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Internet services provider iiNet’s last major sponsorship was with the AFL’s Hawthorn Football Club where it appeared on the back of the players’ guernseys.

Starting in 2014, the deal wrapped up at the end of the 2024 season and that led to Superhero joining the club’s sponsorship roster. 

The sponsor was acquired by TPG in 2015 and the first sign that interest in sponsorship was waning was the culling of its internal sponsorship team. 

This went ahead despite iiNet winning best sponsorship in the Australian Marketing Institute’s awards for its deal with the BBL’s Sydney Sixers. 

At that time, it was also a key sponsor of the Tour Down Under cycling event and prior to that it had a lengthy stay sponsoring the NBL. 

TPG has never used sponsorship marketing to a great extent.

Fast forward to 2020 and iiNet’s sponsorship program still remained, backing Hawthorn and the Sydney Sixers while the latter was edging towards the decade milestone, but never made it.

However, the ending of the Hawks deal sees iiNet’s sponsorship book closed and its spend likely to shift towards broadcast and online marketing.

Prior to its acquisition by TPG, iiNet was Australia’s second biggest internet provider with about 15% market share. Telstra was easily number one with a 41% share. Iinet also just edged out Optus a 14% slice of the pie.

In 2020 TPG and Vodafone merged to form a new entity.  The deal was called a ‘merger of equals’ as it saw neither TPG nor Vodafone holding ownership over each other.  TPG controls the iiNet brand and its sponsors while Vodafone continues to lead its sponsorship program which has a focus on live music and motorsport.

Sponsorship News approached iiNet for comment prior to publication, but interestingly, received a bounce from its sponsorship enquiry email. Apparently, it is no longer working.

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