A business-minded look at digital and social media in sports
Watch or listen to episode 315 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Paige Price, Social Media Creator for the Washington Spirit NWSL Club.
Paige discusses building her career in sports and content, her role with the Washington Spirit, getting to know the players and creating content with them, being the fans’ lens into the team, behind the scenes of the Trinity Rodman re-signing, and more.
106 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
Ostensibly, sports business is selling a product. A social experience, affordable family entertainment, a compelling show.
But products have customers. In sports, we want fans.
Fans make the team or league part of their personality. Their favorite sport or athlete becomes an inseparable part of their identity. They become evangelists for the brand, recruiting others and spreading the good word. That kind of devotion transcends the product; that’s where brand comes into play.
Paul Stafford has worked with the biggest consumer brands in the world, in sports, but also well beyond sports. He appreciates that brands are not just a name, a logo, or a tagline — that’s not how he’s helped organizations like Airbnb, EA, and the Premier League, among others, develop authentic, resonant brands. He gave me a thoughtful description of how to think about brand and the difference between building a brand and executing a business strategy.
“I think many businesses are good at distilling a business strategy and understanding what they’re trying to do on a tangible level of, of ‘We’re going to invest in this space, we’re going to develop this product, so we’re going to appeal to these target audiences,'” said Stafford, CEO of global branding and creative agency Further. “But actually, you can’t then just communicate that to the world, you need to understand, well, what does that mean, and how does that translate into a role that this business is going to play in their customers’ lives?
“What is it that Jeff Bezos famously said: A brand is what people say about you when they’re not in the room. And that’s exactly it. What are they going to say about you?”
These are the elements that broaden the impact of the product or service. And that’s why it’s integral for all parts of an organization to understand the brand and know how to put it into practice. Brand isn’t a marketing motion, it’s not a sales tactic, it’s not a guide for the roadmap, nor a tone or personality trait — it’s all those things and more. Stafford explained that the strongest brands hit fans with consistency and conviction at every level and interaction — that’s what makes it undeniable and recognizable.
“Every single interaction that any customer, any employee, anybody, any business has with your business should really kind of play through that lens of like, well, how does it build on that proposition, how is it uniquely a relationship and an experience that only our business could have?” said Stafford, who led the company DesignStudio before it coalesced into Further. “And I think that’s it. You should be able to cover the logo, cover the marketing copy, but the whole experience and interaction should feel very much like that brand. So it doesn’t really matter what the touchpoints are. They can grow and will continue to grow, especially in this world of AI, but actually, that proposition should stay sacred from the very beginning, right the way through to the very end.”
Something special starts to happen as the brand seeps in, when customers have something to latch onto and can transform from customers to fans. In sports, marketers can think of fandom on a spectrum — from curious casuals to diehard evangelists. More broadly for brands across any vertical, Stafford referenced the ‘commitment curve.’
The commitment curve can be tantamount to avidity, but it can also mean more than that nowadays. Because the best marketing is word of mouth, real people spreading the word organically, those at the top of the commitment curve aren’t just patrons, but promoters.
“If you think about this as a sort of chart, and you think about it as who’s the most committed on this side, and also then how much you can ask those people who are committed that much…,” said Stafford, who invoked the ‘commitment curve’ concept as originated by former Airbnb Global Head of Community, Douglas Atkin. “So if you think about it as a founder or a chairman or the team, it’s those people who are the most committed to the business, and you can make the biggest ask of them. You don’t need to sell them anything. They are the business.
“Then you can think about each of these parts of the community as like a step down. So the next step down will be your employees, the actual team’s players in there, you can almost ask them the same. Next down, you probably have your most avid fans and supporters. Next down, you’ve got ‘I go three, four times a year’ kind of fans. All the way through to people who have never heard of you.”
An underlying truth in all this is that brands can’t be dictated. If, as Stafford mentioned earlier (referencing Jeff Bezos), that brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, then surely brand cannot, by that definition, be centrally controlled. It’s in the hands of others, and the best that organizations can do is to influence the thoughts and ideas of the most vocal and influential.
It can be a sobering, even intimidating, realization that even with all the resources and distribution channels in the world, brands can only control so much. But flip that on its head, says Stafford, and empower others to tell your story. Make everyone who cares, who’s high on the commitment curve, stewards of the brand.
“I think when you’re generating a brand, what you need to think of is how do we give the assets to each of these people to make them take one step up that ladder?” said Stafford. “So what do we give our employees or our team? What tools do we give them so they start acting like founders, they start acting like CEOs, they know the decisions to make, they know how to communicate what this business means as a founder? Those superfans, how do we give them the tools they need to start talking about us like they play for the club?”
Stafford has seen the challenges and opportunities inherent in this framework when working with global, generational brands. They have to be resilient and preserved, but also adaptable and evolved. The key insight, Stafford explained, isn’t to concede to the staunch preservationists or follow the lead of those looking to the future — it’s about taking those fan evangelists on the journey with you. It’s a balancing act, said Stafford.
“If your club wants to move into all of these new spaces and forget its loyal fans, forget its roots, you lose that connection,” he told me. “And, like I’m saying, a brand is never successful by just its own internal teams communicating. You need those advocates. You need those fans to go and tell that story for you. So you need to take them on the journey. And that’s why, really, you have to understand what it is that’s important to them, how that becomes a foundation, and how it communicates where you’re going in the future.”
These principles came to bear when Stafford and his team were tasked with the Premier League rebrand in 2016-17, when the top global football league dropped the longtime ‘Barclays Premier League’ moniker and refreshed its logo, among other efforts. Stafford walked me through a bit of the process, describing the balance of respecting the past while looking ahead to the future. There were several elements for which to account.
“They went and interviewed the fans and listened to everything they said, and then created something that is exactly what the fans said,” explaining fans’ resistance to proposed changes. “But then, when they had it played back to them, it was wrong. I think that’s right.
“You gotta understand where you listen, where you challenge, and where you have to take fans on a journey to the future, even if they don’t like it at the beginning. So how are you going to take them on the journey?”
Bringing fans along for the ride necessarily requires loosening the reins of control. The platforms are too dynamic, and almost everybody wants to be something of a creator. It’s not just naive to think every fan who plays off your brand or remixes your content will adhere to some arcane, static standards, it’s short-sighted.
Stafford recognizes it’s not easy for brands to adapt to this new normal. But it’s an opportunity to achieve outsized results, to empower abassadors who will build on your brand and make it stronger, engendering greater loyalty, expansion, and engagement.
“We’re working a lot with brands now to say, well, we need to stop this being so locked down, we need to give it the flexibility to embrace and utilize the community, that they’re going to go and use these assets,” he said. “We just need to build some way that those things, whether that’s a visual way, whether it’s a tonal way, that kind of resonates and builds it back to us…
“So we are working with brands now [on] how do you create assets that can always be adapted, given out, iterated on, but also be recognized as you and yours and build that brand loyalty back to you. It’s going to be a bigger and bigger challenge as we go forward, but it is how brands need to start thinking.”
The most powerful brands, the ones that inspire zealous devotion, aren’t owned, but shared. That’s when customers act more like fans and fans behave more like evangelists. When fans don’t refer to the team as ‘them’ but ‘us’ — it’s our team, our organization, our brand. The commitment curve crests at the point where brand blends with identity, and fans feel part of it themselves.
On episode 314 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Paul Stafford, CEO of Further, a global branding and creative agency.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.
Watch or listen to episode 314 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Paul Stafford, CEO of Further, a global branding and creative agency.
Paul discusses his work building DesignStudio before its expansion and reformation into Further, rebranding Airbnb and the Premier League, what goes into brand building, what the ‘commitment curve’ means in developing customers and fans, and more.
81 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
Why is sports sponsorship valuable? What factors make it a premium asset for brands?
Sure, the ability to command large, broad, often live audiences plays a major role. But as marketing has matured, the unique value proposition for sports has only grown and has become better understood and appreciated.
Sara Toussaint has seen this play out throughout her career, with experience on all sides of the sports and athlete sponsorship complex. She’s seen fan affinities drive business outcomes through partnerships, she’s been part of tactics that activated partnerships during emotionally charged moments in live sports, and she’s seen new, once vastly undervalued opportunities emerge in women’s sports, which perhaps coalesce all of the above factors in driving the premium value of sports sponsorship.
Toussaint, who today is co-CEO of global women’s soccer-focused athlete management agency TMJ, spent nearly a decade at Wells Fargo driving the bank’s sports sponsorships. Partnerships in sports were not on an island; they were part of Wells Fargo’s overall marketing plans and expected to drive tangible, compounding cross-channel results. Standard wisdom suggests sports fans will support the partners of their favorite teams, especially when it enhances their own fandom. Toussaint explained how this played out for Wells Fargo’s sponsorships in pro and college sports.
“On the Wells Fargo side, it was how do we support the marketing initiatives that the CMO had set in place?” said Toussaint, who spent time at Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer, among other stops, before her tenure at Wells Fargo. “We would use sponsorship as a way to augment the existing media plans and marketing strategies for everything from the websites and store, etc.
“Then, from the brand side, what the property really wanted [was for] Wells Fargo, especially around the Mexican national team and Major League Soccer, to promote those properties here in the US. So to have the Mexican national team debit card on every Wells Fargo ATM was a huge win…there’s a lot of data out there on consumer affinity to brands that support their favorite teams — and we definitely saw that in terms of the number of accounts that were opened, and we could tie that to a Mexican national team card, a Florida Gator card to a new account. Like, we could say on that account that was the card that they requested, and we can presume that we had done marketing there that had caused that demand.”
It’s not just about brand associations and tailing affinities, though. Part of the magic of sports sponsorships is the inherent preponderance of high-impact moments and campaigns. Times when fans are excited, their hearts racing, and their attention focused. That feature of sport is an opportunity for brand partners to make their sponsorships active, riding the wake of the emotional highs, augmented by the real-time nature and inherent connection of sports and social media.
Toussaint had a hand and a front-row view of these opportunities, with Wells Fargo’s partner, the national soccer team for Mexico, competing in the World Cup. She described a clever, provocative campaign that saw American soccer hero Landon Donovan expressing that he’d be cheering for Mexico, and also recounted how Wells Fargo made the most of their sponsorship during the matches and moments themselves.
“We did a lot of live social moments [during the World Cup],” she said. “Our social media team at Wells Fargo had a control room, and there were probably nine screens they could monitor, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook. We had the World Cup up while Mexico played, and we pre-programmed creative and copy as much as possible, so as things happened during a match, we were ready with a post, or we were ready to then supplement, like they just won, ‘Get your Wells Fargo Mexico debit card’ or whatever, and do that in real time. So that social media piece was a really big win for us around the World Cup.”
Social media wasn’t just a way for a brand like Wells Fargo to enter the conversation alongside the properties they were sponsoring, it also gave emerging sports, leagues, and athletes a more level, meritocratic playing field to fuel their rise. These catalyzing elements helped several new sports and leagues find footing, but the impact has been (and continues to be) most evident in women’s sports.
Toussaint recounted to me how a past colleague, at the time, saw the opportunity in women’s sports as a growing and undervalued asset. She looked at the rising National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), and it was the social and digital channels, in particular, which stood out.
“There were so many compelling reasons for sponsoring NWSL,” said Toussaint, who is also a co-owner of two pro soccer teams, the North Carolina Courage in the NWSL and Querétaro FC in Liga MX (Mexico’s top-flight men’s pro soccer league). “For me, the number one reason was the digital footprint and engagement footprint. I was like, Wow, this could be a really cost-effective way to get social media engagement.”
With more women’s sports and athletes commanding attention and audiences on social and digital media, the legacy media began catching up, with coverage going from 4% not long ago to around 15% today, Toussaint noted (citing reports from Sports Innovation Lab, among others). While the early sponsors have been followed by more brands, but the scope and scale of women’s sports still pales in comparison to most of the more mature, generations-old men’s sports properties and its traditional sponsorship assets.
That’s an opportunity, though, said Toussaint.
“With the women, aside from the data, we can also say, Look, it’s not as saturated as men’s sports, so you’re going to have a lot more awareness,” said Toussaint, who heads TMJ’s TMJ Catalyst, which focuses on connecting TMJ’s athletes with brands and business leaders for deals. “You have a lot more white space to play in. We talked about brand loyalty, you’re going to have a lot more of that. You’ve got new categories you can play with. You can try new things, and it becomes even more of a white space because you’re not competing against brands that are typically in this landscape. So that’s a big piece.”
The combination of more media coverage, more brand partnerships, bigger audiences, and more fan interest has turned women’s sports into an asset class that’s increasingly attracting institutional capital and high-net-worth individuals. That infusion and energy will only accelerate the flywheel, driving more growth and more capital in a virtuous cycle of value creation. The bigger fan bases, superstar athletes, and increased cross-channel footprint are all good signs for the continued rise of women’s sports — but it’s that investment that Toussaint cited as perhaps the most impactful factor showing the world, especially the business world, that women’s sports are far from the more charity-driven, corporate social responsibility play the properties may have been a generation ago.
“People follow wherever the money goes, and you’re seeing big money get into women’s sports, and you’re seeing billionaires buying [in],” she said. “And for whatever reason, people think billionaires are like the smartest folks in the room…That news is now on CNBC, and marketers are watching CNBC, right? So you’ve got exponential input that’s coming into the space, and that’s really important. Where the money goes, especially big money names, you’re going to have the media following, and you’re going to have the marketers follow, too.”
The marketers are here. The value proposition for women’s sports is undeniable. And the new paradigms in sports business will favor women’s sports, with its strong social and digital game. As sponsorship further appreciates elements beyond eyeballs, it’ll be the sports properties that can deliver activation and affinities, and the brands that can capitalize on sports’ special elements and emotions that will turn potential value into kinetic outcomes.
On episode 313 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Sara Toussaint, Co-CEO of TMJ and Head of TMJ Catalyst. She’s also co-owner of the NWSL club North Carolina Courage and Liga MX club Querétaro F.C.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.
I went to the Rodeo Championships at Petco Park in San Diego and took notes on the fan experience, content, and the event overall, with a sports business lens. There were probably ~ 10-12,000 attendees and some good takeaways + opportunities.
Check out some of the visuals below and quick hit nuggets and observations here:
🤠 There were protesters outside the main gates, chanting with a megaphone and handing out pamphlets, speaking against cruelty to animals. It was a small but vocal group (fewer than 10 people)
🤠 One of the highlights was the Kids Fest before the event, clearly positioning this as a family outing and trying to get kids excited about rodeo. The Kids Fest included limited sponsor presence, but a handful of activities, including:
(Padres-branded) bounce houses, a bandana station to decorate your bandana, bouncy horses to ride, a lasso station to teach kids, a cowboy on stilts, and, naturally, line dancing (some impromptu, some planned), not live music. There was also, notably, no beer or food on sale (let alone free food) at the Kids Fest — something like free snow cones or kettle corn would’ve been great
🤠 There seemed to be a good amount of VIP elements and upsells — get up close to the animals and competition area before the event, and premium seating right up next to it
🤠 In addition to the National Anthem, the pre-event ceremony included a prayer, addressing and thanking the lord, and also tinged with patriotism thanking the troops
🤠 The demographics of attendees — mostly white, multi-generational families, young kids, older couples, too, and also a good amount of young adults and college-aged females (who were excited to put on the cowboy gear, no doubt). Also some Hispanics (we are in San Diego, after all)
🤠 There was not much pre-event pageantry overall besides some brief intros and very little explanation of the events and scoring. But this is championship Sunday, so perhaps less necessary
🤠 It’s a competition more than a show, so the competitors did not display much personality. Though I’d love to see more distinct outfits, including their horses. There was also little interaction with competitors until the very end. These competitors have intriguing stories (video vignettes peppered through the event would be cool). Post-event meet and greets would be advisable, too. Have CTAs for their social media accounts…
🤠 There was limited audience interaction or digital CTAs during the event, though if you dug in enough, you could find a live scoreboard website. It would be good otherwise have more interaction, too — predictions, ETWs, merch promos
🤠 While there wasn’t much sponsored elements (the kiss cam, for example, was non-branded, there was solid title sponsorship of each competition with prolonged exposure across screens, including a brand flag ride around on a horse before starting each event
🤠 Some, not all, of the riders’ shirts were decked out in sponsor logos, not quite motorsports-esque in volume
🤠 The co-branding with the San Diego Padres was unmistakable – from the colors and even the paper numbers on the competitors ( a bit tacky like they’re marathon runners) having Padres on them. The staff had sweet baseball uniform jerseys with San Diego Rodeo — sell those! Or auction them autographed autographs
🤠 There was a sweepstakes promoted on the video board, a toolbox ETW — with QR code on the board to enter
🤠 There is a good amount of downtime between events, with ample space to fill with content. There was later some audience interaction with kiss cam, dance cam, trivia, and even a marriage proposal. Sponsorable assets there
Definitely more opportunity for unique camera views — POV of the riders cowboy, of the support staff often right next to the action, a camera on the animals, the accessory riders
🤠 The highlight of the day was an acrobatic trick rider, doing stands and holds while horse riding. Impressive! And the crowd seemed to enjoy it, good fodder for social
🤠 Other random observations:
– Officials throw flags during events to denote fouls like NFL refs
– I saw a couple of cowboys gear-wearing girls filming a TikTok on the side of the concourse
– They emptied the bazooka of singalong songs, with a medley of all of them together during a 3-4 minute break
– There were a couple of times when people were honored on the dirt (including youth rodeo). If they can go on the dirt between events, I’d love to see some simple fun games like a horseshoe toss or something
– It feels like the sport could do a lot in collecting and sharing data — torque of the bucking horse, speed off the horses, heart rates of the riders, height of bucking bulls, perceived difficulty of the moves, etc.
Western culture is having a moment in the US, and that’s part of why I was interested to check out this event. They didn’t invoke the pop culture popularity of cowboy culture and lifestyle, taking a serious approach to a world-class competition. The crowd was impressive and engaged, and the opportunity to grow through content, partnerships, and lifestyle is clear, too. In an increasingly digital, AI world, the timeless nature of rodeo offers something special, taking people back to simpler times.
Watch or listen to episode 313 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Sara Toussaint, Co-CEO of TMJ and Head of TMJ Catalyst. She’s also co-owner of the NWSL club North Carolina Courage and Liga MX club Querétaro F.C.
Sara discusses the work with women’s sports athletes and brands at TMJ and TMJ Catalyst, and lessons learned from her background working in sports sponsorships with Wells Fargo and experience at Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, and more.
54 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
The word ‘fan’ is thrown around far too liberally nowadays.
Sports, entertainers, creators, influencers, everyday individuals — they can all regularly reach and engage millions of people every day. However, not every person who consumes, watches, engages, and even shares or saves is a fan. Likewise, not every person who attends a game or show is a fan. Your favorite team’s biggest fan may never attend a game or watch a game, but their closest is full of team swag and merch. That is, if a team is even the focal point of their sports fandom in the first place.
Developing true fans (remember, fan is short for fanatic) requires something more than exposure. Fandom is a journey, and it can manifest in diverse ways. As more brands and properties emerge with dreams of building their own fan base, there’s an increasing diversity of pathways to fandom and definitions of it.
Alyssa Meyers encounters a variety of strategies and tactics to create fans, engage them, activate within fandom, and identify new forms of fandom that are worth paying attention to and exploiting. A senior reporter for Marketing Brew, one of Meyers’s main beats is sports, a broad look at the business of sports and sports-adjacent brands and properties, how they market, how partners participate, how fans engage, and the trends and tactics that play out in this dynamic space. She told me about the avenues to fandom she’s been seeing in her conversations and reporting, as countless leagues and properties seek to earn their spot in the zeitgeist and the fan base that can come from that.
“I hear a lot about [the ‘next gen fan’], see a lot about that, and write a lot about that. I think it’s smart. I’ve been seeing it a ton, especially lately in motorsports,” said Meyers, who picked up the sports business beat only after joining Marketing Brew. “I think after what happened with Formula One in the US, even F1 and teams are still, I think, focused on, Okay, we have this new audience. They’re young, they’re women, they’re from parts of the world that we have not reached before. They’re here, they’re interested. How can we make them a fan of our team? How can we make sure that they will wake up at eight in the morning to watch a race in Abu Dhabi, as opposed to just watching Drive to Survive?…
“Fandom starts so young,” she said, elaborating on the focus to develop young fans. “People say this to me all the time in conversation. I think the sports marketers that are really knowledgeable about this do say things along the lines of, We’ve done studies, we know fandom starts when you’re three, four, five years old, super young, so why would we not think about a fan’s journey from that young age?”
In some ways, it’s never been easier to cultivate fans, with sports intersecting with so many parts of culture. In other ways, however, the competition for fans’ attention, hearts, and minds has never been greater, with fewer barriers to entry and massive audiences up for grabs every day. The result is more creativity and innovation in sports marketing tactics, from collaborations across verticals, unique merch, and even mascots making moves. Meyers described a bit of what she’s been seeing and reporting about, including her personal experiences as a fan.
“I’m so excited about what brands and teams and leagues are doing with mascots lately,” said Meyers, who told me about some of the fun activations with Ellie, the New York Liberty’s feminine elephant mascot. “That has been such a fun story for me to follow, because I do think that brands can play a role in developing the profile of a more rising team or league or sport. There’ve been some really cool campaigns with mascots, and I think that’s so fun.
“Partnerships with musicians, fashion collabs, I think, have been really cool, the NFL’s new partnership with Abercrombie this season.” Meyers also noted. ” It’s been amazing to see merch across the board get a little bit cooler, more stylish. I don’t just have to wear some big jersey that’s not made for a woman. I can spend money on a really cool jacket from my favorite team, or something like that. There’s just so much exciting stuff going on.”
The strategies playing out with various collaborations are the tip of the spear for fan development, very much integral in generating awareness, consideration, and conversion of new fans. And this is where that definition of fandom expands, with a growing number of devotees who may know little about the actual games, let alone the X’s and O’s, but still adopt something of the brand, the team, the athlete, the sport, into their identity. There are fans entering by association, too, who become true fans because an influencer or celebrity with whom they have a parasocial relationship is a fan — it’s a way to feel closer to the community and other fans; fandom by proxy.
Meyers spoke about the brand and influencer relationships, and how there are ‘new types’ of fans developing.
“I think brands do play a role, like doing innovative brand partnerships with big name companies that have an audience, even if it’s not fandom of like a sport. But I think there’s something to be said for that,” said Meyers, whose coverage goes well beyond mainstream sports to even fitness competitions like Hyrox. “I think some of the more lifestyle, entertainment partnerships are really cool.
“In the influencer vein, you think of music — there are creators in the music space, creators in the fashion space, creators in the food space — I’ve seen a lot of teams invite those people outside of sports, invite them in, have them come to a game, they do content that now their followers, who maybe only care about fashion, now they’re saying like, Oh, cool; like, we can go to this game and wear this merch. And it’s a whole new type of fan that you’ve unlocked. I think that a lot of organizations have had a lot of success going that route with something a little more unexpected, whether it’s a brand partner, an influencer partner, whoever, just branching out and getting new fans that way.”
Even some of the longstanding avenues to fandom are fading in importance in modern times, too. The primary motivation for fandom was originally local pride. You cheered for the local team, went to the games, watched the local broadcasts (those were often the only games you could watch), fell in love with the athletes, and then fell in love with new athletes as the roster changed over time. But now, outside of the limitation of regularly seeing the athletes and team IRL, there is no friction with being a fan of a team even a continent away, or an athlete, regardless of which team they’re on at the time.
This new reality has created new forms and categories for fandom, and new opportunities for sports properties to explore, Meyers explained.
“I think it’s incredibly feasible [to drive fandom outside of the region] for so many reasons,” she said. “I mean, look at the Premier League, look at how many Man City fans live in the US. I think there are some stats [that say] like 90% of Man City fans don’t live in the UK. You do not have to have that tie. I think the Premier League is an amazing example of that.
Meyers continued: “We already talked about how important connections with athletes are. In this day and age, you can build a team brand and have people root for your team just based on athletes, not based on the city. It’s sort of like the Athletes Unlimited model as well. They are another one that’s kind of doing this…
“I have come into sports fandom in so many different ways. And sometimes you have to pick a team; everyone isn’t going to grow up born into fandom. You don’t always pick a team based on where you live. People move around. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said about building a brand for a sports team that isn’t solely tied to the market or, geographically speaking…Everything is streamed; you could watch whatever team from whatever city.”
It’s not just the aspects of allegiance that are affecting how fandom is formed and manifests. The nature of consumption and engagement is evolving, too. There is no single funnel for sports marketers to work within anymore. The right funnel for every fan doesn’t lead to buying tickets or tuning into live games, necessarily. Particularly as teams and leagues seek to cultivate fans all over the world, they’ve had to adjust their definitions of fandom, aligning with modern fan traits and behaviors. Meyers described some of the ways sports properties are adapting to the emerging ways that fans are formed and want to engage.
“They’re clipping and putting value behind highlights and saying, Okay, people maybe don’t want to watch the whole game,” she said. “Maybe they can’t because they’re in a different time zone. That’s perfectly fine. We’re going to post a ton of highlights. If you only want to watch the highlights, that’s okay. That’s valuable. If you convert into buying a ticket or watching live from that, amazing. But if you don’t want to do that, that’s okay I think is the approach that a lot of marketers are taking, and I think the business case for it is integral.
“I think a lot of women’s soccer, when I think about the business of international sport, because I’m a fan, but also that’s a big conversation in terms of the player talent right now is, US stars that are based here, they can get paid a lot more money if they go play in the UK. and some of the biggest stars are. There are big disputes over their contracts now to keep them in the NWSL and vice versa. There are international superstars who are huge in their countries and on their national teams. Barbra Banda, Marta, like all these people who play in the NWSL. So you have to [develop fans internationally], and the league can monetize its fans in other countries. You just have to, because of that baseline reason that the talent is crossing countries more and more.”
Fan segments are increasingly diverse and complex. The motivations for fandom and pathways leading to one’s loyalty and expression of identity are more varied. The business strategies, in turn, are necessarily evolving to meet the new paradigms, reimagining sports marketing and embracing the cross-cultural nature of sports fandom today. But don’t mistake exposure for engagement, and don’t label engagement as devotion. Fandom is more than just a passing fad or a stop of the scroll; it’s about capturing a part of someone’s heart and mind.
On episode 312 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Alyssa Meyers, Senior Reporter for Marketing Brew, who writes extensively on sports marketing stories, backed by interviews with leading sports executives, as well as data and case studies.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.