CFI's Tennis Sponsorship Shows a Localized Drift in Sports Deals

The broker has a stronghold in the Middle East.

Sports sponsorships are a popular marketing channel for financial service providers, including FX and CFDs brokers. These sponsorship deals come in all shapes and sizes: some prefer to back significant sports clubs, whereas others go local by inking deals with regional names.

CFI Financial Group, an FX and CFDs broker with a significant presence in the Middle East, has partnered with the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, which is scheduled to take place in Abu Dhabi from 16 December to 18 December.

The Mubadala World Tennis Championship is an exhibition tournament for men's and women's singles. Abu Dhabi has been hosting the game since 2009. Several top players participated in the tournament. This year's participants include Stefanos Tsitsipas, Cameron Norrie, Andrey Rublev, Frances Tiafoe, Ons Jabeur and Emma Raducanu. Last year's Mubadala champion, Casper Ruud, and the current ATP leader, Carlos Alcaraz, will also participate.

"The event promotes the importance of tennis across the region and is inspiring, aspiring generations of tennis players across the GCC," CFI's CEO, Nidal Abdelhadi, told Finance Magnates.

"At CFI, we aim to empower our client base with cutting-edge technology, product offers, educational tools, and much more. This partnership reflects the commitment on both ends to progress, regional support, and innovation, whether it's for the trading industry or the sporting one."

The Mubadala World Tennis Championship sponsorship deal is a strategic one for CFI. It will promote the brokerage brand globally, but the Middle East, to be specific, is the stronghold of the retail broker.

Abdelhadi highlighted that the sponsorship will place CFI's branding on "the page of several magazines and newspapers across the ME region, billboards in UAE, several global TV channels, and in the online medium on social media and other media outlets." This will strengthen the CFI brand significantly.

Officially, CFI has received the title of Premium Sponsor of the tournament. However, the broker did not reveal the financial terms of the deal. Also, it is hard to speculate on the terms of such deals as they involve various factors.

Changing Branding Strategies?

The number of such single-event-based sponsorship deals is much less than the long-term partnerships of the broker with football clubs and athletes. These single event-based sponsorships are very local and help to target a particular market specifically.

"They help boost local market awareness as to where the tournament is taking place. Additionally[, it] could be a great acquisition/customer reward tool by hosting key clientele and suppliers in the local market at these events," an industry source, who deals with sports sponsorships, explained to Finance Magnates.

Such sponsorships are diversifying the deals from a crowded football market, which is the brokers' favorite based on the number of deals inked. The popularity of football is because of the target demographics of brokers' potential clients: a majority of males.

However, several brokers are now inking deals with other sports. For instance, Pepperstone, a prominent name in the retail brokerage space, has become the naming sponsor of the ATP rankings. Other brokers are sponsoring sports like rugby, basketball and volleyball.

"Such sponsorships… cannot be looked at in isolation – for example, someone could be both a football fan and a tennis fan, brokers are looking for people who have an interest or a propensity to invest, which can come from any sport," the industry source said. "Tennis is considered to, on average, have a more affluent audience when compared to football, so this could also be another reason why they've chosen tennis."

CFI's Focus on the Middle East

CFI offers trading services with forex and contracts for differences (CFDs) instruments to retail traders. Its operations are heavily focused in the Middle East, with licenses from the regulators in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Lebanon. It even entered Egypt recently by acquiring a local broker 'El Mahrousa.' Apart from the licenses from MENA regulators, it holds regulatory licenses in the United Kingdom and Cyprus.

Moreover, the strategic target of the broker is visible from its other sponsorship deals. "Regionally, we have been involved in several other partnerships across Lebanon in the racing field, and in Jordan, we are supporting the National Basketball Team on their way to success," Abdelhadi added.

On top of that, CFI signed Pep Guardiola, a former Spanish footballer, and the present English football club Manchester City coach, as the global brand ambassador. This partnership shows the broker is paying attention to the markets outside MENA to strengthen its brand.

"I think more and more we are seeing brokers develop a glocal (global + local) marketing strategy. Have a global asset that they are using in all markets and then invest further into their key strategic markets. This is visible with CFI," said the industry source.

"The same can be seen with the likes of HFM, which have a global partnership with PSG and have recently invested in an ambassador deal for Kenya with marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge. We are seeing more of this and can see this being a growing trend."

At a time when ROI becomes more critical in a marketing budget, localized sponsorship can provide a cost-effective way for brokers to reach their targeted audience. CFI's tennis deal, like other brokers' support of local sports teams, shows a world outside of the glitz, glamour, and cost of high-profile football sponsorship deals. CFI's tennis deal also exemplifies how brokers can localize their sponsorship, as well as globalize, such as the signing of Pep Guardiola as an ambassador.