Team work

The GAA's commercial department watched Wednesday's Champions' League final with only one eye on the game. The reason for its interest was professional.

With a number of other sports governing bodies, it regards the business model of the Champions League to be the best around and one it is trying to replicate.

The GAA is reviewing its commercial structure. The current deals with Guinness and Bank of Ireland are worth about €1.5 million and €2 million annually.

From next year, the GAA is to copy the Champions League way of doing things. Similarly, ERC, the organiser of the Heineken Cup, has gone on the record as a fan of UEFA's cash cow.

There is no doubting the partner model works for European soccer. The last time UEFA put out a tender for its sponsorship, for the three years to 2009, it was greeted with a rush of enthusiasm from the corporate world. It was able to take its pick of the blue-chips desperate to be linked with soccer at the top level. The tournament has six top-line sponsors, including Ford, Mastercard, Heineken, Sony and Vodafone. Each pays about £20 million (€29.6 million) a year.

This money is distributed to the clubs and is the engine of the European football economy.

Each partner shares equal billing across the 26 nights of televised Champions League coverage, spread over the 13 weeks of the tournament. Their logos appear at the beginning and end of every commercial break, on every channel carrying the games right across Europe.

The Champions League has a number of benefits to sponsors. It offers regular exposure, unlike the major quadrennial football events such as World Cups and European Championships. UEFA has also kept a lid on the number of brands clustered around the tournament. This enhances the value of each individual package.

Compare the clean environment on Champions League night with a Formula One race. In F1 every car and every driver is plastered with brands, making it harder for a company's voice to be heard by its intended audience.

According to analysts, the price of a Champions League slot is similar to buying the title of an F1 team "that is not Ferrari". Vodafone pays £38 million a year for that privilege.

These are huge sums, but viewed through the lens of global sport, the Champions League can come out looking decent value for money.

Fifa has reduced the number of top-tier World Cup sponsors from 15 to six for 2007 to 2014. The enlarged product categories cost between £160 million and £180 million, dwarfing the average $60 million paid by Fifa's sponsors for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Sony paid £162 million for the exclusive rights to a wide-ranging digital lifestyle category that includes home computers, plasma-screen televisions, mobile phones and computer games. In April, LloydsTSB signed up as London 2012's first top-line partner for £80 million.

The difference between the Champions League deals and these other big ticket items is that they are broadcast sponsorships. As a result, less money needs to be spent by the sponsor to leverage their involvement.

Compare this to the Olympics, where sponsors receive very little in the way of support - no signage at the grounds, no TV exposure. This leaves the sponsor expected to spend heavily on advertising, adding to the total bill.

Unlike the Heineken Cup or the Guinness All-Ireland hurling finals, no sponsor has rights to the title of the event. This makes rotating sponsors easier. This will be a big challenge whenever Heineken chooses to walk away from rugby. Heineken pays €5 million a year for the title of the event until 2009 - making it, at 14 years, one of the longest relationships in sport.

During the long renegotiation ahead of the last contract renewal, ERC officials said they would follow "the Champions League model" were Heineken to pull out. So as AC Milan celebrated victory in Athens on Wednesday night, for many in the sports business the work is just beginning.