Renault has little sales success to show from its Late Late Show sponsorship

Whatever financial benefits Ryan Tubridy reaped from RTÉ’s sponsorship deal with Renault, it remains to be seen what the French car company has gained from the vast sums (its deal for 2022/23 was reportedly worth €750,000 a year) it spent. Or the surrounding publicity from the scandal.

Tubridy’s agent, Noel Kelly told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week: “As a sponsor of The Late Late Show, Renault was perhaps the most important sponsor of all sponsors. The fee paid by the sponsor of The Late Late Show would dwarf any other sponsorship that it had. RTÉ was focused on keeping Renault happy by maximising the potential of its investment in The Late Late Show.”

Did Renault get much out of the deal beyond brand awareness and, lately, association with a financial scandal at RTÉ?

The fees it paid to RTÉ certainly don’t seem to have caused a spike in its new car sales. Nor did the multiple celebrities and sports stars who got the use of cars as brand ambassadors. RTÉ broadcaster Marty Morrissey last week apologised for an “error of judgment” in accepting the loan of a car from Renault for a period of more than five years.

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Renault has been sponsoring The Late Late Show for several years, first between 2001 and 2006 and then again between 2015 and this year.

During this time the French brand has witnessed its share of the new car sales market slip from 7.3 per cent in 2001 to 3.2 per cent at present. The brand has fallen from sixth place to 12th in the new car market, outsold by premium brands Audi and BMW.

Renault’s current best-selling model, the Clio, languishes 35th in the new car sales table.

Break down this year’s figures by sales channel and of the 2,909 cars it registered so far this year, 1,079 were either to the hire drive market or registered by the company’s own dealers. Neither of these sales channels are likely to be greatly influenced by the brand’s association with The Late Late Show.

For the latest season of sponsorship, Renault focused The Late Late Show promotion on its electric and hybrid models. It recorded just 333 registrations of hybrids and all-electric models in 2022 in an overall market segment of 43,098

Sub-brand success

While the Renault brand has spent millions on the sponsorship deal with RTÉ over the years, it has been the carmaker’s sub-brand, Dacia, which has been winning on the forecourts. This year it overtook its parent.

The economy car brand lies eighth in the overall sales table with a 4.3 per cent market share. Dacia’s best-seller, the Sandero, has nearly double the sales figures of the Clio.

While the high-priced Late Late Show sponsorship deal hasn’t led to any evident sales surge, the real problem for Renault has been with its model mix. Unlike Asian rivals, it has seemed reluctant to join the race to the crossover and SUV formats. It was a leader in the age of the people carrier at the start of the century, with models like the Scenic. But it didn’t move with the market.

Renault didn’t come out with an SUV crossover until 2013, when the Kadjar arrived in showrooms. The delay wasn’t down to technical issues: Renault formed an alliance with Nissan in 1999 and the Japanese brand rolled out its popular Qashqai in 2006.

By 2013, when the Kadjar arrived, the Qashqai was the second best-selling new car on the Irish market, behind the VW Golf. When Renault returned to sponsoring The Late Late Show in 2015, it was the Kadjar that featured heavily in its promotion.

The following year, in a new car market of 146,450 vehicles, it managed to register 2,528 Kadjars. The Qashqai sold 4,591, while Hyundai’s Tucson crossover was the top selling model with 7,425 that year.

For the latest season of sponsorship, Renault focused The Late Late Show promotion on its electric and hybrid models.

It recorded just 333 registrations of hybrids and all-electric models in 2022 in an overall market segment of 43,098. While it has doubled sales to 648 so far this year, it still lags in 13th place in this hybrid and electric sales segment behind premium brands such as Tesla, Volvo and even Mercedes Benz.

Public appearances

As to the details of the sponsorship deal with RTÉ, Renault continues to decline to comment on the matter at present. It will not discuss the agreement to have Tubridy appear at its dealerships to host mock-ups of the Late Late Show.

At the Oireachtas hearings, RTÉ’s former director of commercial, Geraldine O’Leary, said on June 29th that the idea of adding a commercial element – public appearances by Ryan Tubridy – originated at RTÉ. She said she “was advised by the director general that the idea behind the commercial deal was that I would talk to the sponsor about including some personal appearances by Ryan Tubridy as part of the overall Renault relationship with RTÉ”.

While the sponsorship deal with Renault was for three years, O’Leary stated she only spoke to Renault about doing added appearances over a single year. “There is some suggestion that Renault did not renew. We only spoke to Renault about year one.”

Due to the pandemic, Renault didn’t get the three dealer events invoiced for in 2020 until last year. According to O’Leary, she didn’t approach them about extending beyond the first year because they hadn’t held the initial events from year one.

“In year two, in 2021, the director general asked me if there were any commercial partnership possibilities and I said ‘No’. I did not go back to Renault because we already owed it for the previous year.”

[ RTÉ crisis: Tubridy and Kelly shed light on money trail and disputed €120,000 payment ]

[ Ryan Tubridy is the inoffensive figurehead RTÉ wanted ]

She stated that Renault was not aware of any underwriting contract with Tubridy, should the car maker not renew the appearance element of the sponsorship deal.

In relation to attempts to get Renault to stump up extra funds for Tubridy appearances, O’Leary said: “I met the client and discussed it with him. He was very clear that it was contrary to his wishes. I communicated this to the director general. My priority as commercial director is client relationships. I said that the client was very clear that he would not add an additional €75,000 to his existing contract.”

Bill Cullen franchise

In 2007, a declining market share against a backdrop of growing new car sales was enough for Renault to decide to take the Irish franchise off Bill Cullen’s Glencullen Distributors.

Cullen had held the franchise from 1986, when he bought the insolvent Smith Group, the previous owners, for just £1 having agreed to take on about €18 million in debt. It would make him a multimillionaire by the time the parent company took back control.

Cullen’s knack for publicity, along with high-profile deals such as The Late Late Show sponsorship, created an impression that Renault was a more powerful player in the Irish car market than the sales figures showed.

At the end of 2022, there were 97,116 Renaults on Irish roads, a sizeable fleet but less than a third of rivals Toyota, Volkswagen or Ford. Even newcomers such as Hyundai have 50 per cent more cars on the road now than Renault, while BMW and Audi also have larger fleets.

Perhaps it’s the ability to create a perception of being a larger player than they actually are which drives the French car-maker to spend so much on a sponsorship deal that, in the words of Noel Kelly, “would dwarf any other sponsorship that [RTÉ] had”.