Sport Sponsorship for the 24/7 Connected Fan
Macro conditions are challenging for brands and rightsholders, audiences are more fragmented than ever, new OTT entrants are investing in exclusive rights and publishers of all sizes are buying media to grow their organic channels through social platforms, which means there is more sports content than ever for fans to consume. How do sponsors stand out in this crowded space?
The value of most sports sponsorships has been predicated on linear TV audiences, but these are in potentially perpetual decline as sports content is consumed elsewhere. The days of badging with a shirt deal and expecting TV to do all of the work is a false economy as the tangible value of these deals is diminished. For example, UEFA are seeing linear TV audiences across Europe decline in double-digits compared to the last the rights cycle. Brands will need additional rights and a well thought out digital content strategy to reach this “lost” audience elsewhere if the rights fee is to be maintained.
Our modern consumption of sports content has evolved and in turn, given fans the ability to cherry pick the match they want to watch on any device. This is a good thing for overall consumption and it will likely drive new audiences to new sports with less restrictive access that the biggest crowd pullers.
Commercially rightsholders need to think more like media owners and ensure they’re realising the value of that audience through their brand partnerships understand their audience through data and insights for what content resonates with their fanbase. Brands empowered with this data and insight can use the media platforms and partnerships available to create authentic content delivered in the right tone at the right time to offer real added value for the fan. Brands actively engaging fans that, in turn, become a brand purchasers and advocates is the overriding objective, right?
Many sponsors still get this badly wrong, largely because of the disconnect between media activation and the rights they have acquired and this not helped by the agencies they use who either understand sponsorship but don’t understand media or vice versa. Sports fans are ambivalent to brands because very few have provided any meaningful value and lack personal resonance for the audience. If you just badge my football team’s shirt then this won't change, worse case, you create ill-informed content that is disingenuous and it’s a long way back from there.
However this is changing and many brands are creating real engagement. For instance, to publicise their recently announcement of their sponsorship of Women’s Super League Barclays created a bespoke film highlighting their commitment to the women’s game. This authentic and credible content focussed on well thought out key areas showing their commitment to the sport, from grassroots to elite. This initiative highlighted their commitment to women’s sports at all levels, adding credibility to their efforts.
However, brands don’t need multimillion dollar sports properties and huge activation budgets to create meaningful content delivered to the right audience. We are helping brands maximise their acquired sports IP through an insight led content and distribution strategy, partnering with the best media players to tell your story through the lens of their users such as Fifty.
They utilise their unique in-house audience intelligence platform to analyse the social audience of brands, rights-holders and personalities to drive genuine insight into the engaged audience.
With them we have analysed the social audience of The Women’s Super League to understand the key interest ‘tribes’ across the sport. Fifty’s platform segmented their audience into 32 key interest tribes which gives us fantastic insights into the interests, demographics, content and biggest influencers within their audience. One of things it uncovered is the biggest tribe who follow women’s football is a group we called “Amateur Football Players”, a group of 485,000 people who tend to follow individual players such Alex Scott and Steph Houghton rather than individual clubs. The fourth largest group was Female Equality Activists with interests in left leaning politics, science, nature and, as the segment suggests, equality. They’re a very different group from your archetypal football fan which we can target precisely with equality messages to this audience that would resonate with them.
Taking advantage of the passion and meaningful connection between fans and teams is a major objective behind many sports sponsorships. The modern brand is asking more than ever of the sports organisations they look to work with; to understand the lifestyle of their fans, their consumption habits, and their passions and interests on an ever more intimate level. With more consumer data available than ever before, it is now possible to tap into this sports fan culture and find out exactly what makes them tick. By doing this, we can see how their audiences intersect and how relevant one is to the other.
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