Accenture advertises on BBC Sport - how?

I believe that Tag Heuer also appears on-screen during Formula 1. Both are technology partners of the respective competitions.

Mmm. The difference there is that “Tag Heuer” appears on the footage coming from F1, rather than footage generated by the BBC.

How does this fit with the Editorial Guidelines, I wonder?

Are Accenture a technology partner? as I think the Tag Heuer must have an agreement to provide / allow the timing data that includes their logo.. isnt there a similar agreement with other tech providers for Olympics / athletics

You clearly haven’t watched F1 for a very long time.

I think Tag Heuer stopped being F1’s technology partner a decade ago.

Since then both Siemens and LG have sponsored the timing data in F1.

But moving onto the question of how long this has been going on on the BBC, well I seem to remember the London Marathon having “Unisys” as a timing partner back in the 80s, and no doubt there are people older than me who can remember even older cases.

Whether the logo should be displayed on screen seems to depend on whether the company whose logo is displayed is actively involved in compiling and providing the statistical data – as can be seen from Ofcom’s adjudication on Sky Sports’ use of the Opta logo on Premier League football last year.

So the BBC must ask: Do Accenture compile the stats? Or just pay the RFU to have a logo on TV?

I have watched it, but perhaps I’ve just mentally filtered out the branding for the past decade! I have to admit that I hadn’t noticed that it wasn’t Tag Heuer anymore.

Tim – interesting. The adjudication you link to – which is discussing Sky Sports’ use of EA’s logo, rather than Opta’s – was deemed to have broken two Ofcom guidelines, and the complaint was upheld since EA was simply a ‘official technology partner’ and didn’t actually compile any stats.

Accenture’s own announcement appears to say that it is the “Official Technology Partner” but only appears to be delivering a mobile app. So is this just a sponsorship? Accenture’s link from the RBS website is http://www.accenture.com/gb-en/company/sponsorships/Pages/rbs-six-nations.aspx – I’m liking the use of the word “sponsorships” there, that makes it very clear what’s going on.

So. Looks just like a sponsorship. So this sponsorship gives them access to the captions on the BBC, does it? How much money have the BBC got from that?

It’s been going on for years – here’s a 1990 example

Steve – was Bull Computer compiling the results there? I’d think they might have been. Interesting clip though!

Not sure, I always thought the BBC employed their own scorer to provide stats etc and presumably feed data into the system that generates on-screen graphics of the scores.

Doesn’t matter whether the BBC is getting money from it as nobody is claiming this is product placement, just undue prominence.

I think we can safely assume that Bull Computers either compiled the stats or supplied the equipment to enable the ECB to do so.

In Accenture’s case, we should probably assume they have played no part in compiling the data. Knowing them even if they did have responsibility for compiling stats they would have outsourced it to a Bangalore call centre that doesn’t work weekends.

This sponsorship is not just on the BBC btw. It also appears on RTE, France 2 and Al Jazeera coverage.