General Marketing – Digital and Social Media Sports

Fan Development, General Marketing, Sponsorships

What Fan Development and Sports Brand Building Actually Look Like in 2026

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.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ALYSSA MEYERS

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CHECK OUT ALYSSA’S WORK ON MARKETING BREW

Fan Development, General Marketing, General Sports Business, Social Media ROI, Sponsorships

How Sports Properties and Their Partners Build for Mutual Success: An Insider’s View

How do you define a good sports sponsorship?

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.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NICK KELLY

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Analytics and Data, General Marketing, General Sports Business

What the Sports Industry Can Learn (and Adopt) from the Retail Business

On episode 305 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, Neil chatted with Shripal Shah, Chief Digital Officer, Next League, and author of Unlocking Fan Loyalty: From Frequent Flyers to Fanatics in the Age of AI

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.

Content Strategy, Fan Development, General Marketing, Social Media

A Modern Approach to Fan Development: Earning Attention, Operationalizing Engagement, and Crafting Reasons to Care

If you’re reading this, it’s a minor miracle.

There is so much competition for attention and mindshare in general, let alone for sports teams and leagues. The established leagues have massive foundations of fans but want unending growth; meanwhile, myriad upstart and emerging leagues are competing to establish their base, often while concurrently growing broad awareness and interest in heretofore relative fringe sports.

It has never been easier to reach masses of people, but it has never been harder to win their hearts and minds.

So how should sports organizations think about earning new fans amidst a cutthroat world where every swipe, click, and second of attention has to clear an increasingly higher bar? And what does ‘fan growth’ even look like in 2025, with endless to ‘engage’ — that oh-so-ubiquitous but nebulous term?

Tom Halls has faced these challenges head-on throughout his career. Today, he and the team at SailGP aim to turn a centuries-old pastime that has persisted for years on the margins of the sports zeitgeist into a sports league that can command the attention of masses around the world. SailGP only had its first season in 2019, born in a perpetually connected world where hundreds of millions of videos get uploaded to platforms every day and social graphs and follower-based feeds were already starting to diminish. SailGP has hit some impressive follower numbers already, but I asked Halls about how meaningful a follower is in 2025 as content consumption and discovery look so different than it did a couple years ago, let alone last decade.

“Our follower growth target is still pretty aggressive for this season, but my point to [SailGP leadership] is if we’re showing an improvement in viewership, if we’re showing an improvement in engagement, if our engagement rate, which is super high, continues to retain at that amount, [that’s most important],” said Halls, who is the SVP of Social for SailGP following a career with stops at several sports organizations. “There are other ways to hook people in now with AI, whether that’s getting smart in how we sign people up top of funnel; at the very purest basis, like email marketing, databases, etc. How do we get them?…

“There’s always an end goal,” Halls continued, after remarking that UGC efforts are another strong signpost of an engaged fan. “A follow is nice, a comment is nice, but in an ideal world you’re watching the broadcast, you’re watching the live stream, you’re engaging, even better if you’re buying a ticket or merchandise. But we’re five seasons in. It takes time, and it takes leagues years to grow these pieces.”

Facebook introduced Pages in 2007. Instagram introduced business profiles in 2014. Those impressive follower numbers many profiles and pages can boast today are comprised of countless users who may not have logged in in a decade, let alone the bevy of bots that have accumulated over the years. That’s not to say one’s followers aren’t meaningful, it’s just that the follower ‘count’ alone falls short, leaving more questions to ask and more substance to (hopefully) uncover.

‘Engagement trumps followers,” said Halls, who spent years on the Meta sports partnerships team. “I’d rather take 150,000 engaged fans than 2 million passive followers,. And I will wager a decent amount of money that if you were to look at the vast majority of follower counts of the big brands, publishers, creators on platform now that have been there for 10-15 years, there is a rather decently-sized stagnant portion of fans.

“I don’t think your follower count opens doors in the same way with sponsors that it used to. I mean, we’ve just re-upped with Rolex for ten years. A brand like Rolex [is] smart, they look beyond follower count, they look at engagement, they look at audience makeup. Sponsors and commercial investors in sports are savvier now than they’ve ever been.”

There’s that word again — engagement. Any engagement is better than no engagement, first of all, but ‘engagement’ in sports can mean a lot of different things. Engagement could mean commenting on a post or creating UGC, it could mean buying some merch or buying a ticket to attend a competition. But no matter where among the engaged segments a user (sure, a ‘fan’) sits, the only way to increase the base of fans overall is to enlarge the surface area of exposure, the addressable audience that even knows you exist.

The key thing to keep in mind is that fan development is not a linear exercise. We can’t grow more diehards without growing more casuals. And we can’t grow more casuals without identifying and converting the curious (Halls discussed a segmenting of curious-casual-core fans). At the same time, the core audience can’t be taken for granted, with all the attention and efforts focused only on the casuals and curious. That’s the challenge and the opportunity — they all matter.

“My point always comes back to that core audience will always be there, and our goal is to increase the size of that core audience and gradually expand each part of that funnel as we go,” said Halls. “It’s okay if you don’t ever come to a race or ever buy merchandise in my eyes; you still have a value to us… When I talk to our commercial and financial teams… I’ll say [those fans are] not as valuable as someone that buys a ticket or a merchandise, but they are still a fan…”

It’s challenging but fun to seek out new fans. It’s easy to target and reach narrow audiences, but when you’re trying to find those potential curious and casuals, developing a broader and more diverse fan base, creativity, diversity of thought, and the willingness to try new things (and at times fail) are critical. The number of interests and trends, the scale of micro-communities, and the avenues of discovery are innumerable; the idea of diverse creative teams and canvassing ideas from everyone is not lip service to some noble ideal — it’s essential if you want a wide, heterogenous, growing fan base. For Halls and SailGP, creativity can come from anyone and anywhere. And in the increasingly algorithm-fueled world of content consumption and discovery, any quality content can find its audience.

“There’s a lot of creativity that flows through that team…So when someone thinks they’ve got a great idea, what we’re trying to do is ensure that that great idea has an audience and it has a fit for it — how do we utilise the fact that so many platforms these days have got A-B testing opportunities? said Halls, who lauded the ability to target unfamiliar audiences explicitly using Instagram’s Trial Reels. “With the ephemeral nature of social, it’s gone and forgotten in 24 hours if it tanks.

“It’s giving social teams that creative freedom and recognizing that what works for senior leadership isn’t going to work for the fan base. We create content based on what we know the platforms want versus what we know we want. And sometimes we have to let go of, you know, being super comfortable around some things, but it works.”

Halls and his team have learned what the platforms want. They know how to ‘go viral’ on TikTok or maximize engagement on Instagram. Sure, senior leaders may want to promulgate the incredible techniques of its athletes and the impressive analytics the competition delivers on its broadcasts — and there’s certainly an audience for all that — but they know that there’s nothing like a capsize or a man overboard if they want to reach millions (expand that surface area) on TikTok. Those viral clips are opportunities, the first touch point on a funnel where some nonzero portion of those millions of viewers will engage and progress along the fan funnel.

All those viral NASCAR crashes or hockey fights or unexpected incidents in SailGP (Halls referenced an innocent ferry interrupting one of their races) — those clips can be catalysts.

“We posted a clip on Instagram [and] we didn’t think anything of it,” said Halls, referencing a clip of a man nearly going overboard. “It did 40 million views in 24 hours. It hit 105 million views [overall]….We know why it went viral because it was eight seconds, you’re watching, you’re waiting to see what happens. When it does happen, you’ve got so many questions.

“And the way we parlayed that into follower growth was everyone that asked a question about that video, we tried to address it either in comment format, or we went and created explainer content around it. So why did he not fall over the boat? Why was he safe? There’s an explainer video and the fact they’re all tethered and they have to run with the tether. What was he even doing on the boat in the first place? Like, why did he fall off the side? It just looks like, because of the angle, it looked like quite a slow turn. Actually, it’s pulling three G’s at that point. Like the guy, you see him, it almost looks like he passes out. So there’s an explainer video on the G forces these guys are going through…

“So how do we introduce all these unique elements to our sport, or how do we introduce it to a new fan?”

There are stories behind every viral clip. And within those stories lie the elements that attracted the casual and the core fans in the first place. Getting the views, those micro-moments of attention, is just the first step. Are you ready when hundreds, thousands, or millions of fans are there sampling what you have to offer with an open mind to find a reason to engage and consume and learn more? Halls called out the alt-casts, so prevalent in sports now, as an example of trying to cater to new, curious or casually interested audiences. Drive to Survive got millions to sample an F1 race, but they’ll only stick around so long if they have no idea what’s going on.

“You have to make that explainer content simple enough that casual fans feel that they can get it,” said Halls, who was admittedly a relative sailing novice before joining SailGP. “And to me, that comes back to that ‘Explain it to me like I’m five’ principle.

“It’s a more subtle way of doing the Nickelodeon broadcast of the Super Bowl, how they break it down. I mean, we’re not at that stage…but that’s the space where we can play with creators.

“I’m still looking for my Snoop [Dogg]-Martha [Stewart] commentary combo. I can’t get Snoop and Martha, I don’t have those kinds of budgets, but can I do something with a KSI or a Kai Cenat; can we get them to commentate alongside?”

In addition to finding entry points and being ready to cultivate and educate the noobs when they do enter, it helps to give fans a reason to care. A sense of affinity and partiality, something and/or someone to root for as the boats compete for victory. It’s why SailGP produces their ‘Racing on the Edge‘ series (their version of Drive to Survive, essentially). The competition also take advantage of the natural patriotic inclination anyone, fan or not, to cheer on their country in any race.

“To me there’s a natural affinity to root for,” said Halls. “There’s a Canadian team, an American team. There are nationality minimum requirements for each of the teams, they’re nationalistic…”

But don’t mistake the fervent nationalism for jingoism. SailGP knows the best way for the competition to grow, the team valuations to rise, and everyone’s boats to rise (had to do it) is to work together. There are cross-team collabs, democratized sharing of data, and an overall collective that they’re building something special together.

Said Halls: “We have the rivalries and they can be really spicy, but I think everyone across the league and the teams and leadership at the moment recognizes that we have to grow as one unit.”

Fan growth isn’t about waiting for people to come to you—it’s about meeting them where they are, creating sparks of interest and curiosity, and steering them into easy entry points. The signals are everywhere, the bait is working—so cast wide, experiment boldly, and recognize every moment of attention as an invitation. The future fanbase is out there, a light breeze at your back. Come equipped with a plan, catch the right wind, and it’ll be smooth sailing ahead.

LISTEN TO THE FULL (EXCELLENT) INTERVIEW WITH TOM HALLS

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Fan Development, General Marketing, General Sports Business

Turning Casual Into Lifelong Fans: The Opportunity and Challenge for F1

The rise of Formula 1 in the US has been remarkable. And the sport’s path to primetime — their media rights deal went from $5 million per year in the US to nearly $100 million when the next deal was signed — is an illustration of how sports can develop fandom.

It’s perhaps a bit reductionist to say ‘Drive to Survive’ in summing up the league’s explosion in popularity in the States. The Netflix docuseries had a significant effect, to be sure, but it’s what happened before and after that created fans of the sport, not just fans of the show.

A milestone that preceded Drive to Survive was Liberty Media’s acquisition of F1, completed officially in early 2017, which took a sport with an air of luxury and a fanbase mostly in their 50s and older and instilled a culture and sense of urgency to reach a younger and more diverse demographic. Drive to Survive may have felt like a culmination of that increased openness and focus on content, but it was the confluence of factors that arose alongside the Netflix show that put the growth into full throttle.

“What really kickstarted a lot of this content creation and testing out new formats was around 2020 when we had free time essentially to do whatever we wanted to do, and we had time to think,” said Nirupam Singh, who has spent years working with motorsports and today helps motorsports teams and business with sponsorship development. “That gave a lot of content creators and new people who wanted to binge that show the perfect opportunity to speak about a new topic that they had no clue about, but they were interested in, and they went and created new content around it on TikTok, Instagram, all these platforms.”

The pandemic and Netflix for days, the rapid rise of TikTok, the onslaught of creators in every interest area in the world — the elements were all there for fans to discover and then dive deeper into whatever caught their fancy. And for many that meant consuming more F1 content and more creators serving that demand. The teams inside Formula 1 also seized the opportunity, emulating some of the best practices of American sports leagues that had been crushing the social and content game for years.

“Now that F1 saw what the NBA and the NFL are doing, a lot of that stuff was then copied over and translated to what we can do in motorsports,” said Singh, who also works with tech companies on their marketing and email campaigns. “So the teams will look at it, the social media admins will look at it and they’re going to try and replicate something similar.”

The F1 teams are doing their thing, too — the content is hitting and the fan engagement is growing — they’re in that upper part of the hockey stick growth. And the American way is kicking in in more ways than just content, it’s also coming in the form of monetization. It’s all flying high now, but F1 also faces a challenge that all sports leagues face, maximizing the revenue today without sacrificing the fans and opportunities of tomorrow.

“Now everyone is seeing this amazing sport, and the sport has a lot of reach and level of success that every single sponsor and everyone involved wants to capitalize on. But that’s the problem,” said Singh. “They want to capitalize on it, not maintain it. So as soon as they got the fan now all bets are off and [it’s like] ‘Okay, we made as much money from you as possible, [now] ‘Bye’.

“That’s what I want to really avoid; how can we maintain and keep these fans over a longer period of time, because you don’t just become a fan by watching one thing, you become a fan over time, seeing it multiple times, and then you start finding like-minded people…

“There needs to be better strategies and better systems in place to nurture these fans over a longer period of time. These fans, if you talk about demographics, are much younger now. The age of the fan base has shifted from being 50+ to much lower, 18-35, so these fans are going to grow up with this sport over a longer period of time. So how can we maintain that so that as these fans grow up, they can pass down this passion of theirs to their kids and to their peers?”

There’s a lot to unpack there in the impassioned plea from Singh, who can recall days growing up when being a motorsports fan put him squarely in the minority. And if fandom isn’t cultivated, it can disappear as quickly as it came. Pull out the key factors Singh alluded to — repeat exposure and reliability, finding like-minded fans — community building, and passing that fandom from parents to kids and from old to young — generational fandom. Some of that the sports leagues and teams can affect directly, but things like community building, creators and personalities leading such community, parents plopping their kid in front of a grand prix, water cooler conversations — that’s in the hands of others and all the leagues and teams can and should do is set them up for success.

The new sports fan is different, too. While those of us who came of age in the ’90s or earlier mostly came to sports from, well, the sport, there are so many more avenues to elicit interest and fandom now. Many sports leagues have embraced all these tangential interests that emanate from the platform they have — fashion, gaming, music, and even just the drama and intrigue that surrounds the sports and athletes themselves. There are more fan segments than ever and such diversity of affinities and interests can be both a blessing and a curse.

“Because the fan base is now so large, there are so many different levels of interest and personalities and people that find certain things interesting and certain things they don’t find interesting,” said Singh. “So it’s a unique challenge, that’s for sure. And I’m sure the NBA and the NFL have the same issues and they’re all tackling the main issue there — how do we keep these fans and attract more fans down the road?”

There are more types of fans and pathways to fandom than ever before, and that’s great. It’s also a challenge for sports organizations to try and wrap their head around all these unique fan segments, communities, and sub-communities — there is no single or linear fan journey. There is no single story to tell or content to create and it can be intimidating to concede that we don’t have all the answers and don’t understand the factors behind every fan’s affinity. The sports that thrive moving forward will be those that foster open frameworks, that provide a platform for an ecosystem to develop and thrive. The factors that coalesce to drive fandom will continue to evolve in the future, but what keeps fans engaged — the community, the connections, the conversations — will stand the test of time.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NIRUPAM SINGH

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Content Strategy, Digital, General Marketing, General Sports Business, Social Media ROI

The Art and Science of Winning Fans: Strategies for Driving Engagement, Growth, and Revenue in Sports Marketing

There was a pivotal moment early in Dan Gadd‘s career when he was with the Chicago Bears. Social media emerged and the Bears had content crushing on its website that presumably would also crush on social. But then it didn’t.

“We had to take a step back and go, wait a minute, what’s going on here?” said Gadd, who today is the SVP of Growth for the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA. “There’s a different audience out here. This is not the avid group [visiting the website], this is just people who have followed the account because they’re a fan of the team, but they’re not paying attention to us on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. They may be tuning in on Sundays, but that’s about it. And all of a sudden, a group of us kind of went, ‘Hey, there’s a bigger opportunity here because these people don’t come to our events, they’re not on our email lists, they’re not coming to our website — we don’t really have contact with these people and if we can get them thinking about the team more we have a chance to actually strengthen the fan base here.’ So we went hard at work at basically building out content buckets and just testing a bunch of stuff…”

There was a different audience out there. One that paid attention to the team, but in a different way than the existing diehards who regularly visited the official team website. And that appreciation of understanding the audience first — what moves them and why, what commands their attention within the crowded feeds and why — has served as a throughline for much of Gadd’s career, from multiple NFL teams and work with big brands to his post today with one of the most successful teams in the continually rising WNBA.

Marketing is about evoking something from consumers/fans/audiences — a feeling, a desire, an action. The fan journey is not necessarily linear, but the formula for fan development and activation involves a set of feelings, desires, and actions. And over nearly two decades, Gadd has led teams to understand the big picture, the forest among the trees. I recently spoke with him in a wide-ranging conversation chock full of insights, articulating the models that best prevail in today’s competitive, part art, part science-driven environment.

Don’t Make Ads, Make Content

There was another epiphany in Gadd’s career — not so much an epiphany, but a determination to not blindly follow the status quo (the dreaded ‘the way things have always been done’) and challenge long-existing paradigms. When Gadd was at Taylor Strategy, after previously working with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Chicago Bears where the content, really, was the marketing (the beauty of sports), he realized the Mad Men era of advertising was still the way brands functioned in the 21st century, focusing more on the brand than the audience they were trying to reach. Gadd tells it beautifully, so let him take it away:

“The creative agencies, and I still think there’s a lot of this in the industry, were using processes built for TV advertising that go back to the 50s, and they were using them as content processes. So it was like, ‘What is our brand messaging? What is our brand equity? What is our product differentiation?’ And that was the start of the creative process. Then they basically were producing ads and then they would post them on Facebook and Twitter, and then all the brands were saying, ‘Oh, organic reach is dead.’ No, the content’s not content, it’s advertising…

“It kind of hit me. I was like, ‘Well, if I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down telling clients what I think they need to hear instead of what they want to hear.’ So I came back from [a holiday break] and, I don’t know if this was a coincidence or not, but there was a brainstorm on a brand that I wasn’t on yet, Tide, who was just getting into the NFL sponsorship space that year. And I threw out an idea around the Draft and I wrote it out exactly the way I would have done it if I was in the NFL. I mean, this is what you need to do. They bought it and we signed the top 40 prospects going into that NFL Draft and the deal was the contract went into effect if they were the first pick for a team. So we got their first post and that thing went absolutely haywire.

“It was the start of the ‘Our Colors’ campaign (for Tide) in the NFL. And we dominated the other brands in that Draft and that kind of turned everything around for me. Like, okay, I’m now going to go in and I’m going to put the best things I can [in front of clients], I’m going to sell the things that are going to work in this space. I’m not going to keep putting things in front of clients that I don’t believe in. But I had to build out a communication model on how are you going to now tell people that are built on these other processes that you have to flip all this?

So I started building out models like the creative process has to start with research and insights. You can’t jump right into brainstorming and it can’t start with questions like ‘What is our brand equity’ and ‘What is our brand message?’ It has to start with ‘What are people interested in?’ Otherwise, it’s not going to work in this space.”

Fan Activity (or Inactivity) Can Inform Everything

There are constant feedback loops from the countless fan touchpoints (and data) in today’s age. Every content piece that pops can inform another phase of the fan journey and department in the organization — and vice-versa. In Gadd’s time with the Atlanta Falcons, there was a culture of collaboration that realized such a utopian view of execution, which Gadd has now brought to the Atlanta Dream. Each anecdote Gadd told in our conversation carried pragmatic insights and principles that can guide the best teams and leaders moving forward. Take it away, Dan:

“We had to go from just creating great content and trying to grow the fan base and do all these great digital executions to how can we drive as much revenue as possible?,” said Gadd, recounting his time with the Falcons (part of AMBSE, which included Atlanta United and Mercedes-Benz Stadium) “The couple of us rolled up our sleeves and said, ‘Well, we know we can crush these cost per view metrics with paid social, let’s see how good we can get on the lead gen side and drive people through a funnel essentially and help the ticket team out’…

“I was in collaboration with (UX Manager) Austin Klubenspies and [Digital Strategist] Greg Urbano looking at our UI/UX, and I talked to Greg about, you know, ‘Hey, what is Google saying in terms of what’s happening on our site when they get to these pages?’ And then I would be talking to Eric about, Hey, we need to either tweak this on this page, or I need another graphic, this one popped and we got 30 leads in two hours, I need another graphic that hits on the same nerve. Then we’d get reports back from Warren Parr the ticket sales director, about, Hey, how this batch of leads is doing this or this batch of leads is doing that; okay, we need to get a little more information on the page because they don’t know what they’re getting into. So the back and forth on that stuff was just unbelievable…”

It’s pretty cool when silos are truly broken down and each team member — it is a team — knows how their efforts affect other team members across the array of fan journeys and touchpoints. Content and fan experiences connects to marketing and community which connects to fan development and sales and partnerships.

“There’s a system to this where we’re looking very much at how much reach and entertainment can we provide and attention can we have people spend with our content?” said Gadd, speaking about the principles that guided him with the Falcons and today with the Dream. “We want our content team to push the best content they can, but then we’re using paid ads to come behind and retarget and do all the intentional ticket sales or retail sales pieces.

“We’ve got it basically as a four-part engine. We’ve got to have the best content possible that goes out and earns people’s attention. Then we got to get the retargeting. We got to find the hand-raisers who watch these videos for ten seconds, who interacted with something, who came to our website, and then create all these and get as many of those people as possible — if the content’s doing its work, we should have huge retargeting audiences, which we generally do, and then we push as hard as we can on the paid social side to use those retargeting audiences and drive them through the ticket sales funnel. And our ticket team is in love with it. And then we look at like, what are the conversion rates on the sales calls? And we keep tweaking products until we get it right.”

Finding the Why

There’s an old analysis technique (which originated with Toyota) called The Five Whys. While it initially existed to solve problems, the framework is useful in many scenarios. It’s also a close relative of the typical toddler whose repetitive ‘Why’ questions can often lead to meaningful revelations. When you employ the Whys for a given piece of content or a marketing execution or a partnership activation — it ends up leading to some constructive conversations and insights. Gadd didn’t necessarily preach The Five Whys, but the understanding of how each piece fits together, how each decision should be based on some true belief, and the importance of a common goal — these are key tenets to what continues to drive Gadd’s success as a leader.

“I think the biggest thing is you can’t have a team if you don’t have a common purpose. One of the things we’ve talked about, between ticket sales and marketing, is we are absolutely driving ticket sales, but the bigger brand goal is to drive demand, and that’s something both ticket sales and marketing can do…

“I think one of the key things when I got to the Falcons was we did a couple things to make sure that everybody had the same goals. So we did a thing called Finding the Why, where it was an approach to content, and we made sure every content creator went through finding the why. And it had four key factors…The number one factor was to be a people expert, not a platform or technology expert. Every one of our content producers — and we still talk about this, everywhere I go this will be part of it — to create consistently good content, you have to understand what moves people. That is the magic of being consistently good in the content space. So we make all of our content producers responsible for what is happening. And we’re looking at metrics not to be data geeks, we’re looking at it to understand what’s happening with people when they view our content. But they’re all responsible for trying to build things that earn people’s time and attention.

“So those kinds of things to ground the team and have a common purpose…we want to have as many creative differences and creative ideas, but we want them all going in the same place. We want them going to the same goals of how are we moving people? We’re not producing content because we like it, we’re producing it because we want these people. So we have to understand these people to like it and we have to understand what moves them.”

Engagers are Hand Raisers

There’s an old saying that a salesperson is so good they can ‘sell ice to an Eskimo.’ This is meant as a show of praise, but look at it from a different perspective and you may ask why the marketing team is delivering Eskimos as leads to the sales team in the first place or whether the ice company needs to look at its content or events to not focus so much on individuals for whom getting ice is not an interest.

Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s instructive to think about what we can learn about someone when they engage with content, or who we have in mind when developing the marketing or themes of game presentations and promotions. How can we identify and serve fans and give them what they want, rather than convincing them that what we come up with is what they want? Gadd walks through this wonderfully:

“I think one of the things that we’re having the most success with is [to] generate as much attention and interest as we can with the social content and find those hand-raisers but then come behind it — and one of the best things that we’ve done is started to build out these really great game experiences. So it’s not just single-game tickets. We’re now building experiences around them.

“The one that we’ve had the most success with right now is a product we created called Daughter Date Night. It has been a great seller for us, now this is year two. And when we create those retargeting audiences and find all those hand-raisers and put this in front of them, it’s magic in terms of the sales. And it’s been something that we can really leverage, especially in games where we would otherwise have a hard time selling. Now all of a sudden we’ve got an experience…

“It’s always what is the value prop that is not going to just bring people in to the database, but is actually going to get us people that come to that game? Then the next year, Adam Boliek and his team are calling those buyers and trying to see if they can buy a five-game package or a ten or whatever. We talk a lot about what is the value that we’re putting in front of people to make them take behaviors that we want, and I think experiences is one of them. But also really attractive five game and ten game partial plans; we have a lot of discussion about that. Our theme games, our halftimes, our giveaways — all of those things we’re trying to really build out. We have a matrix for every game and it’s like, okay, what is everything that’s going into this game? And how do we make sure that every game is a very sellable game?”

Putting it into Practice

All of the above articulated a clear framework to understand your audience, create demand with that audience through content and engagement opportunities, and produce a compelling product for that audience. But how do you know where to start? It’s easy to say everybody within a given radius of the arena is a potential game goer and everybody in the world with an Internet connection could become a fan of the team. But that content-to-conversion pipeline benefits from a greater understanding of the target audiences; sure, it’d be great to catch all the fish in the sea, but it sure helps to know the fish you’re after and the best bait for them (an oversimplification, but, hey, it’s an analogy). All that to say, and to reiterate a key tenet espoused by Gadd — be an expert in your audiences. And, therefore, know who you gotta study up on (and why that audience is one worth going after). Gadd does a wonderful job of tying many of the aforementioned ideas together, referencing some of the early work he and his team did with the Dream.

“We did a big market research piece when I first got here and the whole thing was aimed at who are our potential fans? Who are the people that are willing to either change allegiances or adopt an allegiance to our team? Who is willing to come in? We looked at questions like, ‘Would you be willing to come to an Atlanta Dream game?’ And then kind of dug into who those people were, what their interests were, what their background was, and what other behaviors they’re taking.

“So, long story short, we’re kind of looking at this inside-out strategy of the next group out from our current fans is, okay, who are the other basketball fans in Atlanta? And then I think the next ring out from there, and we have some really good data on this, is anybody involved in the youth athletics space. So everything that we’re doing from an organization, even in the community is ratcheted up towards like, Hey, gotta we’ve got to have a value to these audiences and we got to build out a value prop across the board… if we’re doing it right, we can look at what are the conversations that those communities are into, and we can start a tailored content [plan] and get in front of them pretty quick.”

Remember the show Seinfeld? (I hope you do, if not — get to Netflix and binge it ASAP!). Well, one of the neat parts about the show was the moment at the end when all the plot elements would come together and the viewer experiences a magic moment of clarity, when things meet together. While it’s not a perfect analogy here, there’s a similar feeling of something like nirvana, when all the dots connect and the full picture reveals itself. Chase that feeling in developing strategy. Define the sun of the solar system and mix the art and the science to make magic.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DAN GADD (tons more good stuff not covered in this piece!)

READ THE SNIPPETS

College, General Marketing, General Sports Business

How to Create a Distinct Entity around a Sports Partnership: The Duke’s Mayo Bowl Story

Pick a college football bowl game. Any will do. What is the ‘brand’ of the bowl game? Does it have a distinctiveness that colors the perception, even a personality, that’s consistent over time?

The Rose Bowl has its pageantry and the Sugar Bowl has its New Orleans location, but for most of the decades-long history of the dozens of bowl games and their various sponsors over the years, there wasn’t much distinctiveness to speak of. But when Miller Yoho rejoined the Charlotte Sports Foundation (following a stint earlier in his career), he and the team there had a hunch a strong brand could help them stand out and, in doing so, set a foundation to raise all KPIs for the bowl game they ran in Charlotte — today known as the Duke’s Mayo Bowl (previously the Belk Bowl, among others). Because while bowl games are by definition an annual ephemeral entity, creating something distinct can be lasting.

“We’ve taken the long approach in understanding brand building is important,” said Yoho, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which runs the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Jumpan Invitational, and other Charlotte-based sports events. “People have seen our strategy for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — [that] started in 2014 when it was the Belk Bowl, understanding that no one was going to buy a bowl game ticket in October, so why not just be a part of the college football ecosystem? Why not have fun? Why not make jokes? And by doing that, people developed an affinity for the game and it became a destination rather than being matchup-dependent.

“Now we’re still very matchup-dependent, but TV tune-in, things like that — people see the Duke’s Mayo Bowl as something they want to see. And we do have fans coming because of how much fun we are, how we wink at the camera and do all that.”

There are so many bowl games crammed together in December that they can start to blend together, so Yoho and his team sought to be a purple cow amidst the herd. To put the game on the map — which would attract attention, drive more value for the eponymous partner, and increase the platform of the bowl game and the organization behind it overall.

There’s a delicate dance, however, in developing a brand for the bowl game that necessarily comingles with the title sponsor. Because while title sponsors don’t hold those spots in perpetuity (see the history of most any bowl game and the shifts in sponsors over the years), they are right there on the marquee of any and all bowl game brand accounts. The trick is finding those intersections, the north star for any good partnership, and building a relationship of trust and collaboration.

“[The Duke’s Mayo team] is aligned in what we’re trying to do,” said Yoho, who noted that Duke’s Mayo already has strong brand recognition in the south while they aim to increase their growing platform as a national brand. “They understand our mission, we understand theirs. It’s aligned. They push us…There is that constant healthy pushing to be the best possible. They understand and we understand [that] we want our games to stand alone. We want in the crowded bowl season marketplace of 40 other sponsors, we want Duke’s Mayo to be unique, and we want the Duke’s Mayo Bowl to be unique.”

Yoho continued, addressing the harmonious coexistence but distinctiveness of the Duke’s Mayo and Duke’s Mayo Bowl brands.

“Now, you do have two different brands,” he said. “You have the Duke’s Mayo brand and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. There are places they intersect and there’s places where they probably are not on the same train track — but the train tracks run parallel. I shouldn’t be doing something that they deem inappropriate in the same way that they’re not going to speak about the game in a way that isn’t going to relate.

“So there’s a lot of healthy conversations and dialogue. We meet year-round weekly just to talk through things and activations. And we’re blessed in that they’re like rocket fuel to everything we do, they provide the substance to make all the marketing fun.”

At the most basic level, both entities seek to reach and engage college football fans. That’s who the Duke’s Mayo Bowl wants to attract to buy tickets, tune in to watch, and consume their ancillary content; and to meaningfully reach that audience is why a brand like Duke’s Mayo invests in a bowl game sponsorship in the first place. As Yoho noted earlier, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl is just the name of an annual game until the opponents get announced. Yoho and his team can’t affect those teams, but they can create a brand that gets fans and players of any team excited to get selected for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl by building an appealing brand and reputation. It all works together, too, in that creating a valuable and distinct brand produces a valuable platform for a partner like Duke’s Mayo.

It starts to sound pretty simple and logical in those terms, and Yoho’s remit is clear in that the best thing he can do is create a distinct brand that’s attractive to the broad college football fan base.

“There’s a lot of trial and error and discovery and now it’s become secondhand in terms of understanding, like, all we have to do is understand what college football is, which is probably the most chaotic and flawed of all sports and constantly changing, but lean into that and have fun and understand that it’s also because of that it’s beautiful,” said Yoho, articulating the thinking behind the Duke’s Mayo Bowl’s approach to personality, content, and social media. “I would argue college sports is probably the closest you come to religion in terms of just how you feel in a stadium — so lean into that. A

“And by doing that, it’s the long term payoff of you create a brand that people relate to. And then if you have a brand people relate to…[and then] out of left field [it gets announced that] you’re playing in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl [fans are] excited because they know that it’s a brand that’s fun, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and they’re going to show up and have the time of their lives. So that’s the payoff. It’s a ten-year bet, but it’s paying off.”

The beauty of building a sweeping brand, too, is that it transcends social media and makes all the other elements of the game, and its activations, come together organically. It’s all too common for ‘brand’ and ‘personality’ these days to get narrowly defined as social media copy and content; heck, sometimes ‘voice’ merely considers the tone of your tweets. But look around the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — what you see on the broadcast, the fan experience, the interactive activities around the game — and the consistency stands out, compounding the effectiveness of everything they’re trying to do.

And make no mistake, this all looks like fun and games (and it IS fun and games), but there’s a point to it all. It’s the synergy of putting all the elements together in harmony that leads to outsized results for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, its Duke’s Mayo Bowl, and the title sponsor with a twang (Duke’s Mayo, iykyk).

“There is the sponsorship fulfillment and we’re crushing it in that,” said Yoho, discussing the core objectives for his efforts. “Like, I think everyone sees Duke’s Mayo as a household name — and it was before in the South, but it’s expanded, and in the South it’s penetrated even more, and that’s due to their trust and awesome and incredible team.

“But also the payoff is the people going to the games, the engagement, what they’re doing, and creating a spectacle where the football game is still the most important thing, the people are suiting up and going — but we also created an environment where it is fun to go to. It’s different, it’s unique; it starts with social, but in the end, if you go in and people are chugging mayo and whatnot, it’s part of what we’re doing all the way and everything’s aligned.”

The terms ‘sponsorship’ and ‘partnership’ often get used interchangeably. But make no mistake, the best outcomes come from partnerships. From relationships that aren’t a transaction that results in an agreed-upon activation, but a collaboration that starts with a foundation, but builds upon it — through teamwork, through exchange of ideas, through reacting and evolving activations — working together to achieve results that benefit all sides. Look closely enough and you can start to tell them apart — the Duke’s Mayo and Duke’s Mayo Bowl is undoubtedly a partnership. That truth comes out in the way Yoho describes the year-round meetings for two games all year (the Duke’s Mayo Classic and Duke’s Mayo Bowl), the mutual trust and alignment of goals, and the results fans see culminate each year with the famous ‘mayo dump’ that serves as a symbol of all those conversations, strategies, and elements coming together.

Said Yoho: “I think everyone has seen this is, I would say, the epitome of what brand marketing via sponsorship should be. And what’s happened for them and what’s happened for the game.

“That’s what happens when you work in harmony together.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH MILLER YOHO

READ THE SNIPPETS

Content Strategy, Digital, Fan Development, General Marketing, Social Media, Social Media ROI

Key Themes and Opportunities for Sports Organizations in the Year Ahead

2023 was a great year to be a sports fan. Most of the traditional measures of fan interest increased, more emerging sports rose up, the platforms of sports did some good in culture and society, and it was another year of growing understanding that the future of sports business and fan engagement will be molded, if not led, by those managing the digital and social channels that comprise the majority of time spent and touch points between sport and fan.

There may not have been paradigm shifts in the greater smsports world, but the roots for such massive evolution formed and there’s more recognition than ever that originality wins, meaningful connections matter, and that sports and athletes are the gateway to so much more than the game on the field or court.

With that in mind, something of an annual tradition building off close observation of the space and countless valuable conversations, here are ten areas of interest and themes at the top of my mind in 2024 for the greater sportsbiz industry.

Fan Identity (online and offline)

So much of fandom has been, and continues to be, about identity. One declares themselves a fan of a given athlete or team and therefore does the things that fans do — follow their social, consume content involving them, wear merch showcasing their fandom, and maybe insert it into their avatar or username or profiles. And the notion of identity, in digital and IRL environments, remains paramount. But there’s more competition than ever to own pieces of one’s identity, so the challenge for sports organizations is to foster and reinforce elements of identity, empower fans to showcase it and find emerging and original ways to do it. One more way to tap into fan identity is to align with their other interests and passions, such as our next item…

Creators, Influencers, and UGC

Fandom is contagious and we’re seeing more collaboration and strategy in direct work with online influencers (and ‘traditional’ celebrities) and creators who are already fans themselves. These mutually beneficial relationships benefit all parties when they’re authentic and it’s why you’ve seen teams and leagues in the last couple of years create full-time positions to oversee and execute influencer marketing and relations; others are rolling the remit into social media roles. It’s not uncommon now to see titles like Director of Social Media and Influencers on the staff directories of teams and leagues.

This is not just about direct partnerships, it’s also a larger theme playing out in sports business as the industry begins to appreciate more and more the value of earned media. Earned media — from fans posting about a game, a team, a player — is not new in sports; traditional B2C brands would kill for such organic earned media. But as teams add a strategic layer, that’s where the fun starts. Facilitating creators with content and access, fostering UGC and showcasing to create a positive feedback loop, monetizing it directly and indirectly. The organization of this ecosystem is only just beginning, which leads us to the next theme…

The next phase of Collab

If we had the data, we could probably see a chart showing the growth in the % of Instagram feed posts that are Collabs looking something like 📈 in the last year or so. Mutual relationships are getting mobilized more frequently, whether it’s league and broadcaster, team and player, league and brand. Alongside the Collab posts, the platforms are also productizing the behavior in other ways, testing true collaborative content, with multiple parties each contributing to a single post.

My job often entails ideating around maximizing such organized orders of parties for a given sports or entertainment property. As the fences get more easily traversable and the collaboration being offered by platforms more widespread, it will lead to more frequent, more creative, and even opportunistic collab content taking off. Too often the power of relationships that transcend the field gets taken for granted, which indirectly leads to our next item…

Relationship platform

There are a lot of answers to the ‘Why do we love sports?’ question and a lot of them are correct. But at its core, past the inherent storytelling [and, yes, the wagering] the group dynamics that sports fandom cultivates is the beating heart. Sports fandom offers an opportunity to plan a social night out with friends or family, it can jumpstart a dormant group chat, fuel endless conversation at the bar or the dinner table, and it can lubricate meetings with even total strangers, providing an instant ember of relationship.

So how can sports teams lean into this superpower even more in 2024? We’ve seen the move to smaller group engagement across social platforms, whether it’s on Discord or IG or WhatsApp or elsewhere — sports provides the connective tissue for much of it. Teams and leagues can create more synapses, more opportunities to foster friendships or even initiate new engagements. If sports can master their position as a purveyor of relationships and pastime, there is a helluva opportunity to further enhance the next item…

Direct to Consumer

The trend of leagues and teams developing and prioritizing their owned and operated channels, often with an app and a CRM at the center, is not a new one. But the climate has only hastened these pursuits — the dilution of precise targeting with digital ads is one and more recently the gradual decline of the regional sports network (RSN) business. If all of a sudden teams had to rely on monetizing their live broadcasts one fan at a time, many realized it sure would help to have a direct line to more of them, especially those not already in the database because they’ve attended a game [but still watched a lot of your games/content].

The apps are getting more competitive — they have to. Teams and leagues are asking themselves (and being pitched by vendors) ‘What can we do to entice more fans to spend time on our owned platforms’ (and what value prop will convince them to register/sign in with their information)?’ There’s the low-hanging fruit of mobile ticket/account integration, but beyond that relatively ‘free space’, there’s a plethora of ideas out there, from interactivity to exclusive content to novel features, and lots more. But one area picking up steam for sports and beyond is our next topic…

More gaming

There was an article recently in Vanity Fair about the New York Times’ big bet on games, facetiously stating the Times is becoming a ‘gaming company that also happens to offer the news.’ Meanwhile, the NBA recently introduced ‘NBA Play’, a collection of games in their league’s app. As the competition for time, attention, and true (registered) membership for fans keeps heating up while simultaneously becoming more important, games represent a sticky, engaging, shareable opportunity to capture all that.

Depending on which stat you stumble upon, something like 90% of Americans regularly play games, whether they’re into Call of Duty, Words with Friends, Immaculate Grid, or even an old-school crossword or Sudoku. So it’s no wonder that investment in games is one with a big TAM for teams and leagues. They can be pretty simple, too (see: Wordle and all its variations). With built-in fandom, the games can simply align to general mechanics — challenging but not too challenging, sticky/consistent, talk-worthy, and, well, fun. Keep an eye on gaming, it may even become a growing direct revenue stream as sports organizations start to realize how much their IP can truly be monetized, which brings us to our next subject area…

Premium content, Passive Monetization, and Content Libraries

There are investors that focus specifically on acquiring YouTube libraries. With just a few tweaks and optimizations, archives of YouTube videos can generate a decent amount of revenue from years-old videos. Meanwhile, that documentary you just watched on Netflix was made in 2018 — and most of the content was pieced together from decades-old archives. That long opening aside, the point is that each piece of content a team publishes, cuts, or produces (or even if they don’t and it’s sitting in the cloud storage) is an asset. And those assets can deliver dividends in direct and indirect ways.

Many conversations you have about sponsored content now bring up that their organization saw the light in the last 1-3 years. The pandemic was a big part of it, but so were tailwinds from marketers across brands diverting more of their marketing spend from linear to digital channels. Sports content, from highlights to documentaries and the reality series that The Last Dance and Drive to Survive accelerated in demand, and while many teams already have the capability in-house to produce great all-access pieces, they’re starting to act more like a media company now, bringing in additional help or hiring more to up their volume. Because it brings in money. It brings in sponsors and can provide lasting value through time spent on an app or lucrative YouTube rabbit holes, or through pre-programmed social media ‘archive’ accounts, and maybe behind a paywall for your in-house RSN subscriber (if that comes to be). The number of permutations and options to piece together reams of old highlights, interviews, and B-roll is virtually endless. Especially if you consider our next item…

Generative AI

Generative AI had already made its way into sports well before ChatGPT launched and introduced the masses to the awe-inducing results; companies like WSC Sports already permitted you to ask for ‘All of Nikola Jokic’s dunks from his rookie season in 2015-2016’ and get a highlight package (assuming the big man dunked at all his rookie year). But the acceleration in 2023 was remarkable and does not seem to be slowing down as 2024 begins. It won’t be long before a video producer can use detailed prompts to significantly reduce the time it takes to produce premium content, optimized for algorithms and viewership. Maybe fans will even be able to create rough cuts of such content themselves (perhaps not in 2024).

The highlights-driven generative AI has been novel, but is mostly packages of a player’s top plays or all the ‘x’ from ‘y.’ As emotion and storytelling gets woven into these creations, the content banks are going to build up more and more so that fans may be consistently flipping between Hulu and their league or team’s app when deciding what to watch before going to bed. The relationships fans can build with their favorite shows or podcasts or creators are hard to truly measure, the metrics models are still catching up to digital interaction that’s so prolonged, invested, and sticky. So let’s talk about the next topic…

The evolving nature of engagement

We’re in the middle of the engagement era. Valuation models are often based on engagements (some include impressions, too), but as metrics and real-life results get more scrutinized, for the first time in a while the industry is reconsidering what really matters and, conversely, what just makes all sides look good to their bosses. As platforms evolve, owned channels get prioritized, and more mediums emerge, the old-school paradigms of engagement and engagement rate will evolve, too. If an impression means they walked by your store (excuse the shopping analogy; it works well here, but team platforms are not ‘storefronts’), engagement could mean they stopped and stared for a moment, they took a peek inside, they came in and browsed for a while, they came in and tried something on, they left with a purchase, they never came in at all but looked it up later, they never came in but after seeing a couple Instagram ads they added something to an online cart, they didn’t buy anything but brought a friend to the store — this list can go on and on with so many more variables and behaviors considered.

The point is that the way we think and talk about engagement is getting smarter and more thoughtful. In an industry like sports, where the longtail is so powerful (but more challenging than ever), sports organizations have to get better at understanding what is not just capturing the casual fan’s attention but what is capturing their heart and mind. The lifetime value of a fan is immeasurable, especially when their fan evangelism is accounted for, and as tempting as it is to chase the trees amidst the forest, we have to balance the casual engagements with the deeper fan touches. Expect to see innovation in measurements — not all will stick, nor should they — as we reconsider KPIs like time spent, frequency of engagement, retention, a fan’s connection tree (to other fans) and their potential k-factor, their propensity for high LTV curves, the number of platforms they engage on, and so much more. While we all love the idea of a Joe DiMaggio-like hitting streak when it comes to repeated social media success, moneyball is making its way into the industry as we consider slugging percentage and game-winning plays. That brings us to our final topic…

Eventizing across digital/social

Routine and its less-appealing stepsibling monotony are an inherent part of sports. Especially for sports with longer seasons and vast quantities of games and star players taking maintenance days, it’s hard to make every game matter. (see: The NBA In-Season Tournament as an effort to alleviate that) And that’s okay; in fact, it invites innovation. Teams and leagues are finding more ways, through brand and creator collabs, through theme nights that echo across content and social, through gamification, and more avenues to give fans a reason to consume and care — whether that means attending, watching, or just paying attention on social and digital channels.

These manufactured ‘events’ that try to break up what could otherwise feel routine are also opportunities to capture casual audiences. If you not only accept but embrace that not every piece of content and every campaign and event and game needs to try to reach your total addressable audience, organizations can hone in on specific audience cohorts. (See the appreciating engagement section). Your Hispanic Heritage activations and creative on social don’t need to go viral, but if that content can be really cool for a certain audience, that’s a win.

At the more macro level, it doesn’t take a genius to see the increase in tentpoles produced and propagated by leagues, with the NFL and their schedule release content jumpstarting the practice. What are all the opportunities for a team, whether through organic parts of the league calendar or manufactured events by teams/leagues themselves, to make it feel like a big deal to fans? Get the right partners involved to justify the investment and make the campaigns feel big and exciting, and that slugging % can go up. Other trends in this piece will make activating and executing such ‘events’ on digital/social and beyond more feasible and valuable, too.

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A common refrain for years posits that all brands are media companies, and vice-versa. Sports organizations embody this duality more than ever, with generational brands and an endless fount of valuable IP. Developing new avenues to monetize and actualize it all is top of mind for the year ahead. The pluripotency of sports is unmatched and we’re just starting to realize what that means.

Fan Development, General Marketing, General Sports Business

Building a League and Fans from Scratch: Inside Fan Development with the Premier Lacrosse League

Every sports team and league has its diehards. But every team and league also knows they can’t thrive at scale on diehards alone. That’s why so many are perpetually chasing the casual fan. The curious observer that can one day turn into a diehard. And even the biggest, most established leagues in the world still don’t have 100% penetration, there is always room to grow.

If cultivating more fans is a challenge for the longstanding major pro sports leagues, imagine an upstart league with an emerging sport. This was what the Premier Lacrosse League and its founders Paul and Mike Rabil were and remain up against. Lacrosse participation is growing, sure, but the viability of the PLL rests on its ability to bring its sport, teams, and players to the masses — whether they’re lifelong players and fans or just discovering it for the first time.

But it’s happening. They’re doing it. The PLL is still just getting started, but RJ Kaminski, the league’s Director of Brand who has been there from the start, sees fans being borne. His charge and his efforts are a big part of it. Kaminski recognizes that fans aren’t built in a day. There are steps along the way as the fan goes from just noticing the PLL to consuming more to the point where they’re buying swag and making plans to go to a game. For Kaminski, to see the process in action is so gratifying.

Kaminski described it: “The most satisfying part has been watching the fan who really doesn’t have an interest in the sport of lacrosse, but something along the way — a campaign that we did — sparked their interest enough to follow along, which led them a little bit further down the fan funnel to potentially watch a game with us, and then they’re really in it. And then they’re potentially picking a team and then they’re potentially appearing in person.

“Watching some of those fan journeys just on Twitter as you can see when someone follows along or when you see someone start to engage and then see them actually come to a game — watching that probably has been the best part.”

There is no one way, no magic pill campaign that can create fans. But the path to fandom involves emotion, getting fans to care. For the PLL, playing a sport with which the majority of people are not familiar, this means highlighting plays and players to inspire awe, empathy, and exhilaration. Kaminski talked about bringing out the stories of their players, citing an example of Redwoods star Myles Jones recounting his dreams as a kid playing lacrosse. Those human stories can ignite the initial intrigue.

“[The Jones story] was an inspirational bit [and makes them ask] ‘What is the PLL? Who is Myles Jones?’” Kaminski explained. “And then they follow along and whether it’s just from a passive capacity and they’re just keeping an eye on what we’re doing or whether they’re ready to come to a game or turn on the TV to see a Redwoods game, whatever it may be — there’s an interest sparked.”

Once fans have a reason to care, Kaminski and the league can watch them dive in, while showcasing what makes the PLL so great. Start by making fans care, then connect, and then fall in love or find someone or something to latch onto. Clearing this pathway is why Kaminski and his colleagues mix the slick shots and moves with scenes that show the human side of the players.

“So you’re sitting at home and you’re watching someone like Myles Jones barrel someone over and put it in the back of the net from two and then you see him in the locker room with his shirt off drinking a beer, celebrating with his teammates, making jokes, and singing along to his favorite Drake album,” he said. “Those are the moments that humanize our players and really deepen the fandom that already exists there and potentially attracts a new fan to follow along with someone like Myles.”

So there you go, right? Drive fans to find players they can love and who can make them go wow in highlights. That’s not the finish line, though. Such fandom may play well on social media and stories off the field, but the most invested and engaged fans care about the final score, too, and not just who scored the sickest goals. The PLL has had fans of its players from the earliest days of the league, but creating fans of the teams is more challenging because of the nature of the team.

The eight Premier Lacrosse League teams don’t represent a city or state like most of the PLL’s pro sports counterparts. They’re relatively arbitrary. But the PLL knows the best fan experience involves them cheering on a favorite team to win the game, bringing an intensity that only rooting on one side and against an opposing side can deliver. Kaminski talked about why getting fans to pick a team is an important objective for the PLL.

“It’s [about] building rivalries, man,” said Kaminski, who can be seen hosting a lot of the PLL social media content. “It’s getting the opportunity to have competing fan sections at games. It’s what you see in the more traditional sports media landscape.

“It’s being able to attend a Redwoods-Whipsnakes game, and have one part of the stadium cheer when a ball goes in one net, and then the same for the other side. That’s happening and we’re progressing there, but there’s a lot of work that goes into actually getting a fan to pick a side, to pick a team or pick two teams or just follow a superstar.”

So how does the PLL go about differentiating the teams, such that being a fan of one and not another really means something? Social media plays a big role here. It’s where, through the content shared, the tone, the personality, the sights and sounds — where all that can create a vibe and, eventually, a unique brand for fans to choose to wrap their arms around and identify with. That’s easier said than done, of course, because it has to fit. A team shouldn’t have a jokey brand if its players exude intensity. So Kaminski and his colleagues take care in building these team brands.

“It’s largely driven by the culture that’s developed from the head coach and the players of those clubs,” he said.

“For example, I think Chaos is one that we can start with — a team that quite literally is incredibly chaotic in the locker room. Pregame speeches, and for those that don’t know who are listening, the Chaos are led by Andy Towers, who’s an incredible head coach. He’s about six foot five, he’s bald and you can hear him from a mile away. [He] gives incredible pump-up speeches, usually has an incredible anecdote to get his guys fired up, and it usually goes viral the next day for how he got his guys going in the locker room. “

All the best marketing, human stories, and entertainment wouldn’t get the PLL all the way there. They’re a professional lacrosse league, their primary product is the game its players are paid to play. But Kaminski is confident that once fans get in the door, they’re not leaving. The PLL has a winning product, so, while conceding that it’s not easy or a given to keep fans in the fold, that he’ll bet that fans who sample it will stick around for the long run.

“Retention can be one of the hardest things to succeed in for a sports league,” he said. “But when the product’s there and the product’s the best out there that combines [with] what we’re doing in the broadcast side and the talent in the booth, to me it’s gonna be tough for them to flip the channel.”

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH RJ KAMINSKI

Fan Development, General Marketing

Where Major League Soccer Fandom Has Been and Where It’s Going as the US Enters a Critical Period for Football ⚽️

What was your favorite team growing up? Regardless of sport or league, which team captured the heart of your 9-year-old self?

It’s likely that that favorite team came from a parent or sibling passing it on and/or from the local team that everybody favored in your town. But here’s the thing about soccer in the US — millennials and the generations preceding them didn’t really have much of a favorite American soccer club (Major League Soccer will turn 30 years old in 2023). So if you’re a soccer fan growing up in the States, particularly pre or early-world wide web, your favorite team was kind of random. It’s no wonder MLS has been battling uphill to win lifelong fans and broad relevancy. Kyle Sheldon, who has spent years working in pro soccer in the US, including stints with four MLS clubs, recognizes the challenge pro soccer clubs in the US face.

“I’ve seen data over my career that soccer fans in the US are more likely to have multiple teams that they follow than just about anywhere else in the world, which makes sense when you think about it,” said Sheldon, who is founder and CEO of soccer-specific marketing and creative agency NAME & NUMBER. “It’s a dynamic country with people from all different backgrounds, and you’ve got really kind of first-generation soccer fans in a lot of cases who are discovering the sport and their attachment to a particular team varies pretty wildly.”

Without such inherent or inherited fandom, MLS clubs had to act a bit more like minor league teams in the earlier days, focusing on affordable family entertainment than a beacon of the collective will and inborn identity of the community. But as younger millennials grew up and Gen Z came along, MLS teams have, for the first time for many of them, been able to aspire to more coveted demographics. They could earn a spot in the local zeitgeist alongside the other most popular, more deeply rooted teams for American sports fans. Sheldon noticed this evolution for soccer marketing in the States, especially with the newest clubs borne in the last few years. It’s a watershed development and one that many MLS clubs can follow.

“You started to see a different type of person attend those games and there was a different connection in the city, in the community that just indicated a different opportunity,” said Sheldon, describing the new type of fan being marketed to and won over in MLS that newer clubs targeted. “I think those were really eye-opening moments for people around the league, and a lot of teams are still frankly trying to capture it…

“Then as you sort of fast forward and you look at — I think it’s a more subtle shift, but you see Atlanta and Minnesota and LAFC and more recently Austin FC have come into the league and these teams are very culture-focused, they’re value-focused, they’re community-focused…”

Sheldon double-clicked into the importance of penetrating community and culture, alluding to LAFC’s success in doing so. “‘Plug into culture before you plug into soccer,’” said Sheldon, quoting LAFC’s Chief Brand Officer Richard Orosco. “I think that’s a good recipe for anyone. You’re a team and a club that’s representative of a very specific place, and that very specific place has cultural connection points. It has its own creative, community, it has music and design, and just a lifestyle that’s really specific to that space.”

It is a tall task to earn acceptance, let alone embrace, into the community. To try and be universally beloved in year one is a foolhardy task. And soccer is different, anyway. The most ardent soccer fandoms are just that: fervent, passionate, whatever intense emotion you want to insert. That’s what markets the product (games to attend and watch) better than any messaging about affordable family entertainment — and, as Sheldon called out — MLS clubs mostly can’t market that their league displays the best soccer players in the world, because they don’t. The experience has to sell, Sheldon told me, and clubs need to build that into their overall strategy.

“MLS has never really had the ability to say come watch the best soccer players in the world, so the experience and the supporters experience in particular is the differentiator for sports viewing or attendance in this country. [But that experience] just doesn’t exist [Sheldon did name a few MLS clubs that are exceptions…

“There’s nothing like [the European experience]. There’s nothing like the 90 minutes of singing, chanting, drum beating, just raucous atmosphere…I think it has to start with growing supporters culture because that’s the differentiator,” said Sheldon, describing the superfan clubs that do all that chanting and drum beating. “And naturally, if you create something that is experiential, that is raucous, that is interesting to watch, that is enjoyable to participate in, then other people will come, I think, because of that experience.”

So all you need is a sizable group of die-hard fans that love the club so much that they’ll sing and cheer for 90 minutes straight at every home match. Sounds easy, eh? Creating and building upon such a fan base cannot happen overnight, kind of by design. Teams have to build credibility and consistency; fans can’t wrap their arms and hearts around something unfamiliar. Sheldon spoke first and foremost about teams committing to a north star identity, and then ingratiating that brand into the community. Not every potential fan will respond to the same approach, but that’s okay (consider your own personality and how you activate it differently around different people).

“I believe in ultimately kind of segmenting your fan base in different ways so that you’re creating content for each. The number of entry points to fandom is vast,” said Sheldon, whose NAME & NUMBER works to help brands and teams in soccer with marketing and creative. “There are a lot of ways people get connected to a club and to an experience. You can’t do it all, especially in a league where there still are limited resources. But to be thoughtful about that and ultimately to ensure you have the right guiding principles as to who you say you are and what your brand is and what you stand for is really what’s most important.”

Sheldon spoke further of earning credibility as a member of the community. Because MLS teams have to succeed locally, first, he said. It’s great to have fans in Panama that love your club’s Panamanian player, but they’re a luxury; the hundreds or thousands of fans chanting at your games and evangelizing your team are the essential.

“I think the starting point has to be hyper-local,” he explained. “It comes back to how do you plug into civic pride? How do you plug into the local culture? How do you plug into the local creative community? What’s the hole-in-the-wall taco joint down the street that everybody in the neighborhood knows? How do you connect to them?…

“How do you connect to culture in such a way that it communicates ‘We know this place and we are a part of this place?’…I think that’s the starting point for sports marketing today. But yes, you have to be relevant locally before you can be globally.”

Domestic professional soccer continues to face those generational challenges, but it’s already growing year-to-year and the much-anticipated World Cup in 2026 promises to throw rocket fuel into that growth. The vision of hordes of casual fans coming is seductive, to be sure, but don’t forget that the most important part of building anything lasting is establishing the foundation.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH KYLE SHELDON

Category: General Marketing

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