said.
“Four years of successful cooperation, more than 3,400 children at the ‘Leipziger Viertelfinale’, countless unforgettable moments with football-loving children – I am sure that we have taken a good path with our partnership and in the years to come our commitment to young footballers in the Leipzig region can continue to expand,” Gerd Rupp, member of Porsche Leipzig’s board of directors concluded.
Volkswagen was named to sponsor the German national football team and all UEFA competitions in a similar capacity in 2017.
