It started with the autograph.
For years, that was the proof that you were in the presence of a sports celebrity. Plenty of vintage sports fans have memories of sticking an arm out, hoping a hero would grab their ball or card and sign it; the most ‘efficient’ athletes could sign dozens in just a few minutes.
Then the selfie arrived. Even better proof that you ‘met’ the athlete. It may not have the same resale value, but it was more meaningful, more personal; the engagement went from a second or two to a few more seconds. But while these micro moments gave fans something to boast about, genuine connection they were not.
As we look at the rapid growth of emerging leagues, whether it’s the WNBA, the NWSL, the PLL, or even F1 fandom in the US, thanks to a little Netflix show, it’s easy to see why their average fan is more avid. They have a fierce, personal loyalty their behemoth legacy brethren can’t touch. Part of it is letting athletes’ authentic personalities shine. But just as much, it’s the accumulation of micro moments, going from the one-second autograph to the 30-second chat (watch the warm-ups or postgame at any W or NWSL game). That’s what has been catching Dave Benson’s eye, as he’s built a platform to systematize authentic connection.
“These folks are all people, and they have their own personalities,” said Benson, who started his company SuperQuickQuestion after a career in sports and tech content strategy and marketing. “For example, you look at the WNBA and how the All-Star weekend absolutely crushed as far as ratings go. It’s not because of the game, it’s not because of the events of the weekend alone — it’s because people care about the stories. That’s a tale as old as time itself: people like stories…
“The leagues that are really excelling now are the ones allowing the athletes to be themselves and exploiting their personalities. Look at Drive to Survive — what a huge success that was. Before, everybody was just like, ‘Here’s a bunch of handsome international dudes behind helmets,’ and you’d see them in their ads, but you didn’t really know anything about them. Now you know their personalities and people actually care…
“The more you feel like you know these athletes, the more you care.”
There is no shortage of ideas to make fans care. It’s the plethora of all-access content produced by teams and leagues. It’s the question of the day, mini mic-style content teams put out on their social platforms. But these are still organizations doing their best to convey some sense of familiarity, oftentimes using the admin as an avatar for the fan at home. That’s the bet behind SuperQuickQuestion (SQQ), the time-based meet-and-greet Benson built. He likens it to Cameo meets FaceTime, except it’s live and unscripted, real 1:1 time. What he’s after is a more visceral form of fan connection.
“The term ‘fan engagement’ gets bandied about so much these days — a fan talking to an athlete is the most pure form of engagement,” said Benson, whose SQQ clients include big consumer brands activating in sports, as well as teams themselves. “You can have a young fan, an old fan, whoever, who gets to talk to their athlete and say, ‘Listen, my kid wants to be just like you, what should they do?’ Or, ‘I was at that game where you scored the game-winner, and I was sitting with my dad, it was my favorite thing…’
“Cheesy though it may be, it is creating memories, because you get these awesome little conversations that you otherwise would have to get lucky enough to [happen serendipitously].”
This brings to mind the aphorism popularized by famed entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham, suggesting startups should ‘Do things that don’t scale.’ It’d be great if every fan could spend a minute or two with their favorite player, not in the assembly-line crush of a fan fest, but in a real exchange that leaves them a story to tell and a memory for life.
Alas, it’s hard to scale that when you’re talking thousands, let alone millions of fans. But what Benson has found is that, even when brands are literally paying for player appearances, the logistics of arranging those encounters at scale keep the memories from ever being made. It shouldn’t be that hard, not when we can all connect on video calls across the globe with the single push of a button. The interesting question is how technology, whether a focused product like SQQ or broader platform plays, can help scale the very things that aren’t supposed to scale.
“You’ll have an athlete that has five appearances in their [sponsor] contract, and they’ll get maybe two or three over the course of the year. That was an eye-opening statistic for me — 60% of these appearances end up never happening,” said Benson. “The amount of waste and spillage from these contracts is huge, and it’s true across every client I’ve spoken to…All of our big clients say the same thing — they never get all of their appearances.
“So now what Verizon is able to do: there was a retired Manchester City player who owed Verizon one appearance. His agent said he’s already on vacation, he’s in the Caribbean,” Benson explained. “And we said, great, he’s going to do a Super Quick Question from the Caribbean. It was perfect, because he was on the beach and he knows he owes them an appearance and he wants to make them happy because he wants a contract next year to renew his deal. So he says to his family, ‘I’ll be back in 45 minutes,’ goes into the room, talks to 30 Verizon VIP customers, and then he’s back on the beach — and he can check off one of the appearances he owes.”
Benson has a sharp read on the many ways these virtual meet-and-greets get used to drive value. I’ve always thought teams under-utilize their ambassadors to make memories for fans and produce delightful moments. The default is to picture a star athlete and a sponsor, but Benson’s stories broaden the aperture.
It starts with traditional form entry and data capture, but goes much further, zeroing in on the specific goals of the partner, or the team itself. He walked through a handful, starting with Indianapolis Colts great Edgerrin James rewarding a longtime suite holder.
“So, ‘Thanks for buying your suite for the 10th year in a row — you’re going to get to talk to Edge,’ who, by the way, lives in Miami now, not Indiana, so he can do it without them flying him in,” said Benson. “We’re also going to work on a thing with the Colts for their kids club — you sign up to be in the kids club, and you get to talk to this player throughout the season.
“And then we’ve got purchase incentives,” Benson continued. “One of our big clients right now is one of the big sports betting companies, and they do a thing where it says ‘bet now and you get a chance to talk to this athlete.’ We’ve done a thing with an IndyCar race team that said, ‘Buy this now and you’ll get a chance to talk to one of the drivers.’ So it depends on their goals, but either way we’re agile enough that we just slot in there. We’ve got an athlete, we’ve got a goal, and we’ve got a bunch of fans — so we just marry it together.”
Influencers. Athletes. Ambassadors. We’re at the peak of the brand-sponsor activation economy, and there’s nowhere to go but down, or somewhere new. Multiple generations of users have developed a sixth sense to sniff out the shill, and it’s not even hard when it’s virtually a verbatim script. The cue-card read is a diminishing return: it doesn’t cut through, and it certainly doesn’t make memories. That’s why Benson is so bullish on SQQ’s scaled, operationalized meet-and-greets, and why he sees genuine, standout moments as an underappreciated asset.
“The smart managers were telling these athletes, ‘Don’t get on Cameo, it diminishes your image.’ So brands are looking for ways they can organically use their relationships,” he said. “Whether it’s a regular meet-and-greet, or putting them in a commercial — that’s never going to go away. Wearing a logo on their sleeve, that’s also totally fine. But for us, we’re just trying to add to the inventory of things these brands can do that are going to be good for everybody.”
In the early days, sports was purely entertainment, augmented by civic pride in your town’s (or school’s) team. Games were something social to do; there weren’t nearly as many other ways to pass the time as there are today, what with endless scrolls and more shows than anyone could watch in a lifetime. Somewhere along the way, sports became big business, layering commercial interests onto the purer origins of the game.
What is the primary currency of sports today? There’s no single answer, and that’s what keeps sports marketers up at night. Some people (I’m reluctant to call them ‘fans’) see it as a moneymaker — a way to wager through a sportsbook or prediction market and pad their income. It’s no doubt a social connector (as my interview with Ben Valenta last month made powerfully clear): watching and attending with others, group chats that run for decades, fantasy leagues that keep friends connected for life.
But there’s something else, too. In the precious vault of lifelong memories, sports has somehow carved out space. There’s a shelf reserved for the thrill of a championship, but that’s also where the most visceral memories are preserved. It’s when we meet our heroes — the idols who, second only to our parents, affected us in our most formative years, or later in life have an outsized impact on our identity, our relationships, and the tales we tell over and over again.
Those memories are the most valuable of all. Revenue follows emotional and eternal encounters. We talk about developing generational fandom; it’s time to start prioritizing what best achieves that kind of lasting, lifelong connection.
