‘Maniacal about measurement’: AIA’s global CMO on its long-term partnership with Tottenham Hotspur 

Asian insurance company AIA has been Tottenham Hotspur’s primary front-of-shirt sponsor since 2014, and while it had to wait more than a decade for the club to cinch a trophy, the partnership has proved deeply effective for the company.  

AIA will be retiring from the front of Spurs shirts at the end of the 2026/27 season, but the partnership will continue to at least 2032, with AIA signing a new deal to become the club’s training kit partner.  

The two organisations are “inextricably linked across Asia”, Stuart Spencer, global CMO at AIA, tells Marketing Week as he sits down to reflect on what is one of English football’s longest-running partnerships.  

From building measurable effectiveness into partnerships to helping AIA to redefine its purpose from a typical insurance company to one focused on health and wellbeing, he explains why AIA has taken a long-term approach to working with the North London club.  

‘Maniacal about measurement’

Under Spencer’s leadership, the business has positioned itself as a driver of health and wellbeing, a strategy supported by its Spurs partnership. “We want our customers of tomorrow to be healthier than our customers of today, and so everything we do at AIA is designed to ensure there is a tangible manifestation and tangible evidence of our commitment to healthy, longer and better lives,” he explains. 

AIA has done “so much to amplify and augment the partnership” with Tottenham, says Spencer who believes this is the key to long-term success. 

More than 180,000 children in Asia have gone through its football training camps and clinics since the partnership began. “It’s really important for us to bring this partnership to life in very tangible ways, so that we can really illustrate unassailably that we are contributing to healthier, longer and better lives,” he says.

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Football is the leading spectator sport in Asia, with the market continuing to grow as more broadcast deals are signed. The benefits are mutual: businesses like AIA gain global reach, while clubs can expand their commercial footprint.  

Front-of-shirt deals with Premier League clubs are hugely expensive. The deal signed by AIA in 2019 – to run until 2027 – cost £320m, according to industry reports at the time. It’s a lot of money to put on the line. “As marketers, we’re constantly having to justify spend. I’m maniacal about measurement, and if there isn’t an obvious way to measure, let’s be imaginative and ingenious, and find ways to measure,” says Spencer, who note Kantar and Nielsen as starting points.  

AIA has “accomplished” what it’s front-of-shirt sponsorship was designed to do, says Spencer.  

“It’s been a wonderful, positive, successful endeavour,” he explains, and has been a key factor in the business repositioning into the health market while also growing its brand metrics. “Brand awareness has skyrocketed”, in the last 12 years, and its “association” with its purpose is now “indelible”.  

But the AIA of today isn’t the same business as it was in 2013, he explains, and the “kind of profile and reach and impact” is vastly different too. “We said, ‘Okay, this is going to evolve, our needs are evolving’.”  

The partnership has been a brand building success. “Because we’ve achieved that success, we’re now transitioning to a role and relationship and an image and a place with the club that just makes so much more sense with us and for us today,” says Spencer as AIA takes on being training kit partner from 2027. It’s a deal the CFO is happy with too, he notes.  

Take note

As training kit partner, the business can create a new “brand ecosystem” and will have access to more content opportunities. Spencer rationalises it as more opportunities to be seen – the number of games is limited, particularly dependent on how much European football the club achieves – while the training kit is worn “every day”.  

Does it matter if the kit is worn every day in training if few people outside the club sees it for most of the week? Spencer’s answer highlights the changes in media channels since the initial cup competition front-of-shirt partnership in 2013, which was extended to all competitions the following year.

Clubs and brands are creating more social media content than ever, and so Spencer believes AIA will be able to cut through deeply off the pitch and TV screens, as well as still appearing on them for matchdays.  

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But marketers need to “be very clear on why” they’re doing sport sponsorship, says Spencer. “What exactly are you trying to achieve? Be clear, why? What’s it going to do for you?”  

These are essential questions to clarify first, but then brands need to “grapple with the risks”, with Spencer pointing to the fact you are effectively “giving your brand away”, so “the conduct of that partner is critical”.  

Front-of-shirt sponsorships almost guarantee brands ‘free’ advertising when players are on the newspaper pages – but it only benefits the business if it’s for good reason. 

“You’ve really got to make sure that that trust and that faith and that belief in market conduct and best practice and integrity is there.”