Thailand Sponsorship Market COVID-19 Pandemic Recovery Surpassed Other Southeast Asian Markets

Asia Sponsorship News (ASN) has just released its 2023 Thailand sponsorship market overview with commentary from local agencies on the performance of the Southeast Asian marketplace. Following the gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic period, Thailand’s economy started to show consistent growth from Q4 2021 rising to 4.5% in Q3 2022. Projections are for 3.6% by Q4 2023. The economy has shown resilience, with the tourism sector recovery and private consumption remaining the major drivers of growth.

With a rate of growth that outstrips any comparable sport, volleyball sponsorship is one to watch. The 2019 spend of US$ 4.2m increased to US$ 7.4m 2022 – up 76% at a time when the trend line for most platforms has been downward. Although the numbers are not yet significant, Thailand is the sport’s biggest growth market and will host the Women’s Volleyball Nations League (VNL) in June 2023.

Reflecting the return to GDP growth, Thailand’s post-pandemic sponsorship spending recovery curve outdid every other significant player in Asia, with 2022 concluding at US$ 172m or 62% of 2019 spend (itself a record year at +25% on 2018).

Commenting on the market recovery, Paul Poole, Founder of Paul Poole (South East Asia) Co., Ltd. – a marketing consultancy specialising in commercial sponsorship in Thailand said: “Thailand has truly bounced back with a sizable increase of +83% in sponsorship spend over the 2021 pandemic low. With spending at 62% of 2019, Thailand’s recovery beat all other Southeast Asian markets; Singapore stands at 30%, Malaysia 53%, Philippines 23% and Indonesia 28% of their 2019 results. Confidence has returned to the Kingdom with brands like Chang, King Power, Singha and Toyota all spending in excess of US$10 million each on sponsorship in 2022 alone.”

Particularly notable for their robust post-pandemic recovery were football and golf. Thailand is the biggest market in Southeast Asia for football and ranks fourth in Asia overall, so out-performing other platforms is to be expected. As for golf, throughout the pandemic golf tournaments were abandoned all over Asia – but not in Thailand, where the following tournaments were staged in spite of pandemic restrictions: Singha Laguna Phuket Open October 2020, Honda LPGA Thailand Open May 2021, Singha Chiang Mai Open November 2021 and the ASEAN PGA Tour: Singha Esan Open February 2022, Thai LPGA Championship March 2022 and Honda LPGA Thailand Open March 2022.

Thailand ranked fourth in the whole of Asia for sponsorship spending, accounting for 3.1% of all Asian spend in 2022 (up compared to 2019’s 1.9%) and ranked first in Southeast Asia, where it accounted for 53% of all Southeast Asia spending (compared to 40% in 2019). However, Thailand was dwarfed by both Japan and China which both outstripped it by x4 and x18 respectively.

Spending by Thailand’s 10 leading brands changed little over the period 2019 to 2022, and most retained their relative positions in the ‘league table’. The exception was the PTT Group, which went from second biggest spender in 2019 with US$ 16.6m to eighth place in 2022, reducing its investment by US$ 12.6m to just US$ 4.0m.

The 2022 ‘Top 10’ were:

(US$ million)

King Power 21.0

Chang 12.5

Toyota 12.3

Singha 10.7

Carabao 8.1

Adidas 5.6

Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) 5.3

PTT Group 4.0

Sports Authority of Thailand (SAT) 4.0

M-150 2.9

These top 10 brands represented 50% of the total investment in Thailand and 24% of investment in the whole of Southeast Asia, while the next ranking 15 brands accounted for just an additional 15% of the Thailand total.

The top 10 sponsorship categories posted whopping 44% increase in spending over 2021 but dropped 37% compared with pre-pandemic 2019. At the same time, a significant change at the top saw retail draw level with traditional leader alcoholic beverages, at just over US$ 24m each. Retail numbers reflect King Power’s sponsorship of English Premier League club Leicester City FC.

There has been a significant shift in favour of sport against non-sport during the report period, with sport sponsorship accounting for 91% of all sponsorship in Thailand, compared to 85% in 2019, when the top five non-sport deals generated US$ 10.6m, all on branded content for TV. In 2022, the biggest non-sport deal came in at US$ 630K and the top five deals combined reached only US$ 2.6m. Non-sport spending in 2022 accounted for only 9% of the total Thailand sponsorship spending compared to 15% in 2019.

Football continues to dominate, accounting for 50% of all sponsorship spend in Thailand with golf at 12% and motorsports 8%. One to watch is volleyball, accounting for only 4% of total sponsorship in 2022, but bucking the trend with a huge 76% increase over 2019.

In line with its domestic economic achievement, the Thai market has out-performed its neighbours during the pandemic exit. The collapse of the non-sport sector over the report period is driven by the effective disappearance of branded content for traditional TV, while Netflix and other OTT companies are poised ready to pick up what spending is available.