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Champions of Business
How FedEx used its UEFA Champions League sponsorship to spotlight the small and medium-sized companies powering professional football
As professional football continued its transformation into a highly globalised commercial ecosystem, attention increasingly focused on the world’s biggest clubs, sponsors and broadcasting deals. Yet behind the spectacle of elite competition sits a complex network of smaller businesses whose innovations help sustain and evolve the game.
For FedEx, a long-standing sponsor of the UEFA Champions League, this moment created an opportunity. The company wanted to use its association with Europe’s most prestigious club football competition not simply to reinforce brand visibility, but to highlight the role that smaller, often overlooked businesses play in shaping the sport’s success.
The challenge: Becoming more than a sponsor
The challenge was how to connect FedEx’s global brand with the grassroots entrepreneurial ecosystem surrounding football. The commercial conversation around the sport was dominated by major sponsors and elite clubs, leaving little space to recognise the innovators and small businesses operating behind the scenes.
Without a clear narrative, there was a risk that any campaign linked to the Champions League would simply blend into the wider sponsorship environment rather than offering a distinctive perspective on the business of football.
The solution: Uncovering football’s hidden economy
Our role was to help place FedEx’s sponsorship in the wider economic context of the football industry and surface an overlooked but compelling tension: while football is one of the world’s most visible global businesses, many of the companies helping it evolve operate far from the spotlight.
We helped identify and elevate the businesses driving innovation within the sport. A survey of 103 professional football clubs across Europe revealed the entrepreneurs and suppliers influencing everything from performance to fan engagement.
This insight allowed FedEx to position itself not just as a sponsor of the game’s biggest stage, but as a champion of the smaller organisations contributing to its growth.
Influence and impact
With that perspective in place, FedEx launched the Champions of Business campaign – a platform celebrating the small and medium-sized companies shaping professional football.
The campaign combined research insights with storytelling to spotlight the entrepreneurs behind the sport, supported by a digital experience featuring articles, video stories and interactive data exploring both the featured businesses and the wider football economy.
The approach resonated strongly with audiences:
impressions generated across the campaign
uplift in brand perception for FedEx
increase for FT users to consider using FedEx
By shifting the focus from football’s biggest names to the innovators operating behind the scenes, the campaign helped reposition FedEx as a brand that supports the broader ecosystem of global business.
As the commercial landscape of sport continues to evolve, the work created a framework for how FedEx can engage with major sponsorships in a way that amplifies the voices of smaller enterprises — demonstrating that influence in global industries often begins far from the spotlight.
The Champions of Business campaign has also garnered award recognition from Digiday for its positioning of FedEx as a trusted partner for subject matter experts navigating global complexity.
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