On episode 311 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Lewis Wiltshire, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, IMG.
He discusses his background in leading digital and social sports strategy, IMG’s strategy and approach in growing and monetizing global and local fan bases and partners, the evolving business models in sports, trends for 2026 from IMG’s Digital Trends Report, and more.
Watch or listen to episode 311 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Lewis Wiltshire, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, IMG.
Wiltshire discusses his background in leading digital and social sports strategy, IMG’s strategy and approach in growing and monetizing global and local fan bases and partners, the evolving business models in sports, trends for 2026 from IMG’s Digital Trends Report, and more.
The athlete marketing complex and the creator economy are converging.
It was bound to happen. Athletes were among the earliest proto-influencers. So it only makes sense that, as opportunities in the creator economy grew and diversified, athletes could build on their influential platforms and become multi-hyphenate creators. But there’s an inherent paradox for elite athletes here: the tunnel-vision dedication and discipline that propels them to excellence in their sport can seem to brush aside extracurricular opportunities for some, while fueling a measured approach for others.
Most athletes only have a limited window of time to even consider the opportunity to develop and monetize their brand. A minuscule portion will get big stages in the pros or in prominent international competition, but the vast majority won’t. So their few years in college comprise that small window, though that doesn’t mean it’s easy or a given. Rachel Maeng has a unique POV having had various perspectives of the creator economy, athletics, and running a business. She competed in college sports, built her personal brand, negotiated brand deals for others, and counseled creators and athletes alike. She dispels the notion that every college athlete is engaging in ‘NIL,’ the shorthand for referencing all things related to activating and monetizing the name, image, and likeness of athletes.
“I talked to so many athletes in college and high school that are like, ‘I’m not doing NIL deals; honestly, I don’t have any time,'” said Maeng, who was a coxswain on the Rutgers rowing team during her college years. “In reality, I would say from what I’ve seen, maybe like 10% of each roster actually in college actively participates or is even interested in doing NIL deals. Because think about it, like, when I was in college, we were practicing every day at 7 a.m., and then I would go to class, and then I would have 3 p.m. lifts, and then I would go to class, and then I was in clubs and organizations…When does that leave time for me to create content and negotiate and do all those things? It doesn’t. And in reality, some kids cannot time manage as well as some other kids, so they’re not able to participate because they would fail classes or they would fail at their athletic opportunities.”
Given that use it or lose it nature of the college athletics platform, however, there can be a degree of pressure to squeeze it all in. You can’t leave money on the table, your peers are doing it, family and friends may expect it — there’s no shortage of factors that can weigh on a student-athlete’s mind. Maeng sees the struggles firsthand and recognizes not just the burden placed upon student-athletes trying to balance it all, but also the gap in education for those wading into the NIL game.
“I think the media and the social media that we see about, like, Oh, this kid made $8 million, so and so athlete just made a couple hundred thousand [dollars] working with Nike. That’s great, and that’s a great opportunity for that athlete who can handle it, who maybe has a team around them that can handle that. But if you can’t do it, you can’t do it,” said Maeng. “I think that we can’t put pressure on athletes to be able to participate in NIL while not giving them the education about how to do everything that comes with being your own business and running a business. And then there’s the mental health aspect that we were talking about before. There are just so many factors, I think, that go into it. You can’t expect it.”
But while NIL development and deals may not be for everyone, there are still a lot of student-athletes who do choose to wade into those waters, doing the quasi-creator and influencer thing alongside their athletic and academic endeavors. One of the best parts of college athletics, too, is the sheer diversity of student-athletes. Not only the sports they play, but their background and interests, present a panoply of ways to cultivate an audience that’s attractive for a brand.
There are only a select few athletes in the pros, let alone college, that have universal broad appeal. The same goes for creators, which is why the majority of creators lean into specific segments or niches, which can make them appealing and authentic endorsers for partners. It’s simplistic, but sometimes effective at a surface level, to jump on trends and pop culture topics, but generic audiences and content, absent immense, undeniable scale, do not make for an effective NIL. Brand deals shouldn’t feel random, but organic and expected. Maeng explained how she’d advise athletes, informed by her work with athletes and non-athlete creators alike.
“As it pertains to athletes, you can go out, and you can dance and do only trends and get a good amount of followers,” said Maeng, who was CEO and Founder of influencer and athlete-driven brand marketing and media production company GEN Agency before selling it. “But as soon as you start advertising, I don’t know, Nike or Jordan or you start advertising Kellogg’s Pop Tarts or Pringles, if you’ve never talked about those products before, your page has nothing to do with it, [then] it feels very inauthentic. So, if you’re a content creator and you’re also an athlete and you talk about training, then you talk about your family, you talk about your lifestyle, maybe you even talk about, like, skincare, you know, because you’re an athlete, you’re sweating, so how do you clean out your pores, I would 100% trust you to tell me what food to put in my body, what things to put on my skin, how to train for acceleration or how to train for explosion. Because those are the things that you have demonstrated expertise in.
“So I definitely think athletes should have some sort of niche to them. But then also, too, you’re a full-time athlete. You are literally spending all your time training or actually participating in a sport. You have limited time outside of that, especially as a college athlete, so pick and choose your battles, pick and choose your free time. And if you’re just making really general content, you’re going to eat up all that free time.”
With experience on all sides of the equation, Maeng understands the perspective and goals of brands and creators alike. When it comes to marketing and creators, brands think about audiences. Whom you can reach will largely dictate the brands and products/services for which you’re an appealing partner. For creators and athletes alike to make themselves attractive to brands, they have to consider why brands work with creators in the first place, and what goes into their decision-making, as Maeng explained.
“When a brand does marketing and uses some sort of talent to market, it’s because that talent can speak to the ideal customer that the brand has,” said Maeng, who today is a fractional COO and CMO, in addition to her work as an investor and adviser. “So like, if I’m Old Navy and I’m launching a new jeans campaign, I’m not going to talk to someone that is probably the same person that State Farm is using to talk about an insurance product. Why? Because the jeans might be for Gen Z people who are going to be under the age of 26, and State Farm Insurance, etc., you’re on your parents’ insurance until you’re 26, so you’re not going to be buying the same product that you would at 26 with the jeans. So it’s creators and talent who have that same ideal audience as the brand.
“Then lastly, it’s figuring out what brands are really interested in. If you see a brand never having been on TikTok, they are probably not going to immediately choose you to be on their TikTok; like, figure out where they are and meet them on the platforms that they are.”
The ball in the athlete’s court is just as important as the brand’s. It can be tempting to say yes to every paycheck, every deal. But as a creator athlete develops an audience, it’s the trust their audience has in them which makes them an appealing endorser in the first place. As many examples have shown over the years, one false step can inhibit the perception of dependability and integrity. This is another layer of counsel that NIL-focused athletes need as they figure out this space.
“At the end of the day, don’t tie yourself to products that aren’t quality, right?” said Maeng, who was an official TikTok partner as the platform ramped up its creator strategy. “Like, you don’t want to turn into these athletes that got caught up in the crypto scandals or any of the other scandals out there because they didn’t do their due diligence, because they thought this would be easy money. They didn’t look into who owns the company or what products were in the product or all those sorts of things…
“When I become an advisor, I put my name, image, and likeness on that company, and my belief in them and my expertise go with them, and my credibility goes with them. So I think everyone has to do their due diligence and really make a very serious, forward-thinking decision if they would like to tie themselves to that.”
There is no shortage of suits getting into athletes’ ears, preying on their untapped potential and relative naivete, to sign them up as a client. And sometimes, agents are a great value-add, but the notion that every athlete seeking to monetize their NIL needs an agent is misleading, Maeng told me. She explained the key considerations in what an athlete needs and when an agent does and does not make sense to bring into the fold, and the potential risks to watch out for.
“In my opinion, if you have your own platform and if you have opportunities in brand deals, you don’t need an agent, you just need a lawyer, and maybe a publicist, someone that can help get your SEO out there, can help get you in front of good opportunities,” said Maeng, who also noted that brand deals don’t happen willy-nilly, but are more often part of brand campaigns planned months in advance. “But an agent should only be used if their opportunities and the things that they have for you outweigh what you currently have. Because at the end of the day, agents make a commission, so they really only get paid on what they bring in or what they work on. And it might get to the point where one agent has like 30 athletes, and he doesn’t have time to work on the bottom 20, he’s only working on the top ten, and you’re going to get upset, you’re going to get unmotivated, all those things, because you realize someone doesn’t care about you or your business as much as you do.”
All of these factors discussed in the preceding paragraphs illuminate the main point: student-athletes, college administrators, university leaders — all this stuff is new to them. The responsibilities for overseeing and preparing athletes for NIL deals are not something to be added to an existing role in the department, nor is an added hire from within the sports world. College programs need someone who has done the thing, who has worked with brands, managed creators (and/or were or are creators themselves), who knows all the things those aforementioned parties don’t.
Maeng and others like her have spent time at schools, working with student-athletes and school administration. She’s seen the gaps to fill, and she spoke with conviction, enumerating the must-haves for these programs to set up their student-athletes for success.
“I think, number one, there are too many agents in the space and not everybody needs an agent, honestly. But I think there are people like myself, people like Sam Green, and people in other companies like Advance, at Greenfly, who are experts in what they educate about.
“Schools should bring in people who can not just speak from experience and speak on education, but I think schools need to actually go a step further and develop curriculum for their athletes about what is a personal brand, how to build it up, how to put that voice into action on social media, then how to make an LLC, how much money that you have to put away for taxes, how to file taxes, how to find a good manager and interview them and figure out if they’re a good fit, how to talk to brands, how to negotiate, how to even turn that into a bigger opportunity. All the things that go along with NIL, I think, need to be taught in some sort of classroom environment.”
This NIL era is new for everyone, not just the student-athletes at the center of it. The systems are being built by the day, the rules are constantly evolving, and many of the administrators and leaders are learning as they go. There is no precedent for programs to follow to adapt to the new normal, but, Maeng reminds us, it’s okay to recognize that there’s a lot you don’t know. The creator economy has been around for years, so while a lot of this is new (and nuanced, to be fair) for college athletics, there are those far more experienced and informed that schools can and should lean on and learn from. Maeng offered her perspective, having worked with schools, and what she’s seeing in the industry.
“I think anyone that has brought in a good platform or a good partner, whatever it is, is taking those first steps; it’s really important,” she said. “Just even admitting they don’t know everything, because, you know, you don’t know everything. I don’t know everything. I don’t even call myself an expert. So I think people that are actively making steps to make this easier on athletes, to make the experience something that they can actually leverage and learn from, I think they’re doing a great job.
“They have to just keep trying to help the athletes and keep trying to be better in the space.”
On episode 310 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Rachel Maeng, Adviser, Fractional Executive, Investor, expert in influencers, sponsorships, events, and NIL. Rachel discusses her career as an entrepreneur and operator in brand partnerships, creators, athletes and NIL, events, influencers, and more, including founding and selling her own agency.
Watch or listen to episode 310 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Rachel Maeng, Adviser, Fractional Executive, Investor, expert in influencers, sponsorships, events, and NIL.
Rachel discusses her career as an entrepreneur and operator in brand partnerships, creators, athletes and NIL, events, influencers, and more, including founding and selling her own agency.
The view from a sports team’s social media seat offers a unique perspective. Social touches just about everything. The person at the helm of the social media practice needs to know everything going on with the team, by necessity. From gameday presentations to sponsor activations, community events, and fan development initiatives, ticket promotions, and team transactions — the list goes on. Meanwhile, social has more fan touchpoints than any other part of the organization, is their finger on the pulse of an admittedly small but mighty sample of the fan base, and has a better picture of fans’ psychographics than perhaps any other department or person within the team.
From his early days managing social media with the Carolina Panthers, Dan LaTorraca appreciated the unique position that social media occupied and the diverse ways it could provide value. He eventually ascended to a role overseeing marketing with the Carolina Hurricanes, taking lessons from years of experience to help in building an industry-leading organization at the Canes. Today, he leads marketing at media measurement and tracking platform Zoomph, where he uses learnings from nearly two decades in sports business to continue to help push the industry forward.
I recently sat down with LaTorraca for a wide-ranging interview, packed with insights and anecdotes from throughout his career. Read on for just a few of the key points touched on in our chat. There is so much more in the full interview, and I highly recommend watching or listening! Check it out here
Social Media Is Part of the Larger Organization
It’s easy to become a little myopic in any job function or role. The social media operation wants to nail its KPIs and surpass them, hitting highs in metrics like views, impressions, reach, and engagement rate. But social media is ultimately one cog, an important and arguably the most front-facing cog, of the team and its business. The power of social media lies in its connectivity to every organizational goal, and therefore its ability to play offense, finding opportunities to capitalize on and problems to solve.
LaTorraca talked about his understanding of the pivotal position in which social media sat, and the mindset of weaponizing it, in a good way, to affect the bottom line, while maintaining and developing the long-term brand and connection with fans essential to any sports team.
“Social obviously was a powerful tool for engagement, for revenue driving, but also it’s like, Well, how are we driving [website] traffic with it? How are we driving leads with it? How is it feeding these other pieces here? How does the mobile app fit in with all this other stuff? How does email fit in? Ultimately, it wasn’t just about social; it was about building a strong digital ecosystem. And social may be the most valuable, impactful, and engaging part of that, especially in that era when everything was social…Social has been that front door, that front porch for teams in a lot of ways, so a lot of the resources and strategy started there, but it had to fit together with everything else, and to ultimately drive value and figure out where those value opportunities are.
“In the Panthers’ case, they were doing really well with ticket sales. They didn’t have a lot [of tickets] to offer because of the PSL [personal seat license] system they had there. So it was like, where are we going to make money elsewhere? Where are we going to drive value elsewhere? And is it with driving tune in for our broadcast network? Is it with retail and merchandise sales? Sponsorship integration ended up being the biggest piece for us. So, really having that perspective of, we have to see how this fits together with everything else, and also understand compromise. A lot of times it’s tough, and it was tough for me at first, too; it was almost like, you have to maintain the purity of social. Like, there’s a way to do this, and we can’t have other departments influencing or implementing our strategy and decision making here with another ticket deal or this or that. But I realized early on that, while it is an important marketing tool, it has to fit within the boundaries and the needs and goals of the organization.”
Developing a Voice and Brand That Draw Fans In
When LaTorraca was early in his tenure with the Panthers, the concept of a team with personality was just emerging in sports social media. But he knew that developing intimate relationships with fans was going to be the most effective way to punch above their weight in the Carolina and national sports hierarchy.
“The first thing that I picked up on was just like answering fans a lot more. Remember Zappos? That was one of the focal points of their social strategy was that they actually responded. We were still in an era in 2011 or so where if a brand responded to you on social, you were like, Alright, it’s either an automated customer service thing or it’s a mistake. The responses didn’t have personality or uniqueness. And you know, where we are now, it’s like, Oh man, this brand actually cursed at me. So we’ve evolved a whole lot. But back then, it was new, and that was something the Panthers could do differently.
“So building those 1-to-1 relationships, and I even kept a list of, like, certain things fans were passionate about, and we built authentic relationships there. I think that really helped us not only understand what mattered to them, but also the language they were using and how to craft and build our content strategy. So it was a mix of best practices and understanding what worked and what didn’t, and what we liked and what we were capable of, as well as what was going to resonate with our fans. We didn’t have the creative resources, we didn’t have a lot of other stuff that other teams had, but we were able to at least strategize our way into driving value both internally and externally.”
But, especially during a time when you’re trying to transform the strategy, you have to be able to show why this shift, this personality pivot, is working. Some things are immediately and easily measurable, some aren’t. But LaTorraca sought to prove why and how things were working and resonating. Those transformative moves can have compound effects, too, increasing fan avidity and evangelism, strengthening identities, and creating a fan base whole that’s greater than the sum of its individuals.
“Certain things like those 1-to-1 interactions aren’t measurable; technically, Zoomph can track those, and you can actually see social value if some kind of response actually catches fire. There is a way, but there’s so much more in those particular instances of measuring the sentiment. It’s not measurable in the traditional sense…
“However, the social voice was a key there, and that was something we were able to have data on that I used to validate the direction we wanted to go…This was at the time when you had the LA Kings starting to show a little more personality on social. I started seeing that and I was like, ‘This is what we need to be doing.’ We tried it in the comments a whole lot, and that was the way to test it. But we would occasionally put stuff out there that I felt was more human and had a bit more personality and sass and spunk to it. And what I would do is track the data and performance of that one and start kind of planting those seeds with my boss and his boss and ultimately their boss, who is the owner of, like, Look, this is working and this performs better than the average post, and clearly this type of of language and messaging and approach is resonating with our fans.
“I think it was built on those 1-to-1interactions, warming people up, and then eventually having actual personality and catching people off guard with some of the stuff that we put out there is going to be really good for growing our brand, engaging our fans, creating pride and sentiment there, and we backed it up with data. We were able to show, like, Hey, this is working, and get that buy-in to the point where in 2014 or so, we started having a lot more personality, and then I was able to share a lot more data. Then, 2015 was the Panthers’ Super Bowl season, and that’s when the gloves came off because it was where the team won 15 or 16 games in a row in the regular season, and a lot of people were doubting the team. And they were upset with Cam Newton for dancing in the end zone, and it was a lot of like, Oh, you guys are good, you’re probably the worst 10-0 team though, and everything was just ripe for me to dunk on on social. Almost like every week, we had something else that would go viral, because nothing galvanizes a fan base like when you’re successful, the team is good, the players are good, you’re winning, and the media or other narratives are coming at you. It puts a chip on the shoulder.”
The Value of Fandom
In its most fully developed state, sports fandom seeps deeply into hearts and minds, and it’s contagious throughout a snowballing mass that grows stronger with each addition and display. The strength, appeal, and spread of a brand create immeasurable value in ways both tangible and intangible. It all leads to arrows and trendlines pointing up, making every activation and strategy that much more meaningful and effective. It’s not always easy to measure linearly, because fandom drives success exponentially.
“I firmly believe that sports fandom can be boiled down to a desire for connection and community, and it’s fueled by identity. Those three pillars, to me, are the things that you have to engage in some way, because that’s what we are at the core of our identity or our kind of essence of sports fandom and sports consumerism. And I think finding ways to engage and leverage those, or build some brand pillars that help kind of convey those…In the Canes case, we defined it as fun, bold, and regional, but those were still lenses we could operate through. Like, regional is a great one, because we can talk about local community engagement and building a Canes bar network, or authentic brand positioning campaigns that were like murals or things like that. So, ultimately, the essence of those things, it’s not directly measurable in a traditional sense; it can be in a bunch of different ways of like, alright, how do we attribute this to that? But if you’re seeing certain things in your tracking, how retail sales of certain items are going up and trying to understand the psychology behind that, or certain types of social content or campaign or messaging or email pieces or other activations, whatever it may be, events or or ticket offers or promotional theme nights — all that stuff is measurable in a sense, but you have to also be able to tie it back to that human element in order to kind of have both sides there. You got to have the tactics you can measure, the activations you can measure and then refine and optimize, and you got to have well, this is how we tie it back to affinity or passion or community or belonging, or these other less tangible and measurable things that are really at the core and essence of what it means to be a sports fan…
“We had all these little ways we were going to try to get [the Canes] logo out there authentically. And it was like, alright, high-quality decals in every online order from our e-commerce shop and working with local businesses to distribute flags and all these little ways to influence the visual positioning of our brand, because that creates more passion. People see that and they say, I want to be part of that, or that’s something, or they’re already a fan, they’re like, I love that. This is that piece of their identity hanging on a flag outside their local bar, and that’s an important piece there. Well, yeah, it’s not as measurable, but it’s so important for growing a brand and creating that sense of pride and that regional sort of connection there, that sports really is.”
Making Big Moments Bigger
Sports are unpredictably predictable. There is a whole lot you can plan for (more on that in the next section), and a whole lot of extemporaneous opportunities that’ll present high ceilings of upside, even if you can’t foresee the details. It’s part art, part science, to enlist a well-worn but apt cliche, and a social media sixth sense of sorts to spot an opportunity to seize — provided the preparation and systems are in place to make seizing said opportunity possible in the first place. LaTorraca recounted one of the many examples of the Canes being ready to execute when an unexpected moment struck (and this excerpt doesn’t even capture all the ways the Canes capitalized):
“The last big piece we had with Twitter Amplify was the David Ayres game, which I’m sure you remember, was the emergency backup goalie comes in for an extended period, not just a couple of seconds, and essentially wins the game against the Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada. And he was the team Zamboni driver. It was this whole wild story. And that video, I remember texting our video producer at the time and was like, Dude, you glue yourself to him, get as much as you can, because we didn’t have video people traveling prior to my first season there. But [revenue via] Twitter Amplify helped me make the case of being like, look at all the money we’re making, we need more video. Thank God somebody was there, and it wasn’t just a PR person with their cell phone getting something. We had one of our best video producers there, and he got some iconic footage that was later used in ESPN commercials and all sorts of stuff. But that one video where, if anybody listening goes and Googles David Ayres, of him walking into the locker room after the game, and all the Canes players are spraying him with water and all that, that one video made like $80,000 for us, and it was insane.”
Building and Activating a Well-Oiled Machine
Just like some of the best athletes make impressive plays look easy, some of the sports organizations make agile execution look smooth, too — like they had it planned all along. Both the athlete and the team can make it look easy because they’ve prepared and planned. They’ve been proactive in setting up the systems that need to operate together when the moment comes and have plans ready to go for every scenario, many of which can be anticipated, to whatever degree of precision. One of the most memorable initiatives from LaTorraca’s time with the Canes was when well-known hockey commentator in Canada, Don Cherry, called the Canes ‘A bunch of jerks.’ And the rest is history, as that line was molded into a revenue stream and a galvanizing force for Canes fans everywhere. LaTorraca explained how executing around that campaign and initiative was just one example of the importance of ‘proactive planning.’
“Creating a culture that prioritizes that proactive planning really is the key to being able to have the runway to capitalize when crazy stuff happens. And it always does. Lightning struck us two times in a year at the Canes, and that was great, and then it didn’t strike the same way for a while. But we had that Bunch of Jerks thing, and we were able to capitalize on it and build a shirt. And people are important, too; we had the right relationships. I can still remember sitting in my office after that game, after we sort of concocted this plan, and Mike Foreman is texting Don Waddell and Tom [Dundon], being like, Hey, we’ve talked, we’re making shirts about this. You know, like, I pitched this idea to him and I was like, we can use this company here, because at the time, Breaking T was just kind of getting big, and I was like, I think they can turn it around for us quickly, because I don’t want to wait here for this one. It was also President’s Day weekend, and a lot of other shirt distributors were closed. Mike got the approval and basically was like, Alright, if Dan can show what a shirt model will look like by the next morning, we’ll go…
“If you give yourself more time, it just leads to so much more opportunity for creativity and doing stuff that’s a higher quality. Whether it is planning out the promotional giveaway item or a Star Wars night idea. Our Whalers night is another great example of like, Hey, you really want to plan that out, that was a Super Bowl for us, in a way, to capitalize on that, whether it was retail or activation, it was a a chance for our creative team to flex, and you want to be able to plan that out far away in advance…Whatever you can do, give yourself the runway to do it for the things you can control. It goes back to what I tell my kids all the time, You can’t control what’s going to happen to you, but you can control how you react. And if you have the right system in place and process in place and plan and people and all that, and you can come up with the right ideas and creative solutions, you can really turn a tough situation into a win, or you can turn a win into a bigger win, but you gotta have a lot of things in place to do it. It doesn’t just happen like that, and if you don’t have the runway to do it, it’s not going to happen. So that’s what really separates the good from the great is those cultures that prioritize people first above all else, but process and proactive planning, and that’s how you really win time and time again when these things happen. Because they always will. It might not be as big as every other situation, but even capitalizing on the smaller ones can still drive value in the end.”
On episode 308 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Dan LaTorraca, Director of Marketing at Zoomph and sports business veteran.
Dan discusses the insights picked up throughout his career, including stints at the Carolina Panthers, Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment (Brooklyn Nets, Barclays Center, and more), and the Carolina Hurricanes, as well as what he’s learned from his role at Zoomph, too.
Watch or listen to episode 308 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Dan LaTorraca, Director of Marketing at Zoomph and sports business veteran.
Dan discusses the insights picked up throughout his career, including stints at the Carolina Panthers, Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment (Brooklyn Nets, Barclays Center, and more), and the Carolina Hurricanes, as well as what he’s learned from his role at Zoomph, too.
There are plenty of definitions, and no shortage of software tools and measurement businesses to answer that question. But, for the consumers — the actual sports fans — there is a bit of you know it when you see it. Part of it is longevity, with brand-sport associations that have been together so long, it feels like they go together like peanut butter and jelly. The activations aren’t interruptive but additive or complementary.
For the brands, they’re getting the proverbial bang for their buck. But that ‘bang for the buck’ can mean a lot of things, as anyone who has worked on the brand or property side can attest. The roots of sports sponsorships may have been outfield signs and facsimiles of newspaper ads, but the options are more varied and solution-oriented in modern times.
For the teams and leagues, it’s more than just a paycheck. The revenue is key, to be sure, but other elements come into play — brand associations that can elevate their own, better experiences and content for their fans supported by willing partners, and putting their stamp of approval or endorsement on products and services that help them and can help their fans, too.
Nick Kelly has been on all sides of the sponsorship equation. He witnessed the religious-like fealty with which fans treated their favorite drivers’ partners in NASCAR early in his career, he’s walked around a stadium seeing product get poured (usually!) with AB InBev, he was in the middle of deals that saw the sponsor selling service back to the property at Verizon, and he’s been at the helm of a major pro sports league as CEO of then-expansion Major League Soccer club Charlotte FC. He talked about the diversity of sponsorship ‘ROI’ and approaches for different brands, a departure from the ‘cookie-cutter’ paradigms that may have persisted at a less enlightened time.
“On the AB (AB InBev) side, it was very marketing-heavy,” said Kelly, who today has taken his years of experience and insights to help others as CEO of Encore Sports and Entertainment. “Like, we could never really tie it to direct sales: one, because it was super complicated, and two, it was illegal. I could never walk into Yankee Stadium and say, ‘Well, only 70% of the beer you’re selling here is mine, but I’m paying you 100% of the sponsorship revenue. What gives?’
“On the Verizon side, you could be very black and white,” he said. “So a lot of it was very marketing ROI driven, brand lift, social media engagements, a lot of the soft metrics, but they mattered. And look, sports still are probably the number one, if not the biggest marketing pillar or marketing channel you can have to drive brand awareness. On the Verizon side, for us, a lot of it was business back. A lot of it was ‘What is the value I can pass to our 130 million consumers?’ I’ve got 130 million consumers; what do they get as a Verizon customer and a Washington Commanders fan? [For example], is there 10% off the team store? Is there early access to tickets? We didn’t really even take into consideration a lot of the soft metrics. They were there, but that wasn’t really driving the immediate value back to us.”
The sponsorship paradigms have undergone more shifts than ever in the last couple of decades, too, as sports teams have adopted new platforms that allow them to reach more fans than ever, and with often wildly unpredictable swings in audience. New signage and new naming rights were easy enough to adapt, but then Facebook posts and tweets and Stories came along, and, more recently, TikTok, where a post could reach hundreds or millions, with even social media managers not always quite sure which posts will hit.
Kelly provided insight from his perch, as he was right in the thick of this rapid evolution in sponsorships, full of opportunities and uncertainties.
“The bigger challenge became as new assets came online, and we wanted to create them with teams; I think we both struggled to price them,” said Kelly. “It’s like, ‘Hey, we want to come up with a content series for TikTok; well, TikTok just started, we’ve never priced that out’. Or when we signed the deal, they only had 20,000 followers, and when the deal came up, they’ve got 3 million. And it’s fair. So I think it became a little bit more of like we do understand the rate card is a league-informed baseline of what teams charge, but not all teams are created equal. And honestly, the content that teams create isn’t all equal.” [Interesting to note that Kelly called out the Jacksonville Jaguars as being particularly good at content during his time working with AB InBev]
The often-volatile nature of sports teams’ audiences, especially on social platforms where the difference between a winning and a losing season could sometimes vastly inflate or deflate the metrics reached, led Kelly and his colleagues at AB InBev to create a new model, an incentives-laden sponsorship deal. The goal for both sides was for the team to crush it, to hit the highest of highs and receive the highest payout; that’s what AB InBev budgeted for, too. Teams can go on championship runs that deliver better and bigger audiences than expected; they can also find a new groove in content production that captures big numbers on social and digital platforms. The new deal structures ensured they could get rewarded for that success. Kelly explained the how and the why.
“In theory, we probably had 15 to $20 million a year at risk that was based in incentives,” he said,” but we fully expected to pay it. But it was very time-consuming and cumbersome to coach all the teams on how to get to that successful metric. It was based on everything from the social media side — we even did it off of attendance or championships — so they can just get paid their bonus now, so then when the renewal comes up, it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re more valuable.’ ‘[Well] I already paid you for that. We already paid you for winning a championship, but if you don’t go to the championship, if all of a sudden you go from winning the NBA Finals to not making the playoffs, it’s not like I have a chance to come back down. So it helped us in forecasting a lot.’”
There’s a sense of fairness and trust cultivated with deals like that. And even the notion of ‘coaching’ teams to those metrics caught my eye. Memories are long in professional relationships, and the sports industry is no exception. The importance of honest and open communication was a consistent throughline during my discussion with Kelly, and is no doubt a big part of how he has cultivated successful partnerships, activations, and initiatives over the years.
While you may walk with your head a little higher after buying a new car and feeling you got one over on the salesperson, the best partnerships are when both sides win. The individual on the brand side driving the sponsorship wants to ensure the company’s decision to invest in the partnership was the right one, while the property side wants to also show they more than justified the cost of the deal, and that renewal is an easy decision when the deal expires.
“Nobody on the brand side ever goes into a deal trying to think ‘I gotta get as much out of this as possible because we’re likely not going to renew’,” said Kelly. “The brand side is overly incentivized because they have probably fought to get this deal, so they need to make it look like it’s the smartest decision they have ever made or recommended to their CMO or CEO by getting a ton of value out of it and then ultimately renewing the deal because it was such a great investment.
“Most times when a partnership doesn’t work, it’s either, one, a change of strategy which the team can’t help, or two, the brand itself didn’t put the right resources to get the most out of the partnership. Very seldom is it that the team has not provided or been flexible enough for the brand to get the value out of it. Because, look, no team wants to take any category back to market. So I think a lot of the communication has to come from the brand and the agencies to get to success, because you having to justify why you spent X amount of dollars on a partnership and why that was a bad decision three years later, it’s tough, because it puts your job at jeopardy.”
Kelly continued, discussing why he understands the frustration that can come from each side, as both brand and property want to do right by the partnership, and can feel pressured to deliver and over-deliver on expectations.
“That’s the one thing that we’re counseling some of our clients on now is like, you fought for this, you fought for, or your CMO handed you this or your CEO, you need to make it work,” said Kelly, referencing the advising and work he and his team do today at Encore. “You’re not in a position, and the teams should know that, like, they’re in a position to make all of these deals work. And when they’re being a pain in the ass and they’re asking you for stuff, it’s not because they’re being selfish, and it’s not because they just are trying to get more than they want, they’re trying to justify the expense they made, period.”
These conversations are often framed around how the property (team/league) delivers sufficient value and results for the brand. But, in recent years, as more emerging sports leagues have entered the ecosystem and women’s sports leagues continue to command and demand attention and investment, the pollyannaish paradigm of partnerships are more viable and visible than ever. These are two-way relationships where the partner helps elevate the league/team as much, if not more, than the other way around.
Big brands, with deep pockets, haven’t just put their money where their mouth is, by betting on the growing women’s sports leagues, especially, they’ve also taken action to ensure the gatekeepers appreciate the consumer demand for women’s sports as much as the sponsors believe in them (and the data often dictates).
“They don’t just write the check and then walk away and hope the partners do it all,” said Kelly, discussing the partners of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), who’ve often been vocal about getting games more exposure on broadcast networks, with whom they’ve also invested. “They’re amplifying on their traditional, social media, above the line, everything; they’re there. They’ve done a great job of connecting the dots.
“They don’t just hand the NWSL a check and then say, I don’t have anything left for you, broadcast partners or players. They’ve been able to close the loop. They’re supporting the broadcast partners. Then they’re making demands in a very responsible way of like, ‘We need to see this more on linear [television]. We need to see this more in the right time slots.’ And it really takes somebody with the right vision and the right brand, with the right vision to pull it forward because the commissioners of these leagues are in a tough spot because they want to drive as much revenue as possible to the league to then disperse out to all the owners. Then obviously they want the teams driving their own revenue, too. But when you get a brand like Ally who does the full flywheel of every point, everybody gets a little piece, and everybody’s getting elevated.”
There’s a perception bump, too, that can come when a big-name brand signs on to partner with an emerging league. Pick your favorite upstart league and its trajectory can often be seen through its sponsor roster. The endemics typically come first; it makes sense for equipment manufacturers and apparel partners, for example, to sign up early and a lot of the early fans are participants in the sports, so fit a sweet spot segment of potential customers for brands endemic to the sport. As the fan base broadens, with more interest and engagement, so, too, does the list of partners.
Before long, well-known brands in the auto, insurance, beverage, quick-service restaurant, and other CPG and B2B brands seeking to reach a wide swath of fans. The day a league signs a blue-chip brand like AB InBev can be a signficant signpost — a big brand believes in the league, and the windfall that comes with such a sponsorship allows for further investment and growth. Kelly reflected on this idea, noting the big brands he represented were cognizant about what their investment could mean to a growing league.
“We weren’t naive to the influence we had when we were at either one of those companies I worked at, because, we knew that if we came on to a league early on, because we believed in it, it helped establish credibility for the league if you have, you know, a Budweiser or Verizon on board early,” he said. “And it was just very much a ‘Do we believe that this is, one, good for us because we’re hitting another audience?’ And two, ‘Do we believe they have the infrastructure in place to actually go and drive even incremental value for us than we actually are investing?’
“We saw hundreds of presentations over the years from esports teams. And, you know, we did Drone Racing League for a while, all these other ones where it was just like, you know, it meant a lot. For us, it became a little bit more we got on the sales tour with them promoting like, well, why did you invest? And they would just say, ‘Hey, can brand X call you and tell you about what you’re doing in our sport?’ And it’s like, sure. So, oftentimes in these emerging sports we became a little bit more of like an evangelist for why did you invest. And look, we felt that it was a privilege and also a responsibility of, if we were investing here, we got to see that it works.”
Sports sponsorships may have started out, decades ago, as advertising transactions and static assets, but they’ve since evolved into integrated relationships. The most successful deals today are no longer about merely buying access, but about engineering a dynamic where every stakeholder wins: the brand justifies its investment, the property elevates its value, the emerging league gains credibility, the fans receive better, more engaging experiences.
The modern sponsorship is a flywheel where both sides, and increasingly the fans, are fully invested in the other’s success. It requires honest communication, the flexibility to account for unpredictable growth, and the vision to see an investment not just as a cost, but as a commitment to the growth of the entire sport. The biggest win isn’t just a renewal, it’s a legacy of impact.
A good sports sponsorship is one that leaves all parties better off for the relationship. It’s not just a line item on the budget, but a statement of shared belief, proving that when partners rise together, everybody wins.
