There was a segment on SportsCenter that used to end each show back in the ’90s and ’00s called ‘Did You Know?’ It would leave viewers with a fun or interesting fact and it was brought to you by Invesco. Because as the voiceover told viewers, “You should know what Invesco knows.”
Decades later and I still remember it so well. That’s what good sponsored content can do.
It’s that sweet spot that people like Alex Kopilow are chasing — where fans enjoy the content (I loved ‘Did You Know?’) and the sponsor accomplishes what they’re after. Kopilow sits at the center of the growing ecosystem of social media in sports and sponsorship. In helping to construct digital and social activations, Kopilow and his colleagues aim for that intersection where fans and partners win.
“I think about what translates across any industry is, whether it’s organic content or branded content, you really have to think in terms of strategy of matching the expectations of fans when they hit the follow button,” said Kopilow, who is the Senior Manager of Digital for the Global Partnership Solutions group at MSG Sports, which runs the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, among other properties, following his time with the Chicago White Sox. “Why do they follow the White Sox? Why do they follow the Knicks or the Rangers?… It’s all about matching expectations of why people are following you in the first place and when coming up with any idea you need to keep that as your North Star when building things out.”
Tracing back the history of sponsorship in sports often goes back to the billboard — the signage on the walls and boards at games. Not every fan may know what Citgo does, let alone what makes its product superior, but any fan that attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park over the years surely remembers the Citgo sign that sat above the big ‘Green Monster’ wall at the famed venue. The ballpark billboard still thrives today and extends to the social media realm with the logo-ed graphic.
If there are 162 games in a Major League Baseball (MLB) season, that’s 162 starting lineup graphics with a brand logo and millions of impressions, for example. Such frequent exposure is great for brand awareness, so it makes sense for a sponsor where brand awareness is a key objective of the partnership. But that’s one of many potential goals for a partnership in sports and it’s the responsibility of Kopilow and his group to uncover fan-friendly, viable, feasible ways to activate a partnership that aligns with the objectives of both sides. Kopilow talked about the framework with which they approach a sponsor and how to arrive at that magical sweet spot.
“We go throughout the marketing funnel, so you definitely have your awareness goals where you have partners who just need brand recognition within your audience. So those are really great for high frequency, you know, your starting lineups, your final scores, something that’s going to appear every single game day…,” said Kopilow, who went on to explain the partner goals that go beyond awareness.
“I think a lot of partners now want to go a little bit deeper,” he said. “They want to really push product consideration and, you know, what are the best ways to show off your product? Is it the New York Giants using a Pepsi Zero Sugar can and doing a can challenge with their players and trying to roll it to the end of the table without it falling off and that’s a natural integration?…
“Then of course lead generation. I think there’s a lot of opportunity with lead generation that can continue to be used throughout the industry to help generate leads for partners. I think the teams have a lot to offer by way to get that information whether it’s tickets to a game, whether it’s unique experiences that teams can offer, it really gets people to opt in and be willing to pass along their information to the end goal partner…
“If you’re doing the right kind of partnership from the jump, that means there’s an attraction to have that audience and now you’ve generated it for a partner.”
Lead generation is where the promise of social and digital really comes to the forefront. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy, to tie new individual customers or purchases to a billboard or logo placement — with digital and social platforms it can be. But remember what Kopilow said about fan expectations and why they follow their favorite teams on these platforms? Their primary purpose for spending time with their team’s content on social is not to discover a partner deal or learn about its latest product or promotion or sign up for a sweepstakes or special offer subscription.
That doesn’t mean fans won’t engage with such content on social media, but it’s not the recipe for keeping followers engaged and winning their trust that stopping their scroll for your content is worthwhile. Kopilow discussed how teams can approach lead generation with their powerful platforms on social, matching the right strategy to the partner goal.
“I think the big thing when it comes to lead generation is it’s a natural fit with sports partnerships. I think where teams can go wrong is when they try to do that only via organic social media,” said Kopilow, who started his career pursuing sports broadcasting and journalism. “They’re trying to drive lower funnel tactics with organic social, which is really not made for that. All these social channels are really telling you ‘We want to keep you on the platform.’ Meanwhile, you’re trying to drive them off, right?
“So it’s making sure, again, back in that beginning stage of saying like, hey, if we’re going to try to drive people to this website, we need to make sure we’re [using] the right tactic, maybe using paid media, maybe using email, SMS, using your app to really drive people that way to make sure that you’re achieving that goal.”
Teams are rightfully protective of their organic social media, because when you’re competing with tons of other brands, creators, celebrities, and a fan’s friends and family for attention any rupture of that trust, of that relationship, can be detrimental in the short-term and catastrophic in the long-term. That’s why the increased collaboration in recent years between the social media and content teams in the daily trenches and those putting together the deals like Kopilow is so essential.
It was not all that long ago when sponsored social meant an incoming email from the partnerships teams with a verbatim post meant for copying and pasting onto the team’s platforms. Thankfully, those days are largely long gone as partnerships and content teams work in harmony, playing within established lines of repeatable content series, as well as flexibly creating and innovating new ones.
“The most important thing is speaking directly with your content team and being in lockstep with them,” Kopilow explained. “You have to be deeply ingrained within your content team to understand what are their brand standards, what can we offer, how are they feeling about an execution and what’s going on in the market.
“So a menu [of sponsorable social media assets] is definitely important to have and also important to have from an organizational standpoint to see where are the opportunities, where do we have too much, where do we have too little just to understand as you’re going throughout the year. But then yes, no matter what you do, you can have the best menu out there, there are going to be opportunities where you have to come up with something completely custom and that’s fine.”
Social media evolves quickly, and the trends and the algorithms that lie beneath the platforms evolve even faster. So as opportunities arise, the lines of communication, coordination, and cooperation have to keep up, Kopilow described.
“It’s sitting down with the teams and understanding what’s the flow of a game day and a non-game day, what are we already doing and are we comfortable putting a partner on it, and if so, how?” he said, talking about what forming that initial menu can look like. “But then also making sure to stay close with your content teams about how they feel about it. You know, just because it’s on the menu — and this is what I tell my content teams all the time — just because you’ve told me we can put it on the menu doesn’t mean I’m just going to go and sell it. Like at any time during the season if it’s going to go in a pitch, I’m going to check with them and be like, ‘Are we still good and are we still as constructed?’”
We’re talking a lot about the benefits of a collaborative relationship the partnerships and content squads on the team, but we can’t forget about the party who’s ultimately signing the checks — the sponsor. They may come in with their own ideas, or they may pick something from the menu that the team later determines isn’t working well anymore, for whatever reason. This is an important part of the greater conversation — and central to landing on that sweet spot where the activation is something both the sponsor and the content team are excited to bring to fans. Luckily, Kopilow said, data drives that conversation and helps lead the direction.
“As long as you come with that data-backed rationale and the fact of how it aligns with their goals and their standards, I think anyone’s always willing to shift,” he said. “I think partners are super amenable to that. Like, if you’re just upfront with them about the why and the rationale, why wouldn’t they want to perform better? I think everybody wants the top performance. So I think if you’re doing a good job of that storytelling and presenting that data, then you’re really going to succeed.”
Kopilow went deeper in discussing data, which gets better and more sophisticated with each passing year. It’s easy to focus on the biggest numbers, the so-called ‘vanity metrics’ — and sometimes that’s fine — but richer, more analytical framing of data can get at more important measures of what signifies a successful activation.
“I think it’s really important when you report on the back end to frame up the results in the way that’s going to be impactful,” explained Kopilow. “So what I mean by that specifically is instead of reporting on just total impressions or just total engagements, it’s impressions per post and how does that compare to your channel average or the way it went last year? Engagements per post, engagement rates — what are the benchmarks you can compare that to? And then there are some in-depth metrics that you can use if you’re talking about a little bit more long-form video content, what is the average percentage viewed and how long are people listening?
“I think it’s just being good about putting data forward, contextualizing it with benchmarks, and making sure it really fits the goals and their target audience. So it’s basically showing that you listen to the partner when they said, ‘Here’s what we want’ or ‘Here’s what we want to achieve’, right?… You need to show that the data represents that you’ve listened to the partner and why you’re recommending something.”
It’s something special to see sponsored social media content that just works perfectly. Where it seems like such a perfect fit for the team’s content and the partner’s messaging — it’s the proverbial round peg in the round hole. Nail it and decades later a generation of fans may just remember that ‘You should know what Invesco knows.’ Mission accomplished for that partner goal.
On episode 246 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Alex Kopilow, Senior Manager, Business Solutions (Digital), Madison Square Garden Sports (New York Knicks, New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden, more!).
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 Stitcher.
Listen to episode 246 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Alex Kopilow, Senior Manager, Business Solutions (Digital), Madison Square Garden Sports (New York Knicks, New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden, more!).
What was the last sport you became a fan of? Not the sport that captured your heart as a 9-year-old, but one that came along later and, for whatever reason, hooked you in?
After decades of relative status quo in the major pro sports landscape, there are more fans than ever finding themselves gravitating to sports they never thought they would. Social media has made highlights, storylines, and community more accessible; infinite streams and channels largely eliminate barriers to entry for fans to watch any sport; and the proliferation of content allows for broad exposure giving potential new fans a taste of a sport they never knew they wanted and could grow to love.
Karen Ramming wasn’t facing a lack of familiarity as an issue for potential new track and field fans as she took on her role with TrackTown USA. The majority of the world can recognize a race, a jump, or a throw, and many have participated in such pursuits with varying degrees of competitiveness. But that doesn’t mean they’re all fans, who will tune into major competitions and follow the athletes and stories that surround the sport. So the challenge she is faced with in her role setting the digital strategy for TrackTown is pulling in new fans, but not at the expense of serving the fans that are already there.
“With niche sports in general, you want to make sure that you’re serving the existing fan base because they’re the ones that are going to keep you alive online,” said Ramming, who was in social media roles with the Golden State Warriors and Pac-12 Networks before joining TrackTown. “But you also want to make sure that your coverage is appealing so that way, yeah, you can break through that bubble of whatever sport it is and reach a potential new audience…
“So how can you balance those two things of still serving the existing fan base and creating content in a way that’s accessible to potential new audiences?”
So about that sport you, dear reader, came to enjoy later in life — what first pulled you in? Not necessarily what made you a fan, but the clip or friend or athlete or story that first caught your attention. Ramming had years of experience promoting dozens of sports across the Pac-12 Conference, some with broad, well-established fan bases and others more in the ‘niche’ category.
The encouraging opportunity is that the entry points for new fandom are near-infinite. An amusing or incredible TikTok highlight can drive initial interest for some, a photo finish can draw in others, or an inspirational athlete can ignite another group of fans. They’re all sparks that can fuel the growth of a future fire, creating fans from the embers of even the most esoteric or eccentric elements.
“Let’s say a mascot race or like a baby race or whatever, those things are helping tell the story of the brand and the experience and the athletes,” said Ramming, who is TrackTown USA’s Senior Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation. “And I think that especially when you’re looking at growing an audience of a sport, the stories are what grows the sport, especially for new audiences…
“They’re going to become a fan initially because they found somebody in the sport that appeals to them and that makes them want to come back and root for them and learn the sport on their behalf.”
As Ramming noted, a common element shared by every sport is the athlete. They may be manipulating a different apparatus, if they even have a stick or ball, but it’s the people that make up the ecosystem of sports that most often form the foundation of emotional investment and fandom. Athletes recognize they’re the talent in the program, the stars of the show. But as sports become more and more like entertainment, showcasing the powerful stories and personalities is just as important as the competition. For Ramming, especially when she was surrounded by global superstars like the Golden State Warriors players, collaborating effectively with players meant earning trust at all levels, and treating them not like talent, but like, well, humans.
“Before we even touch on building trust with the players, a lot of it is a step back and building trust with operations and with public relations — they’re the ones who are the gatekeepers essentially to player access on a lot of the teams…,” explained Ramming, who was with the Warriors from late 2018 – 2021. “So that was the approach that I took and just being really proactive with my communications with them, overexplaining everything that we were doing, showing them the results of what we were doing and that was how we earned that internal trust…”
About working with the players, Ramming described that “It’s kind of a balance of being really professional, knowing exactly what you need from them so that way you don’t waste their time while also being just a normal human and talking to them in a way that shows that you respect them as a person and not just as an athlete who will bring a million new followers or whatever it is to the channels.”
But there’s another factor when it comes to marketing a sport through its athletes. Or, as Ramming faced both at Pac-12 and now at TrackTown, putting muscle behind the content, sports, and athletes that will more predictably perform versus telling more complete stories that better serve the team, conference, or sport [and fans] going forward. The NBA, for example, is accurately cited as a superstar-driven sport. It’s Jimmy Butler and the Heat, LeBron James alongside Anthony Davis and the Lakers, and, of course, Steph Curry and the Warriors. The social media metrics may dictate that focusing all content on Curry would deliver the highest numbers, but that may be missing the forest for the giant, all-time shooting tree.
“We knew when I was there that we could post a clip of Steph [Curry] hitting a halfcourt shot once a day and nobody would get tired of it and it would hit a million views every single time,” Ramming explained. “But that would be doing a disservice to our players, our team, and our fans by not showcasing the other players. So it wasn’t even just the social team that was keeping that in check and making sure that there were faces getting on the feeds, it was our entire marketing department…”
Ramming and her team face a similar challenge in showcasing the various disciplines that make up the track and field competitions put on by TrackTown USA. Many casual fans can recall seeing Usain Bolt win the 100-meter dash or Michael Johnson set records in the 400, but trying to develop fans of every competition within track and field is not necessarily the right way to go about fan development. If someone loves the long jump, but couldn’t care less about hurdles, that’s okay, and it may not be a good use of resources to try.
But Ramming notes that perhaps that’s not the right question. These days, quality content is what cuts through, and getting the content and storytelling right — can render everything else, if not moot less of the main point.
“There are a lot of people who are throws fans and they care about the throwers and discus, shot, javelin, hammer — that’s what they care about and that’s great. How can we serve them? How can we create content for that specific audience? Same thing for sprints, jumps, distance,” she said…
“I don’t think that I have an opinion right now in terms of segmenting [social accounts] for jumps, throws, sprints, and distance, necessarily, but instead looking at how we structure actual content packaging…”
Ramming cited the recent example of TrackTown’s docuseries ‘Road to TrackTown,’ hosted on their YouTube channel, which follows athletes in their preparation and lifestyle leading up to their major competitions. It wasn’t necessarily that Netflix’s Drive to Survive made us all realize what a cool sport Formula One is, it’s that the level of storytelling gave us a reason to care and to learn more. So, for ‘Road to TrackTown,’ Ramming said that within the phenomenal storytelling and packaging, they were able to produce narratives across track and field disciplines.
“We intentionally chose one runner, one jumper, one thrower and one multi-event athlete, so that way it could appeal to those specific fanbases while still all living on our larger TrackTown USA Channel,” she described.
In the end, they’re all athletes showcasing passion, dedication, triumphs, failures, hard work, and humanity.
Said Ramming: “Being able to experience that kind of raw emotion from athletes directly when you tune into a track meet, whether it’s online, on TV or in person, I think is what makes the sport really special. And even outside of those moments, obviously, these athletes are humans. They have hobbies and interests and they have other stuff going on. So understanding how we can better tell those stories to make them more relatable and potentially find new audiences through them and who they are as people is really valuable.”
It’s incredible to think that there have been sports and sports fans for thousands of years. The games and the mediums evolved, but those same undying principles that made fans cheer and jeer centuries ago, the stories that captured our imagination still do so today.
