29 June 2006
VIDEO: Jonathan Hill interview
Jonathan Hill speaks to TheFA.com about the commercial effects of this summer's World Cup in Germany .

On Thursday, TheFA.com caught up with Jonathan Hill, FA Group Commercial Director, who was speaking about the effects of a successful World Cup tournament, so far, both for FIFA and The FA's own sponsor partners.

Hill commented: "Generally it has been a very successful Tournament from a commercial perspective when you look at three key areas: broadcasting, sponsorship and licensing, with the fundamentally positive effect for most partners of the event being held in Europe this time round."

Asked about the success of the Tournament for The FA's current sponsors, Hill said: "Clearly it is the 15 FIFA sponsors who are enjoying the perimeter board exposure at the games themselves, but the World Cup is very much the culmination of a four year period for our FA Partners where they have been steadily building the direct association between themselves and the England team.

"The level of media and public interest in the team over the past five weeks has clearly been at an all-time high, which is a fantastic platform for all five partners to market their relationship with the team and to really bring it to life.

"Hill also referenced the new FA sponsorship programme due to commence after the World Cup in August 2006 and gave an update on progress: "We have restructured the programme so that we now have a Lead Partner for each of The FA Cup and the England team with each property have three supporter partners below this level.

"Having secured E.ON as the sponsor of The FA Cup from next season, we are in active negotiations with a number of companies at Lead Partner level and, given the amount of exposure the team is currently getting during the World Cup, we are confident that we will engage a range of strong partners at the supporter level as well."

Hill finally gave an overview of the 50 million licensed England products that The FA is hoping to have sold worldwide by the end of 2006.

"We believe that one in three of the England population has a piece of official Umbro England branded merchandise.

"We would like to thank all of our fans for their continuing support as all the surplus revenues that The FA generates goes back into the game at every level," he added.

"Also, given the amount of excitement being generated by the World Cup right now, we are very confident that we will see a surge in interest in playing and being involved in the game, as seen by the fantastic response to our "Get Into Football" initiative being driven by TheFA.com"