Company

The Irish Times is Ireland’s leading newspaper, reaching millions of readers across print and digital every month. As one of Ireland’s most trusted news brands, it plays a central role in how Irish audiences engage with major national moments, including sport.

As the official airline of the Irish Rugby Football Union and a Guinness Six Nations sponsor, Aer Lingus needed to bring that sponsorship to life within the media environments where rugby audiences were already showing up.

Challenge

Sponsorship visibility on media platforms typically means banner ads or logo placements alongside editorial content. These formats are passive: the average click-through rate on display ads is just 0.06%. They sit beside the content rather than within it, and they rarely give audiences a reason to engage.

For Aer Lingus, the challenge was clear. As a major IRFU partner during the Six Nations, the brand needed to be more than a logo next to a match report. It needed to be part of the fans’ experience of the tournament.

At the same time, The Irish Times wanted to enrich its rugby coverage, giving readers something beyond standard editorial and a reason to return throughout the tournament.

Solution

The Irish Times partnered with Amondo to embed a real-time content experience directly within its Six Nations coverage, bringing together editorial content, player moments, and fan submissions into a single branded feed. Aer Lingus had a presence inside the editorial environment rather than around it. The same experience was also deployed in the Irish Examiner, extending reach across two of Ireland’s leading news platforms at once.

A content feed that moved with the tournament

Amondo built a Gallery within The Irish Times, pulling live editorial content from the paper’s rugby coverage into a dynamic, branded feed. As the tournament progressed, the Gallery updated in real time, keeping fans coming back to an experience that felt fresh throughout every match week.

The experience was badged clearly as “Guinness Six Nations 2024, In partnership with Aer Lingus”, with Aer Lingus and IRFU co-branding throughout. This positioned the sponsor not as an advertiser interrupting the content, but as an integral part of how fans accessed and explored it.

Inviting fans to be part of the story

Alongside editorial content, the Gallery included an Amondo Submission Tile giving rugby fans the chance to share their own message of support for the Irish rugby team.

This added an interactive layer to what would otherwise have been a read-only experience. Fans could contribute directly, turning the Gallery from a content destination into a participation moment tied to one of Ireland’s biggest sporting occasions.

Submissions were captured with consent, giving both The Irish Times and Aer Lingus a growing collection of supporter sentiment and a first-party database of engaged rugby fans they could reach directly long after the tournament ended.

Making sponsor value part of the editorial environment

By embedding the experience within The Irish Times and Irish Examiner, Aer Lingus showed up where Irish rugby fans were already reading about the sport they cared about. No separate destination to click through to, no interruptive ad format to dismiss.

The Gallery sat within the natural editorial flow, co-branded with both the Aer Lingus and IRFU marks, making the sponsorship feel native to the experience rather than bolted on.

Results

The Amondo-powered experience gave Aer Lingus something a banner placement never could: a reason for fans to engage actively with the sponsorship rather than scroll past it.

• Real-time content feed embedded across two of Ireland's leading national news platforms simultaneously

• Aer Lingus co-branding integrated throughout the editorial experience, not placed around it

• Interactive fan Submission Tile capturing supporter messages and consent directly within the media environment

By embedding the brand inside the editorial experience itself, The Irish Times created a new model for how media partners and sponsors can work together. Not just to reach audiences, but to bring them into the action and make them part of the story.