McDonald's signed up as official EURO sponsor

UEFA and McDonald's, a UEFA European Football Championship sponsor since 1992, today announced an extension of the corporation's long-term sponsorship as official restaurant and UEFA EUROTOP partner covering all competitions within the EUROTOP programme until 2017.

McDonald's therefore becomes the sixth global partner for UEFA's flagship national team tournament, UEFA EURO 2012, following on from the announcement of the adidas, Castrol, Coca-Cola, Hyundai-Kia and Carlsberg agreements.

As part of its sponsorship deal, which includes integrated broadcast sponsorship rights in Europe, McDonald's will continue to provide children with the opportunity to participate in all national team competitions through the sole and exclusive McDonald's player escort programme.

In addition, McDonald's will benefit from exclusive marketing rights and will activate a number of marketing and promotional campaigns across its restaurants giving football fans throughout Europe the chance to obtain tickets for the relevant events.

"We have been supporting football, from grassroots level to the international tournaments, for more than 25 years," said Denis Hennequin, president of McDonald's Europe. "Our player escort programme is a great way of inspiring more young people to participate in the game," he added.

Commenting on the signing, David Taylor, CEO of UEFA Events SA, said: "The commitment of McDonald's to sponsor UEFA EURO 2012 and all our EUROTOP competitions is a further vote of confidence in the tournaments we organise and we are delighted to continue our long-standing relationship with McDonald's."

As well as being a global partner for both UEFA EURO 2012 and UEFA EURO 2016, McDonald's, as EUROTOP partner, will also sponsor the UEFA European Under-21 Championship (2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017 editions), the UEFA European Women's Championship (2013 and 2017) and the UEFA European Futsal Championship (2012, 2014 and 2016).

UEFA Events is a wholly-owned subsidiary of UEFA and has been created to manage and handle UEFA's commercial and event operations. It is, among other things, responsible for generating media rights, sponsorship, licensing and hospitality revenue from all professional national team and club competitions, and for managing relationships with all associated commercial partners.