Written by: Kenneth Ho

The Great Eastern Yeo’s S.League officially announced the extension of the co-sponsorship by insurance company Great Eastern in a press conference on Monday.

This is the sixth successive season that Great Eastern is sponsoring the S.League as co-title sponsors, with beverages firm Yeo’s being the other sponsor.

Great Eastern Singapore Chief Executive Officer (COE) Dr Khoo Kah Seng explained that Great Eastern was happy to continued its support of the S.League, as it helped the company broaden its outreach to the community.

“Football is one of the most popular sports in Singapore and we see it as a good platform for us to achieve this goal. ” Dr Khoo added.

“Our support of the league is one of the initiatives under our Live Great programme where we promote the importance of healthy lifestyle through sports to our community.”

“Where we get a lot of alignment in value is the outreach to the community using football as a key platform in a lot of our other engagements. S.League has always been a integral part of the broader community,” Great Eastern Singapore Chief Marketing Officer Mr Colin Chan agreed.

S.League COE Mr Lim Chin was also present at the press conference, and after touching on several features set to be implemented for the 2014 season, Mr Lim reiterated how such sponsorship deals are essential in the implementation of these features.

“We want to focus a lot on match experience as a key focus for this season to ensure all fans when they come to the stadium there is a very positive match experience. So we are looking at many initiatives,” Mr Lim said.

“We are going to have food nights like kachang puteh nights, ice cream, maybe a burger night. For the fans whenever they pay $5 for a ticket, I want to give them back more than what they paid for.

“On social media sites, we are going to have match highlight videos maybe 12 hours after a match. I am trying to bring it down.

“We want to post match videos on websites, Facebook, so that if fans missed a goal they can see it again. The second one we are going to launch this week is an application on our Iphones with more details later, and also our Fantasy League.”

“All this is possible with corporate sponsors. Everybody in S.League are truly appreciative of the support from one big local company called Great Eastern.”

FAS President Mr Zainudin Nordin called the extension  of Great Eastern’s co-sponsorship a ‘major boost’ to the league, and was of the belief that the S.League has been enjoying success due to their support.

“On behalf of FAS and S.League, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the management of Great Eastern,” Mr Zainudin continued.

“Particularly Dr Khoo Kah Siang and Mr. Colin for their invaluable support and incomparable contributions to Singapore football and making the S.League the success it is today.”

The 2014 Great Eastern Yeo’s S.League campaign will kick-off with the Charity Shield match between Tampines Rovers and Home United on 21 February at Jalan Besar Stadium at 7.30pm.