LUXURY cars, mobile phones, burgers, banking services and airlines are some of the products and services that will come with the Pope's blessing in the sponsorship blitz the Catholic Church plans for World Youth Day. Telstra, the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas are all confirmed as sponsors of next year's week-long celebrations which the Catholic Church is promising will command larger audiences than the Sydney Olympics and the Rugby World Cup.
Mercedes-Benz and McDonald's are concluding negotiations to join up to 30 other companies the organisers aim to secure by March. But few, if any, are handing over cash to get their names alongside what is the biggest event in the Catholic world since a similar festival was held in Germany three years ago.
Sponsors have preferred to give their services in kind by providing, for example, cheap travel, foreign exchange services and telephone services for pilgrims and cars for VIPS in return for exposure for their brands.
The absence of hard sponsorship cash might leave the organisers with a funding shortfall for the event, which is expected to cost $100 million.
At the 2005 World Youth Day in Cologne, about 15 per cent - or 15 million euros - of the cost was reportedly underwritten by sponsors such as Audi, Bayer, Cisco, Shell and DHL.
World Youth Day organisers have refused to discuss sponsorship targets or confirm that any have been finalised.
Sponsors are being sold the opportunity of reaching an elusive but potentially valuable audience of up to 500,000 young people united by a common cause: their faith. Catholics make up the single largest Christian group in Australia.
But sponsorship experts doubted an enthusiastic take-up by corporate sponsors. Kim Skildum-Reid, the author of Sponsorship Seeker's Toolkit, said she saw limited marketing value for Australian companies.
"While we might have a moral, ethical and spiritual society, there is not a huge number of Catholics here, nor is there much support for organised religion. When we are living in a multicultural society something like this has the potential to be very divisive."
William Bourke, director of Sponsorship HQ, also predicted muted interest from sponsors largely because the high number of overseas pilgrims were of little value to a homegrown brand and because many Australian companies had clauses barring them from sponsoring religious events.
But for those who did take it up, he added: "We are talking about a very loyal audience here, and any company that supports the event could find a very receptive audience for their message."
Organisers expect a global TV audience of about 1 billion, but say Australia's time zone has worked against them.
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