UD Las Palmas and Gran Canaria are reaching across borders. The Spanish club, the Gran Canaria tourism board and Norwich City FC have established a collaboration agreement for the English team to promote the image of the island in the British market.
This new alliance has great promotional value for the island of Gran Canaria, as there is a very attractive proposal that will help export the brand.
Carlos Álamo, the minister for tourism in the Gran Canaria government, said of the agreement: “This is a great opportunity to make an impact in a strategic market for the Canary Islands and particularly Gran Canaria. We will enter millions of potential tourists’ homes through sports. This is a determined step to value British customers and to also maximise the potential of the 20 cities connected to Gran Canaria.”
With this collaboration, the Gran Canaria tourism board has become a partner of the English club and the image of Gran Canaria will appear on the shirts of their men’s first team. In addition, the British club will commit to sharing audiovisual productions and advertisements during the televised and non-televised broadcasts of Norwich City FC’s home fixtures, which will represent an excellent promotional campaign to highlight Gran Canaria as a potential tourist destination for people in the United Kingdom and in Europe.
Norwich City FC and UD Las Palmas, a relationship with history
The Spanish and English clubs already began their relationship in October of 2022, thanks to the World Travel Market tourism fair held in London. Since then, both entities have been collaborating and creating synergies in terms of training, technification and international expansion.
Discussing the beginnings of this twinning between the two entities, UD Las Palmas stated: “We contacted [Norwich City FC] because we discovered a nice story that could serve as a means to connect and start a fruitful relationship for both. It’s interesting to note that the English club’s supporters and the citizens of Norwich in general are called The Canaries.”
Norwich City FC even have a canary bird on their crest and wear yellow, just like UD Las Palmas. If we add to all this the fact that the mascot of the LALIGA EA SPORTS club is a canary, called Pío Pío, we only needed to take the right steps for the relationship between the clubs to grow.
Another step in UD Las Palmas’ internationalisation
UD Las Palmas has begun an internationalisation process in countries from which Gran Canaria receives the most tourism. This is why the British market is of interest to the club. On this relationship, Patricio Viñayo, general director of UD Las Palmas, commented: “The English brought football to Gran Canaria, as well as a significant number of linguistic expressions and influence in the urban planning of the capital, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as both shores were the origin and destination of a commercial relationship. By having direct contact with tour operators and by searching for our islands’ links with England, we can revitalise and highlight this relationship.”
Last season, the club not only promoted itself in the British market but also in Germany. However, they noticed during visits made to different German clubs that opening up across borders wasn’t in their priorities. However, they did make contact with Norwich City FC, who showed interest at all times in continuing talks.
In the words of the club: “We have seen that our initial work in the internationalisation process is returning results, as evidenced by the fact that both Norwich City FC and RB Leipzig showed interest in playing a pre-season match with us. With the former, it couldn’t happen in the end, but with the latter it did end up taking place. And a match against Norwich City FC has already been agreed for next pre-season, as well as a series of joint activations from which we will really see the return of the efforts of the international department.”
With more than 426,000 tourists having visited Gran Canaria in the first half of 2023, according to the data offered by the Gran Canaria government, and with the support of a perfect ambassador on British soil such as Norwich City FC, tourism should only increase in the region thanks to football.
As Sam Jeffery, the commercial director of Norwich City, concluded: “The Gran Canaria logo is already on our jersey, and we’ve celebrated the first goal of the season with the logo. We’ll carry out other actions and campaigns to promote the island’s image, using our players to help spread the image in their home countries.”