Winners of SPORTO Awards 2019 announced
Winners of SPORTO Awards 2019 announced
Portorož, 21 November 2019 – Winning Service (Petrol), The Stands will be full (NK Maribor) and EuroVolley 2019 (Volleyball Federation of Slovenia) won four categories at the SPORTO Awards 2019 as the best practice in sponsorship and marketing in the Adriatic region. The best projects from each country, participating in the SPORTO Sponsorship category, qualified directly to the ESA Excellence »Best of Europe« competition. You can find information about all entered projects for SPORTO Awards 2019 here.
The SPORTO Awards perfectly illustrate the capability of brands, rights holders and agencies to deliver against the strategic goals of businesses in the region and as a shop-window of best practice. The range, from all across the Adriatic region, covers integrated programmes engaging brands with fans through their passion points of global sports to community activities, from healthy living campaigns to direct sales drivers and targeting from the very young to more mature audiences.
The jury awarded the following projects:
SPORTO Sponsorship category
Winning service (sponsor: Petrol d,d., rightsholder: Volleyball Federation of Slovenia, entrants: Agencija 101 and Petrol)
President of SPORTO Awards jury panel Andy Westlake stated: »With a large number of impressive entries this category created a good deal of debate. However, our winner was a campaign that genuinely integrated the sponsorship in to the heart of the business and delivered value, against specific objectives, across a number of functions within the organisation. Petrol became a key part of the event and showed us what sponsorship can really do to delver real impact«.
The Jury noted that the shortlisted projects were great examples of sponsorship and these are two finalists in addition to the winner: Gripworld (sponsor: Continental Adria) and Reviving mind of steel (sponsor: Sij Group).
SPORTO Event category
EuroVolley 2019 (rightsholder: Volleyball Federation of Slovenia, entrant; Volleyball Federation of Slovenia)
Jury noted that Eurovolley 2019 was an extremely strong campaign that focussed on selling out a major event in the country. The work was executed really well and delivered great results. Working on major events of this nature requires tenacity and determination and to achieve all the set objectives gave this campaign a strong advantage in the category.
SPORTO Digital category
Winning service (sponsor: Petrol d,d., rightsholder: Volleyball Federation of Slovenia, entrants: Agencija 101 and Petrol)
There was some strong work in this category and some real digital innovation which the judges were impressed with. Our winner, Petrol, was a very strong submission. The team had thought hard about how this sponsorship could deliver value to the business and how digital assets could help to drive real impact. It was a strong campaign that had an edge over the others in the category.
SPORTO Rightsholder category
The Stands will be full (rightsholder: NK Maribor, entrant: NK Maribor)
»The objective of this project was simple - to maximise sales for one key match and to create a campaign to ensure that happened. It was a simple brief, a project that was well activated and that delivered against the set objective,« jury concluded.
Projects from each country of the applicants which received the highest score in the category of SPORTO Sponsorship Award are qualified for the competition of the European Sponsorship Association (ESA) in the category "Best of Europe". The following projects qualified to enter the competition of the best European sponsorships projects:
The best Slovenian project: Winning service (sponsor: Petrol d,d., rightsholder: Volleyball Federation of Slovenia, entrants: Agencija 101 and Petrol)
The best Croatian project: ParaBOX (sponsor: Allianz Zagreb d.d., rightsholder: NPC Croatia, entrant: Allianz Zagreb d.d.)
Jury highly commended project Reviving mind of steel (sponsor: Sij Group) with commenting: »we were really impressed with the quality of the strategic planning in this work and were keen that this submission deserved special praise. The 'mind of steel' idea was really well considered and linked back to the business well. The committee are looking forward to seeing how this work builds in 2020«. 
Entries in all SPORTO Awards categories were reviewed and evaluated according to predefined criteria in close cooperation with European Sponsorship Association (ESA), by an international expert Judging Panel chaired by an ESA president Andy Westlake.
