Why is sports sponsorship valuable? What factors make it a premium asset for brands?
Sure, the ability to command large, broad, often live audiences plays a major role. But as marketing has matured, the unique value proposition for sports has only grown and has become better understood and appreciated.
Sara Toussaint has seen this play out throughout her career, with experience on all sides of the sports and athlete sponsorship complex. She’s seen fan affinities drive business outcomes through partnerships, she’s been part of tactics that activated partnerships during emotionally charged moments in live sports, and she’s seen new, once vastly undervalued opportunities emerge in women’s sports, which perhaps coalesce all of the above factors in driving the premium value of sports sponsorship.
Toussaint, who today is co-CEO of global women’s soccer-focused athlete management agency TMJ, spent nearly a decade at Wells Fargo driving the bank’s sports sponsorships. Partnerships in sports were not on an island; they were part of Wells Fargo’s overall marketing plans and expected to drive tangible, compounding cross-channel results. Standard wisdom suggests sports fans will support the partners of their favorite teams, especially when it enhances their own fandom. Toussaint explained how this played out for Wells Fargo’s sponsorships in pro and college sports.
“On the Wells Fargo side, it was how do we support the marketing initiatives that the CMO had set in place?” said Toussaint, who spent time at Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer, among other stops, before her tenure at Wells Fargo. “We would use sponsorship as a way to augment the existing media plans and marketing strategies for everything from the websites and store, etc.
“Then, from the brand side, what the property really wanted [was for] Wells Fargo, especially around the Mexican national team and Major League Soccer, to promote those properties here in the US. So to have the Mexican national team debit card on every Wells Fargo ATM was a huge win…there’s a lot of data out there on consumer affinity to brands that support their favorite teams — and we definitely saw that in terms of the number of accounts that were opened, and we could tie that to a Mexican national team card, a Florida Gator card to a new account. Like, we could say on that account that was the card that they requested, and we can presume that we had done marketing there that had caused that demand.”
It’s not just about brand associations and tailing affinities, though. Part of the magic of sports sponsorships is the inherent preponderance of high-impact moments and campaigns. Times when fans are excited, their hearts racing, and their attention focused. That feature of sport is an opportunity for brand partners to make their sponsorships active, riding the wake of the emotional highs, augmented by the real-time nature and inherent connection of sports and social media.
Toussaint had a hand and a front-row view of these opportunities, with Wells Fargo’s partner, the national soccer team for Mexico, competing in the World Cup. She described a clever, provocative campaign that saw American soccer hero Landon Donovan expressing that he’d be cheering for Mexico, and also recounted how Wells Fargo made the most of their sponsorship during the matches and moments themselves.
“We did a lot of live social moments [during the World Cup],” she said. “Our social media team at Wells Fargo had a control room, and there were probably nine screens they could monitor, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook. We had the World Cup up while Mexico played, and we pre-programmed creative and copy as much as possible, so as things happened during a match, we were ready with a post, or we were ready to then supplement, like they just won, ‘Get your Wells Fargo Mexico debit card’ or whatever, and do that in real time. So that social media piece was a really big win for us around the World Cup.”
Social media wasn’t just a way for a brand like Wells Fargo to enter the conversation alongside the properties they were sponsoring, it also gave emerging sports, leagues, and athletes a more level, meritocratic playing field to fuel their rise. These catalyzing elements helped several new sports and leagues find footing, but the impact has been (and continues to be) most evident in women’s sports.
Toussaint recounted to me how a past colleague, at the time, saw the opportunity in women’s sports as a growing and undervalued asset. She looked at the rising National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), and it was the social and digital channels, in particular, which stood out.
“There were so many compelling reasons for sponsoring NWSL,” said Toussaint, who is also a co-owner of two pro soccer teams, the North Carolina Courage in the NWSL and Querétaro FC in Liga MX (Mexico’s top-flight men’s pro soccer league). “For me, the number one reason was the digital footprint and engagement footprint. I was like, Wow, this could be a really cost-effective way to get social media engagement.”
With more women’s sports and athletes commanding attention and audiences on social and digital media, the legacy media began catching up, with coverage going from 4% not long ago to around 15% today, Toussaint noted (citing reports from Sports Innovation Lab, among others). While the early sponsors have been followed by more brands, but the scope and scale of women’s sports still pales in comparison to most of the more mature, generations-old men’s sports properties and its traditional sponsorship assets.
That’s an opportunity, though, said Toussaint.
“With the women, aside from the data, we can also say, Look, it’s not as saturated as men’s sports, so you’re going to have a lot more awareness,” said Toussaint, who heads TMJ’s TMJ Catalyst, which focuses on connecting TMJ’s athletes with brands and business leaders for deals. “You have a lot more white space to play in. We talked about brand loyalty, you’re going to have a lot more of that. You’ve got new categories you can play with. You can try new things, and it becomes even more of a white space because you’re not competing against brands that are typically in this landscape. So that’s a big piece.”
The combination of more media coverage, more brand partnerships, bigger audiences, and more fan interest has turned women’s sports into an asset class that’s increasingly attracting institutional capital and high-net-worth individuals. That infusion and energy will only accelerate the flywheel, driving more growth and more capital in a virtuous cycle of value creation. The bigger fan bases, superstar athletes, and increased cross-channel footprint are all good signs for the continued rise of women’s sports — but it’s that investment that Toussaint cited as perhaps the most impactful factor showing the world, especially the business world, that women’s sports are far from the more charity-driven, corporate social responsibility play the properties may have been a generation ago.
“People follow wherever the money goes, and you’re seeing big money get into women’s sports, and you’re seeing billionaires buying [in],” she said. “And for whatever reason, people think billionaires are like the smartest folks in the room…That news is now on CNBC, and marketers are watching CNBC, right? So you’ve got exponential input that’s coming into the space, and that’s really important. Where the money goes, especially big money names, you’re going to have the media following, and you’re going to have the marketers follow, too.”
The marketers are here. The value proposition for women’s sports is undeniable. And the new paradigms in sports business will favor women’s sports, with its strong social and digital game. As sponsorship further appreciates elements beyond eyeballs, it’ll be the sports properties that can deliver activation and affinities, and the brands that can capitalize on sports’ special elements and emotions that will turn potential value into kinetic outcomes.
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.
The athlete marketing complex and the creator economy are converging.
It was bound to happen. Athletes were among the earliest proto-influencers. So it only makes sense that, as opportunities in the creator economy grew and diversified, athletes could build on their influential platforms and become multi-hyphenate creators. But there’s an inherent paradox for elite athletes here: the tunnel-vision dedication and discipline that propels them to excellence in their sport can seem to brush aside extracurricular opportunities for some, while fueling a measured approach for others.
Most athletes only have a limited window of time to even consider the opportunity to develop and monetize their brand. A minuscule portion will get big stages in the pros or in prominent international competition, but the vast majority won’t. So their few years in college comprise that small window, though that doesn’t mean it’s easy or a given. Rachel Maeng has a unique POV having had various perspectives of the creator economy, athletics, and running a business. She competed in college sports, built her personal brand, negotiated brand deals for others, and counseled creators and athletes alike. She dispels the notion that every college athlete is engaging in ‘NIL,’ the shorthand for referencing all things related to activating and monetizing the name, image, and likeness of athletes.
“I talked to so many athletes in college and high school that are like, ‘I’m not doing NIL deals; honestly, I don’t have any time,'” said Maeng, who was a coxswain on the Rutgers rowing team during her college years. “In reality, I would say from what I’ve seen, maybe like 10% of each roster actually in college actively participates or is even interested in doing NIL deals. Because think about it, like, when I was in college, we were practicing every day at 7 a.m., and then I would go to class, and then I would have 3 p.m. lifts, and then I would go to class, and then I was in clubs and organizations…When does that leave time for me to create content and negotiate and do all those things? It doesn’t. And in reality, some kids cannot time manage as well as some other kids, so they’re not able to participate because they would fail classes or they would fail at their athletic opportunities.”
Given that use it or lose it nature of the college athletics platform, however, there can be a degree of pressure to squeeze it all in. You can’t leave money on the table, your peers are doing it, family and friends may expect it — there’s no shortage of factors that can weigh on a student-athlete’s mind. Maeng sees the struggles firsthand and recognizes not just the burden placed upon student-athletes trying to balance it all, but also the gap in education for those wading into the NIL game.
“I think the media and the social media that we see about, like, Oh, this kid made $8 million, so and so athlete just made a couple hundred thousand [dollars] working with Nike. That’s great, and that’s a great opportunity for that athlete who can handle it, who maybe has a team around them that can handle that. But if you can’t do it, you can’t do it,” said Maeng. “I think that we can’t put pressure on athletes to be able to participate in NIL while not giving them the education about how to do everything that comes with being your own business and running a business. And then there’s the mental health aspect that we were talking about before. There are just so many factors, I think, that go into it. You can’t expect it.”
But while NIL development and deals may not be for everyone, there are still a lot of student-athletes who do choose to wade into those waters, doing the quasi-creator and influencer thing alongside their athletic and academic endeavors. One of the best parts of college athletics, too, is the sheer diversity of student-athletes. Not only the sports they play, but their background and interests, present a panoply of ways to cultivate an audience that’s attractive for a brand.
There are only a select few athletes in the pros, let alone college, that have universal broad appeal. The same goes for creators, which is why the majority of creators lean into specific segments or niches, which can make them appealing and authentic endorsers for partners. It’s simplistic, but sometimes effective at a surface level, to jump on trends and pop culture topics, but generic audiences and content, absent immense, undeniable scale, do not make for an effective NIL. Brand deals shouldn’t feel random, but organic and expected. Maeng explained how she’d advise athletes, informed by her work with athletes and non-athlete creators alike.
“As it pertains to athletes, you can go out, and you can dance and do only trends and get a good amount of followers,” said Maeng, who was CEO and Founder of influencer and athlete-driven brand marketing and media production company GEN Agency before selling it. “But as soon as you start advertising, I don’t know, Nike or Jordan or you start advertising Kellogg’s Pop Tarts or Pringles, if you’ve never talked about those products before, your page has nothing to do with it, [then] it feels very inauthentic. So, if you’re a content creator and you’re also an athlete and you talk about training, then you talk about your family, you talk about your lifestyle, maybe you even talk about, like, skincare, you know, because you’re an athlete, you’re sweating, so how do you clean out your pores, I would 100% trust you to tell me what food to put in my body, what things to put on my skin, how to train for acceleration or how to train for explosion. Because those are the things that you have demonstrated expertise in.
“So I definitely think athletes should have some sort of niche to them. But then also, too, you’re a full-time athlete. You are literally spending all your time training or actually participating in a sport. You have limited time outside of that, especially as a college athlete, so pick and choose your battles, pick and choose your free time. And if you’re just making really general content, you’re going to eat up all that free time.”
With experience on all sides of the equation, Maeng understands the perspective and goals of brands and creators alike. When it comes to marketing and creators, brands think about audiences. Whom you can reach will largely dictate the brands and products/services for which you’re an appealing partner. For creators and athletes alike to make themselves attractive to brands, they have to consider why brands work with creators in the first place, and what goes into their decision-making, as Maeng explained.
“When a brand does marketing and uses some sort of talent to market, it’s because that talent can speak to the ideal customer that the brand has,” said Maeng, who today is a fractional COO and CMO, in addition to her work as an investor and adviser. “So like, if I’m Old Navy and I’m launching a new jeans campaign, I’m not going to talk to someone that is probably the same person that State Farm is using to talk about an insurance product. Why? Because the jeans might be for Gen Z people who are going to be under the age of 26, and State Farm Insurance, etc., you’re on your parents’ insurance until you’re 26, so you’re not going to be buying the same product that you would at 26 with the jeans. So it’s creators and talent who have that same ideal audience as the brand.
“Then lastly, it’s figuring out what brands are really interested in. If you see a brand never having been on TikTok, they are probably not going to immediately choose you to be on their TikTok; like, figure out where they are and meet them on the platforms that they are.”
The ball in the athlete’s court is just as important as the brand’s. It can be tempting to say yes to every paycheck, every deal. But as a creator athlete develops an audience, it’s the trust their audience has in them which makes them an appealing endorser in the first place. As many examples have shown over the years, one false step can inhibit the perception of dependability and integrity. This is another layer of counsel that NIL-focused athletes need as they figure out this space.
“At the end of the day, don’t tie yourself to products that aren’t quality, right?” said Maeng, who was an official TikTok partner as the platform ramped up its creator strategy. “Like, you don’t want to turn into these athletes that got caught up in the crypto scandals or any of the other scandals out there because they didn’t do their due diligence, because they thought this would be easy money. They didn’t look into who owns the company or what products were in the product or all those sorts of things…
“When I become an advisor, I put my name, image, and likeness on that company, and my belief in them and my expertise go with them, and my credibility goes with them. So I think everyone has to do their due diligence and really make a very serious, forward-thinking decision if they would like to tie themselves to that.”
There is no shortage of suits getting into athletes’ ears, preying on their untapped potential and relative naivete, to sign them up as a client. And sometimes, agents are a great value-add, but the notion that every athlete seeking to monetize their NIL needs an agent is misleading, Maeng told me. She explained the key considerations in what an athlete needs and when an agent does and does not make sense to bring into the fold, and the potential risks to watch out for.
“In my opinion, if you have your own platform and if you have opportunities in brand deals, you don’t need an agent, you just need a lawyer, and maybe a publicist, someone that can help get your SEO out there, can help get you in front of good opportunities,” said Maeng, who also noted that brand deals don’t happen willy-nilly, but are more often part of brand campaigns planned months in advance. “But an agent should only be used if their opportunities and the things that they have for you outweigh what you currently have. Because at the end of the day, agents make a commission, so they really only get paid on what they bring in or what they work on. And it might get to the point where one agent has like 30 athletes, and he doesn’t have time to work on the bottom 20, he’s only working on the top ten, and you’re going to get upset, you’re going to get unmotivated, all those things, because you realize someone doesn’t care about you or your business as much as you do.”
All of these factors discussed in the preceding paragraphs illuminate the main point: student-athletes, college administrators, university leaders — all this stuff is new to them. The responsibilities for overseeing and preparing athletes for NIL deals are not something to be added to an existing role in the department, nor is an added hire from within the sports world. College programs need someone who has done the thing, who has worked with brands, managed creators (and/or were or are creators themselves), who knows all the things those aforementioned parties don’t.
Maeng and others like her have spent time at schools, working with student-athletes and school administration. She’s seen the gaps to fill, and she spoke with conviction, enumerating the must-haves for these programs to set up their student-athletes for success.
“I think, number one, there are too many agents in the space and not everybody needs an agent, honestly. But I think there are people like myself, people like Sam Green, and people in other companies like Advance, at Greenfly, who are experts in what they educate about.
“Schools should bring in people who can not just speak from experience and speak on education, but I think schools need to actually go a step further and develop curriculum for their athletes about what is a personal brand, how to build it up, how to put that voice into action on social media, then how to make an LLC, how much money that you have to put away for taxes, how to file taxes, how to find a good manager and interview them and figure out if they’re a good fit, how to talk to brands, how to negotiate, how to even turn that into a bigger opportunity. All the things that go along with NIL, I think, need to be taught in some sort of classroom environment.”
This NIL era is new for everyone, not just the student-athletes at the center of it. The systems are being built by the day, the rules are constantly evolving, and many of the administrators and leaders are learning as they go. There is no precedent for programs to follow to adapt to the new normal, but, Maeng reminds us, it’s okay to recognize that there’s a lot you don’t know. The creator economy has been around for years, so while a lot of this is new (and nuanced, to be fair) for college athletics, there are those far more experienced and informed that schools can and should lean on and learn from. Maeng offered her perspective, having worked with schools, and what she’s seeing in the industry.
“I think anyone that has brought in a good platform or a good partner, whatever it is, is taking those first steps; it’s really important,” she said. “Just even admitting they don’t know everything, because, you know, you don’t know everything. I don’t know everything. I don’t even call myself an expert. So I think people that are actively making steps to make this easier on athletes, to make the experience something that they can actually leverage and learn from, I think they’re doing a great job.
“They have to just keep trying to help the athletes and keep trying to be better in the space.”
The view from a sports team’s social media seat offers a unique perspective. Social touches just about everything. The person at the helm of the social media practice needs to know everything going on with the team, by necessity. From gameday presentations to sponsor activations, community events, and fan development initiatives, ticket promotions, and team transactions — the list goes on. Meanwhile, social has more fan touchpoints than any other part of the organization, is their finger on the pulse of an admittedly small but mighty sample of the fan base, and has a better picture of fans’ psychographics than perhaps any other department or person within the team.
From his early days managing social media with the Carolina Panthers, Dan LaTorraca appreciated the unique position that social media occupied and the diverse ways it could provide value. He eventually ascended to a role overseeing marketing with the Carolina Hurricanes, taking lessons from years of experience to help in building an industry-leading organization at the Canes. Today, he leads marketing at media measurement and tracking platform Zoomph, where he uses learnings from nearly two decades in sports business to continue to help push the industry forward.
I recently sat down with LaTorraca for a wide-ranging interview, packed with insights and anecdotes from throughout his career. Read on for just a few of the key points touched on in our chat. There is so much more in the full interview, and I highly recommend watching or listening! Check it out here
Social Media Is Part of the Larger Organization
It’s easy to become a little myopic in any job function or role. The social media operation wants to nail its KPIs and surpass them, hitting highs in metrics like views, impressions, reach, and engagement rate. But social media is ultimately one cog, an important and arguably the most front-facing cog, of the team and its business. The power of social media lies in its connectivity to every organizational goal, and therefore its ability to play offense, finding opportunities to capitalize on and problems to solve.
LaTorraca talked about his understanding of the pivotal position in which social media sat, and the mindset of weaponizing it, in a good way, to affect the bottom line, while maintaining and developing the long-term brand and connection with fans essential to any sports team.
“Social obviously was a powerful tool for engagement, for revenue driving, but also it’s like, Well, how are we driving [website] traffic with it? How are we driving leads with it? How is it feeding these other pieces here? How does the mobile app fit in with all this other stuff? How does email fit in? Ultimately, it wasn’t just about social; it was about building a strong digital ecosystem. And social may be the most valuable, impactful, and engaging part of that, especially in that era when everything was social…Social has been that front door, that front porch for teams in a lot of ways, so a lot of the resources and strategy started there, but it had to fit together with everything else, and to ultimately drive value and figure out where those value opportunities are.
“In the Panthers’ case, they were doing really well with ticket sales. They didn’t have a lot [of tickets] to offer because of the PSL [personal seat license] system they had there. So it was like, where are we going to make money elsewhere? Where are we going to drive value elsewhere? And is it with driving tune in for our broadcast network? Is it with retail and merchandise sales? Sponsorship integration ended up being the biggest piece for us. So, really having that perspective of, we have to see how this fits together with everything else, and also understand compromise. A lot of times it’s tough, and it was tough for me at first, too; it was almost like, you have to maintain the purity of social. Like, there’s a way to do this, and we can’t have other departments influencing or implementing our strategy and decision making here with another ticket deal or this or that. But I realized early on that, while it is an important marketing tool, it has to fit within the boundaries and the needs and goals of the organization.”
Developing a Voice and Brand That Draw Fans In
When LaTorraca was early in his tenure with the Panthers, the concept of a team with personality was just emerging in sports social media. But he knew that developing intimate relationships with fans was going to be the most effective way to punch above their weight in the Carolina and national sports hierarchy.
“The first thing that I picked up on was just like answering fans a lot more. Remember Zappos? That was one of the focal points of their social strategy was that they actually responded. We were still in an era in 2011 or so where if a brand responded to you on social, you were like, Alright, it’s either an automated customer service thing or it’s a mistake. The responses didn’t have personality or uniqueness. And you know, where we are now, it’s like, Oh man, this brand actually cursed at me. So we’ve evolved a whole lot. But back then, it was new, and that was something the Panthers could do differently.
“So building those 1-to-1 relationships, and I even kept a list of, like, certain things fans were passionate about, and we built authentic relationships there. I think that really helped us not only understand what mattered to them, but also the language they were using and how to craft and build our content strategy. So it was a mix of best practices and understanding what worked and what didn’t, and what we liked and what we were capable of, as well as what was going to resonate with our fans. We didn’t have the creative resources, we didn’t have a lot of other stuff that other teams had, but we were able to at least strategize our way into driving value both internally and externally.”
But, especially during a time when you’re trying to transform the strategy, you have to be able to show why this shift, this personality pivot, is working. Some things are immediately and easily measurable, some aren’t. But LaTorraca sought to prove why and how things were working and resonating. Those transformative moves can have compound effects, too, increasing fan avidity and evangelism, strengthening identities, and creating a fan base whole that’s greater than the sum of its individuals.
“Certain things like those 1-to-1 interactions aren’t measurable; technically, Zoomph can track those, and you can actually see social value if some kind of response actually catches fire. There is a way, but there’s so much more in those particular instances of measuring the sentiment. It’s not measurable in the traditional sense…
“However, the social voice was a key there, and that was something we were able to have data on that I used to validate the direction we wanted to go…This was at the time when you had the LA Kings starting to show a little more personality on social. I started seeing that and I was like, ‘This is what we need to be doing.’ We tried it in the comments a whole lot, and that was the way to test it. But we would occasionally put stuff out there that I felt was more human and had a bit more personality and sass and spunk to it. And what I would do is track the data and performance of that one and start kind of planting those seeds with my boss and his boss and ultimately their boss, who is the owner of, like, Look, this is working and this performs better than the average post, and clearly this type of of language and messaging and approach is resonating with our fans.
“I think it was built on those 1-to-1interactions, warming people up, and then eventually having actual personality and catching people off guard with some of the stuff that we put out there is going to be really good for growing our brand, engaging our fans, creating pride and sentiment there, and we backed it up with data. We were able to show, like, Hey, this is working, and get that buy-in to the point where in 2014 or so, we started having a lot more personality, and then I was able to share a lot more data. Then, 2015 was the Panthers’ Super Bowl season, and that’s when the gloves came off because it was where the team won 15 or 16 games in a row in the regular season, and a lot of people were doubting the team. And they were upset with Cam Newton for dancing in the end zone, and it was a lot of like, Oh, you guys are good, you’re probably the worst 10-0 team though, and everything was just ripe for me to dunk on on social. Almost like every week, we had something else that would go viral, because nothing galvanizes a fan base like when you’re successful, the team is good, the players are good, you’re winning, and the media or other narratives are coming at you. It puts a chip on the shoulder.”
The Value of Fandom
In its most fully developed state, sports fandom seeps deeply into hearts and minds, and it’s contagious throughout a snowballing mass that grows stronger with each addition and display. The strength, appeal, and spread of a brand create immeasurable value in ways both tangible and intangible. It all leads to arrows and trendlines pointing up, making every activation and strategy that much more meaningful and effective. It’s not always easy to measure linearly, because fandom drives success exponentially.
“I firmly believe that sports fandom can be boiled down to a desire for connection and community, and it’s fueled by identity. Those three pillars, to me, are the things that you have to engage in some way, because that’s what we are at the core of our identity or our kind of essence of sports fandom and sports consumerism. And I think finding ways to engage and leverage those, or build some brand pillars that help kind of convey those…In the Canes case, we defined it as fun, bold, and regional, but those were still lenses we could operate through. Like, regional is a great one, because we can talk about local community engagement and building a Canes bar network, or authentic brand positioning campaigns that were like murals or things like that. So, ultimately, the essence of those things, it’s not directly measurable in a traditional sense; it can be in a bunch of different ways of like, alright, how do we attribute this to that? But if you’re seeing certain things in your tracking, how retail sales of certain items are going up and trying to understand the psychology behind that, or certain types of social content or campaign or messaging or email pieces or other activations, whatever it may be, events or or ticket offers or promotional theme nights — all that stuff is measurable in a sense, but you have to also be able to tie it back to that human element in order to kind of have both sides there. You got to have the tactics you can measure, the activations you can measure and then refine and optimize, and you got to have well, this is how we tie it back to affinity or passion or community or belonging, or these other less tangible and measurable things that are really at the core and essence of what it means to be a sports fan…
“We had all these little ways we were going to try to get [the Canes] logo out there authentically. And it was like, alright, high-quality decals in every online order from our e-commerce shop and working with local businesses to distribute flags and all these little ways to influence the visual positioning of our brand, because that creates more passion. People see that and they say, I want to be part of that, or that’s something, or they’re already a fan, they’re like, I love that. This is that piece of their identity hanging on a flag outside their local bar, and that’s an important piece there. Well, yeah, it’s not as measurable, but it’s so important for growing a brand and creating that sense of pride and that regional sort of connection there, that sports really is.”
Making Big Moments Bigger
Sports are unpredictably predictable. There is a whole lot you can plan for (more on that in the next section), and a whole lot of extemporaneous opportunities that’ll present high ceilings of upside, even if you can’t foresee the details. It’s part art, part science, to enlist a well-worn but apt cliche, and a social media sixth sense of sorts to spot an opportunity to seize — provided the preparation and systems are in place to make seizing said opportunity possible in the first place. LaTorraca recounted one of the many examples of the Canes being ready to execute when an unexpected moment struck (and this excerpt doesn’t even capture all the ways the Canes capitalized):
“The last big piece we had with Twitter Amplify was the David Ayres game, which I’m sure you remember, was the emergency backup goalie comes in for an extended period, not just a couple of seconds, and essentially wins the game against the Maple Leafs on Hockey Night in Canada. And he was the team Zamboni driver. It was this whole wild story. And that video, I remember texting our video producer at the time and was like, Dude, you glue yourself to him, get as much as you can, because we didn’t have video people traveling prior to my first season there. But [revenue via] Twitter Amplify helped me make the case of being like, look at all the money we’re making, we need more video. Thank God somebody was there, and it wasn’t just a PR person with their cell phone getting something. We had one of our best video producers there, and he got some iconic footage that was later used in ESPN commercials and all sorts of stuff. But that one video where, if anybody listening goes and Googles David Ayres, of him walking into the locker room after the game, and all the Canes players are spraying him with water and all that, that one video made like $80,000 for us, and it was insane.”
Building and Activating a Well-Oiled Machine
Just like some of the best athletes make impressive plays look easy, some of the sports organizations make agile execution look smooth, too — like they had it planned all along. Both the athlete and the team can make it look easy because they’ve prepared and planned. They’ve been proactive in setting up the systems that need to operate together when the moment comes and have plans ready to go for every scenario, many of which can be anticipated, to whatever degree of precision. One of the most memorable initiatives from LaTorraca’s time with the Canes was when well-known hockey commentator in Canada, Don Cherry, called the Canes ‘A bunch of jerks.’ And the rest is history, as that line was molded into a revenue stream and a galvanizing force for Canes fans everywhere. LaTorraca explained how executing around that campaign and initiative was just one example of the importance of ‘proactive planning.’
“Creating a culture that prioritizes that proactive planning really is the key to being able to have the runway to capitalize when crazy stuff happens. And it always does. Lightning struck us two times in a year at the Canes, and that was great, and then it didn’t strike the same way for a while. But we had that Bunch of Jerks thing, and we were able to capitalize on it and build a shirt. And people are important, too; we had the right relationships. I can still remember sitting in my office after that game, after we sort of concocted this plan, and Mike Foreman is texting Don Waddell and Tom [Dundon], being like, Hey, we’ve talked, we’re making shirts about this. You know, like, I pitched this idea to him and I was like, we can use this company here, because at the time, Breaking T was just kind of getting big, and I was like, I think they can turn it around for us quickly, because I don’t want to wait here for this one. It was also President’s Day weekend, and a lot of other shirt distributors were closed. Mike got the approval and basically was like, Alright, if Dan can show what a shirt model will look like by the next morning, we’ll go…
“If you give yourself more time, it just leads to so much more opportunity for creativity and doing stuff that’s a higher quality. Whether it is planning out the promotional giveaway item or a Star Wars night idea. Our Whalers night is another great example of like, Hey, you really want to plan that out, that was a Super Bowl for us, in a way, to capitalize on that, whether it was retail or activation, it was a a chance for our creative team to flex, and you want to be able to plan that out far away in advance…Whatever you can do, give yourself the runway to do it for the things you can control. It goes back to what I tell my kids all the time, You can’t control what’s going to happen to you, but you can control how you react. And if you have the right system in place and process in place and plan and people and all that, and you can come up with the right ideas and creative solutions, you can really turn a tough situation into a win, or you can turn a win into a bigger win, but you gotta have a lot of things in place to do it. It doesn’t just happen like that, and if you don’t have the runway to do it, it’s not going to happen. So that’s what really separates the good from the great is those cultures that prioritize people first above all else, but process and proactive planning, and that’s how you really win time and time again when these things happen. Because they always will. It might not be as big as every other situation, but even capitalizing on the smaller ones can still drive value in the end.”
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.
The onset of NIL has already upended the college athletics world and it’s about to do so again.
With the anticipated official approval of the House Settlement on April 7, the ability for schools, the student-athletes, and corporate sponsors to comingle will expand even further, presenting unprecedented opportunity for a new, more rewarding (in more ways than one) student-athlete experience.
For college sports marketing powerhouse Learfield, their conversations with partners are evolving with the onset of ‘student-athlete influencer marketing,’ creating even better activations and enriching the experience for student-athletes. The interest in creators and influencers continues to grow in and out of sports, marked by the universal truth that people connect with people more than brands (or mascots).
“NIL, in a good way, has really opened things up for the storytelling and created an opportunity for my team to think about when we go into a pitch with a brand or another platform or even an athletic director — putting athletes at the center of that storytelling,” said Grant Jones, Senior Vice President and Head of Content for Learfield. “Which in the content world is way more interesting than us pitching a bunch of concepts around — I mean, I love mascots — [concepts] around a bunch of mascots or, you know, a facilities tour. We’ve done a lot of facilities tours. We had to do a bunch of content that really a lot of times didn’t feature or didn’t focus on student-athletes.
“Now that we can pay the athletes to be in this content when the brands are involved in a big way, it opens up storytelling in a big way. So in the last year, even more so, our content is now storytelling with athletes at the center of it.”
As Learfield has kept up with the opportunities that the changing regulations present, schools have been busy finding ways to funnel more money to student-athletes in various ways leading up to the commencement of revenue sharing expected to start with the House Settlement approval. NIL Collectives sprung up around the country along with dubious dealmaking — but in the new world, there will be more ‘true’ NIL, where companies like Learfield, as Jones noted above, can work with sponsors and schools to include student-athletes in sponsor deals.
Every decade or so of college athletics seems to usher in a new sort of ‘arms race,’ marked in recent years by ballooning staffs and increasingly flashy facilities. The next, as Learfield sees it playing out, will be legit NIL opportunities, that allow student-athletes to earn more money on top of the House Settlement revenue sharing (capped at $20.5 million overall).
“It’ll be on top of the student-athlete compensation revenue share piece. So I do think you’re going to see an arms race develop, a new arms race, developing, which was traditionally in coaches salaries and facilities, transition into authentic NIL dealmaking for student-athletes at the universities prioritized. And they’re going to be leaning on us to be a solution for that,” said Solly Fulp, Executive Director for NIL Growth and Development at Learfield, who noted the unique role Learfield can play with their scale of brand and university partners.
“If you think about it, we have the intellectual property rights, so we’re the ones that can connect brand partners with school IP in these campaigns. We’re the only ones that can do that if we’re representing the university. We have over 12,000 brand partners that we’re contracted with both locally and nationally. We have the people power on the ground to activate these campaigns, which is critical when you’re dealing with 18-to-24-year-olds and making sure that this goes well for the brand partner and the student-athlete and it’s good for their experience.”
Arms races in college athletics ultimately come down to fielding the best teams that can attract fans and media and engagement, win championships and drive all the accompanying revenue streams. Jones, who leads Learfield’s content division, noted that while having sponsored content in their social feeds was once met with mild resistance from college athletics staff, brand presence in the feeds is a welcomed addition.
“[It’s pivoted now where a lot of schools want more brands with athletes on their content because it’s great for recruiting,” said Jones. “That is a huge [change]. It’s just funny how much things have changed just in that simple part of the business because of NIL, not only what it means to revenue generation, but to recruiting.
“If you can prove as a school that you’re bringing in, even if it’s a local content deal, that is a positive thing as recruits are scrolling on Instagram.”
Student-athletes will no doubt be enticed by the opportunities to engage in real NIL while they compete in their sport and work toward a degree (in theory at least). There’s a quiet part some are saying out loud, though, because NIL — real NIL (i.e. not paper bags full of cash) takes time. And that’s on top of a demanding schedule of classes and classwork — education is still an essential part of the student-athlete experience for 99% of the — along with practices, travel, and games. So while it’s exciting to envision endless deals and content, Learfield recognizes the best outcomes will try to balance time demands and to lean more in to deals that make sense organically for the student-athletes.
“They have 168 hours in a week,” said Fulp, a former college athlete himself before getting into the business of college sports. “They already don’t have enough time for commercial dealmaking with their athletic and their academic endeavors, so I think we’re getting really strategic on when we engage the student-athletes, when we capture content, when we bring opportunities to the table to make sure that they can be student-athletes, and working with the schools on that.
Fulp continued: “I think we’re getting much better at that, and what campaigns work, and the storytelling behind it, that is really resonating with the corporate partners, and I think as we get to know our student-athletes outside their sport and major — what their likes and interests are and what they represent in values when they take their jersey off…Once we discover [that] and we’re getting better at discovering their likes and interests, we can pair them up with the right brands. And when you do that, it’s like next-level engagement. You can see it in the campaigns and the storytelling content that Grant and his team bring to the table.”
Even the most thoughtful, spot-on partnerships and deals still have to be activated, and these days that often means content — videos or photos or both, often meant for social and digital media. Content is the name of the game for the creator economy, but student-athletes aren’t professional creators. The value of the name, image, and likeness for the vast majority of student-athletes isn’t from the content they produce, but their influence.
While it’s easy to assume that all of Gen Z are native creators, having grown up in a rich content ecosystem with all the hardware and software in their pocket, Jones and the Learfield team appreciate that it’s not that easy. It can be intimidating to produce content for which a brand is paying, so Learfield is there to ensure everything goes smoothly and to put both sides at ease.
“There are not too many athletes that are fully comfortable, and this is professional [athletes] too, that are fully comfortable taking brand dollars, taking a brand brief, creating something on their own with their cell phone and putting it back to a brand, especially if it’s a national brand, and thinking that they’re good to go,” said Learfield’s content lead Jones. “The idea of creating something on their own is, I think, difficult…
Jones continued: “That might mean they’re setting up an entire production and there’s a couple of cameras and the athlete comes in and does something. It might mean they go over to the practice facility with a cell phone and just shoot something with the athlete real quick and they’re not even taking the footage into a post-production software.
“We are really making sure that the athletes are in a position to succeed, the brand is happy with what they get back and that there’s, obviously, the recognizable intellectual property of the school involved…”
While Learfield is there to lend a helping hand, the sheer volume of deals and number of student-athlete influencers means the organization has to be smart about where they allocate resources. It also means they have massive potential to put together far-reaching, national deals that are lucrative for schools and student-athletes, and effective for brand partners.
“When NIL was first starting…[and] there’s a local pizza shop that wants to give five athletes $1,000 each to create some content, does Learfield get involved in that? Is that a thing that we want to play with?” Jones posed rhetorically. “We quickly learned that the work it takes to do that $5,000 deal on the content and student-athlete and influencer side might not be that much less work than the $500,000 deal from the hospital down the street from the pizza shop.
“So our business is about creating the most value for our brand partners, combining those three things — media assets, IP from the school marks and logos and the student athletes’ NIL. Then how that manifests to bigger deals, like the national deals that I mentioned is, that’s where content is a huge driver of that.”
The ‘content’ portion of the revenue pie for Learfield and its partners continues to grow — while making the overall pie even bigger. Driven by the ever-insatiable appetite from fans for content featuring their favorite teams and student-athletes, Learfield recognizes the underlying paradigm of their business is evolving — and that it presents a heck of an opportunity. Fulp spoke enthusiastically about the increase in content demand, flanked by the opportunity to tell richer student-athletes’ stories with their involvement, and what it means for the present and future of the business.
“We’ve been an event-driven business. We’ve been selling football packages and basketball packages, and it’s been really wrapped around the actual athletic event,” explained Fulp. “This opens up the year-round engagement with the student athletes that these university communities want, so the storytelling and the connections can happen in the off-season.
“And what we’re realizing and appreciating is that these university communities can’t get enough of the content with the student athletes associated with it. They want to consume it, and they’re consuming it. So when you connect it with the right brand partners, it is magic. It’s exciting.”
It all IS exciting. For years, many descried the state of the industry, with student-athletes getting remuneration for all their efforts in the form of scholarships only, while millions of dollars flowed from their labor and NIL. The new era is exciting, but it’s about more than just money exchanging hands. The best outcomes for, again, ‘real’ NIL transcends a paycheck; student-athletes are getting valuable experience that’ll serve them well beyond their athletic careers. They’ll make money, but also learn about business, form invaluable relationships, and get more out of their time in collegiate athletics than ever before. Fulp reflected on the dynamic landscape, speaking forcefully about the need to keep the student-athlete at the center of the conversation going forward. Amidst all the change, the money, and the opportunities, it all goes back to what’s best for the student-athlete.
“The challenge now is we’ve got to reconstruct some of the stuff, incorporate NIL the right way, and prepare these young adults to go out and do really awesome things outside their sport,” said Fulp. “And I think we have the opportunity to do that. I think it’s going to be really additive to the university and align with the university’s mission, values, and purpose.
“But university leaders, when they’re thinking about conference realignment and they’re thinking about the $20.5 million distribution to these student athletes and some really big things, making sure that at the end of the day, when these kids leave these universities, they feel like they’ve gotten just as much or more from the university that they gave.”
Athletes working with brands is nothing new. There are tons of big-name brands that conjure everlasting associations with athletes in the minds of consumers. (which athlete[s] comes to mind when you think of McDonald’s, Nike, State Farm, or Gatorade?) These lucrative partnerships have been lining pockets and moving markets for over a century.
But until recently the athlete sponsorship avenue was relatively limited. Sure, some smaller brands could activate locally, using players on the home team in radio or TV commercial spots between segments on the local news or morning drive show. Now, with social media leveling the playing field, empowering any athlete to reach a national audience with a single post, the supply has grown such that global athlete sponsorships are a feasible and viable tactic for a heck of a lot more brands compared to, say, the 1990s.
There are a lot more individuals worthy of partnership deals now, too — joined by athletes are a huge supply of digital publications and, of course, the ever-growing hordes of influencers and creators reaching enormous audiences. So why do sports and athletes still command a premium? Why, with all else being equal with any marketing-driven variable or metric one can name, do sports and athletes still stand a cut above? As we dove into a deep discussion of athlete sponsorship, that intangible but real incremental value of an athlete partnership amidst the growing influencer economy was the first topic I covered with Ishveen Jolly, Co-Founder and CEO of sports sponsorship platform OpenSponsorship.
“If you’re a product today, whether you’re Walmart or a super small company, having an athlete wear your product, eat your product, use your product, and being able to talk about that is legitimacy, being the official partner of your favorite team,” said Jolly, who has unique insight overseeing a platform that plays matchmaker for a plethora of brands deals with sports organizations and athletes.
There may be thousands of viable influencers with which brands of any size can partner, but having that official sign of endorsement and association with someone famous for what they do outside of online platforms offers a stamp of legitimacy that others cannot. A key difference in the execution is that influencers do this for a living. Creating and distributing quality content to an audience they know intimately is their livelihood. So as these deals come together and matches get made, it’s important to recognize that key distinction and realize all that brands are putting stock into.
“Their everyday job is not to make money through social media,” said Jolly about athletes, many of whom consummate mutually beneficial deals on the OpenSponsorship platform. “A brand doesn’t want to work with someone and then they’re like, ‘Oh shit their last post was six months ago.’ Because at the end of the day, the algorithms are all always changing…
“It’s quite hard because as a brand I’m paying you for content and I’m paying you to be a distribution channel. So it’s a bit annoying if everything changes and, suddenly, I thought I was going to get tens of thousands of views and now I got like 50. So there’s a lot to think about, and some of it is to do with the athlete and some of it’s to do with just the strategy of the platform as well.”
The platform that athletes have transcends social media channels. So while the fickle feeds can dictate the reach of even the best content, the most effective partnerships take advantage of the elevated platform of athletes. Revisiting the math equation and the sizable supply of ‘professional’ influencers, it’s that athlete premium that can take a reach of 200,000 followers across five micro-influencers next to an athlete or two with the same following and tip the scales to the sportsman. IF the brand activates in such a way that puts that premium into practice, that is. Jolly elucidated further, discussing some of the recommendations her company’s services team brings to brand clients.
“As a brand, you’re like, ‘Well, if I spent $20k on this one post, is it going to do anything?'” she said. “But then that goes back to the point which is, well, don’t treat them as an influencer, treat them as an athlete — get PR, get amplification, turn that one piece of content into 50 pieces of content, right? Put that on your website.
“But, again, it’s all strategy. It’s definitely a difficult one and that’s probably the hardest thing for marketplaces like ours is you turn around and you think it’s enough to be a matchmaker and it’s not. We definitely need to make sure that you’re thinking about amplification strategy, and repurposing content in the best way.”
Everyone’s out to maximize the value of these partnerships — but what does that mean? There’s no shortage of metrics (though perhaps not the single ‘perfect’ metric) to determine success, but the correct way to measure results is: it depends (isn’t it always ‘it depends’?). That’s why it’s so essential to know what the objectives are and to know the right metrics that align with a given brand goal. That affects everything down the line — the type of content to produce, the channels to activate, the form of content, and, yes, the metrics. Jolly gets to see all of these deals play out and has instructive insight into what matters.
“Recently we’ve heard a lot more people talking about cost per view, but that’s if you want brand awareness…,” she said, before describing the different nature of reach in this new age of For You feeds. “Your engagement [can be] a percentage of your following. [But] do you care about the virality or do you care about them following [the athlete]? So there’s a lot to think about depending on your strategy.”
Jolly continued, offering a sharp perspective on how brand deals can evolve over the lifespan of a relationship. There can be a funnel framework with partnerships just like the top-down funnels with which internal marketing teams of an organization operate. One phase may be awareness, where views are the KPI, but that may mature to some sort of conversion, the form of which would depend on the nature of the business. Jolly explained the different ways brand deals can be activated to serve the right part of the funnel.
“I do think for a lot of brands it kind of changes; like they might care about this, they tick that one off, then they care about this, tick that one off and then they probably go more lower funnel. So their top-of-funnel awareness then they’re like, alright, convert, then they’re like okay we need sales. So it’s a bit of a journey funnel.”
She described the funnel further, offering examples and insights that guide how brands and sports organizations/athletes can think about strategic partner activations.
“Top of funnel still really matters because people like [to see] how many people viewed your brand? How many people interacted with your brand? That’s really important…That’s where it works best with influencers and athletes. As you go bottom funnel, you can do giveaways, right? Like, you could drive to a website landing page, sign up for this competition, put in your email and you might win something, tag some friends, etc.
“Then of course bottom of funnel is literally purchase this product. Put my name in, this coupon code, my name Olympics whatever 2024 and get 20% off. So as I said like brands go up and down in different needs. Sometimes it might be more brand awareness and then sometimes they’re like, well, we’re really pushing sales.”
There is no single ‘best practice’ for a sponsorship activation, in sports or otherwise, because each set of circumstances dictates ‘best.’ From all angles — the audience being sought, the content the athlete (or property) is adept at producing or sharing, the objectives and measures of success — so much more goes into it than followers (and dollars) and cents. But the valuable elements inherent to sports are always there: the air of credibility, the emotional connection, the platform and notoriety to build upon. Put it all together just so and you have a game plan built for victory.
There was a segment on SportsCenter that used to end each show back in the ’90s and ’00s called ‘Did You Know?’ It would leave viewers with a fun or interesting fact and it was brought to you by Invesco. Because as the voiceover told viewers, “You should know what Invesco knows.”
Decades later and I still remember it so well. That’s what good sponsored content can do.
It’s that sweet spot that people like Alex Kopilow are chasing — where fans enjoy the content (I loved ‘Did You Know?’) and the sponsor accomplishes what they’re after. Kopilow sits at the center of the growing ecosystem of social media in sports and sponsorship. In helping to construct digital and social activations, Kopilow and his colleagues aim for that intersection where fans and partners win.
“I think about what translates across any industry is, whether it’s organic content or branded content, you really have to think in terms of strategy of matching the expectations of fans when they hit the follow button,” said Kopilow, who is the Senior Manager of Digital for the Global Partnership Solutions group at MSG Sports, which runs the New York Knicks and New York Rangers, among other properties, following his time with the Chicago White Sox. “Why do they follow the White Sox? Why do they follow the Knicks or the Rangers?… It’s all about matching expectations of why people are following you in the first place and when coming up with any idea you need to keep that as your North Star when building things out.”
Tracing back the history of sponsorship in sports often goes back to the billboard — the signage on the walls and boards at games. Not every fan may know what Citgo does, let alone what makes its product superior, but any fan that attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park over the years surely remembers the Citgo sign that sat above the big ‘Green Monster’ wall at the famed venue. The ballpark billboard still thrives today and extends to the social media realm with the logo-ed graphic.
If there are 162 games in a Major League Baseball (MLB) season, that’s 162 starting lineup graphics with a brand logo and millions of impressions, for example. Such frequent exposure is great for brand awareness, so it makes sense for a sponsor where brand awareness is a key objective of the partnership. But that’s one of many potential goals for a partnership in sports and it’s the responsibility of Kopilow and his group to uncover fan-friendly, viable, feasible ways to activate a partnership that aligns with the objectives of both sides. Kopilow talked about the framework with which they approach a sponsor and how to arrive at that magical sweet spot.
“We go throughout the marketing funnel, so you definitely have your awareness goals where you have partners who just need brand recognition within your audience. So those are really great for high frequency, you know, your starting lineups, your final scores, something that’s going to appear every single game day…,” said Kopilow, who went on to explain the partner goals that go beyond awareness.
“I think a lot of partners now want to go a little bit deeper,” he said. “They want to really push product consideration and, you know, what are the best ways to show off your product? Is it the New York Giants using a Pepsi Zero Sugar can and doing a can challenge with their players and trying to roll it to the end of the table without it falling off and that’s a natural integration?…
“Then of course lead generation. I think there’s a lot of opportunity with lead generation that can continue to be used throughout the industry to help generate leads for partners. I think the teams have a lot to offer by way to get that information whether it’s tickets to a game, whether it’s unique experiences that teams can offer, it really gets people to opt in and be willing to pass along their information to the end goal partner…
“If you’re doing the right kind of partnership from the jump, that means there’s an attraction to have that audience and now you’ve generated it for a partner.”
Lead generation is where the promise of social and digital really comes to the forefront. It’s not impossible, but it’s not easy, to tie new individual customers or purchases to a billboard or logo placement — with digital and social platforms it can be. But remember what Kopilow said about fan expectations and why they follow their favorite teams on these platforms? Their primary purpose for spending time with their team’s content on social is not to discover a partner deal or learn about its latest product or promotion or sign up for a sweepstakes or special offer subscription.
That doesn’t mean fans won’t engage with such content on social media, but it’s not the recipe for keeping followers engaged and winning their trust that stopping their scroll for your content is worthwhile. Kopilow discussed how teams can approach lead generation with their powerful platforms on social, matching the right strategy to the partner goal.
“I think the big thing when it comes to lead generation is it’s a natural fit with sports partnerships. I think where teams can go wrong is when they try to do that only via organic social media,” said Kopilow, who started his career pursuing sports broadcasting and journalism. “They’re trying to drive lower funnel tactics with organic social, which is really not made for that. All these social channels are really telling you ‘We want to keep you on the platform.’ Meanwhile, you’re trying to drive them off, right?
“So it’s making sure, again, back in that beginning stage of saying like, hey, if we’re going to try to drive people to this website, we need to make sure we’re [using] the right tactic, maybe using paid media, maybe using email, SMS, using your app to really drive people that way to make sure that you’re achieving that goal.”
Teams are rightfully protective of their organic social media, because when you’re competing with tons of other brands, creators, celebrities, and a fan’s friends and family for attention any rupture of that trust, of that relationship, can be detrimental in the short-term and catastrophic in the long-term. That’s why the increased collaboration in recent years between the social media and content teams in the daily trenches and those putting together the deals like Kopilow is so essential.
It was not all that long ago when sponsored social meant an incoming email from the partnerships teams with a verbatim post meant for copying and pasting onto the team’s platforms. Thankfully, those days are largely long gone as partnerships and content teams work in harmony, playing within established lines of repeatable content series, as well as flexibly creating and innovating new ones.
“The most important thing is speaking directly with your content team and being in lockstep with them,” Kopilow explained. “You have to be deeply ingrained within your content team to understand what are their brand standards, what can we offer, how are they feeling about an execution and what’s going on in the market.
“So a menu [of sponsorable social media assets] is definitely important to have and also important to have from an organizational standpoint to see where are the opportunities, where do we have too much, where do we have too little just to understand as you’re going throughout the year. But then yes, no matter what you do, you can have the best menu out there, there are going to be opportunities where you have to come up with something completely custom and that’s fine.”
Social media evolves quickly, and the trends and the algorithms that lie beneath the platforms evolve even faster. So as opportunities arise, the lines of communication, coordination, and cooperation have to keep up, Kopilow described.
“It’s sitting down with the teams and understanding what’s the flow of a game day and a non-game day, what are we already doing and are we comfortable putting a partner on it, and if so, how?” he said, talking about what forming that initial menu can look like. “But then also making sure to stay close with your content teams about how they feel about it. You know, just because it’s on the menu — and this is what I tell my content teams all the time — just because you’ve told me we can put it on the menu doesn’t mean I’m just going to go and sell it. Like at any time during the season if it’s going to go in a pitch, I’m going to check with them and be like, ‘Are we still good and are we still as constructed?’”
We’re talking a lot about the benefits of a collaborative relationship the partnerships and content squads on the team, but we can’t forget about the party who’s ultimately signing the checks — the sponsor. They may come in with their own ideas, or they may pick something from the menu that the team later determines isn’t working well anymore, for whatever reason. This is an important part of the greater conversation — and central to landing on that sweet spot where the activation is something both the sponsor and the content team are excited to bring to fans. Luckily, Kopilow said, data drives that conversation and helps lead the direction.
“As long as you come with that data-backed rationale and the fact of how it aligns with their goals and their standards, I think anyone’s always willing to shift,” he said. “I think partners are super amenable to that. Like, if you’re just upfront with them about the why and the rationale, why wouldn’t they want to perform better? I think everybody wants the top performance. So I think if you’re doing a good job of that storytelling and presenting that data, then you’re really going to succeed.”
Kopilow went deeper in discussing data, which gets better and more sophisticated with each passing year. It’s easy to focus on the biggest numbers, the so-called ‘vanity metrics’ — and sometimes that’s fine — but richer, more analytical framing of data can get at more important measures of what signifies a successful activation.
“I think it’s really important when you report on the back end to frame up the results in the way that’s going to be impactful,” explained Kopilow. “So what I mean by that specifically is instead of reporting on just total impressions or just total engagements, it’s impressions per post and how does that compare to your channel average or the way it went last year? Engagements per post, engagement rates — what are the benchmarks you can compare that to? And then there are some in-depth metrics that you can use if you’re talking about a little bit more long-form video content, what is the average percentage viewed and how long are people listening?
“I think it’s just being good about putting data forward, contextualizing it with benchmarks, and making sure it really fits the goals and their target audience. So it’s basically showing that you listen to the partner when they said, ‘Here’s what we want’ or ‘Here’s what we want to achieve’, right?… You need to show that the data represents that you’ve listened to the partner and why you’re recommending something.”
It’s something special to see sponsored social media content that just works perfectly. Where it seems like such a perfect fit for the team’s content and the partner’s messaging — it’s the proverbial round peg in the round hole. Nail it and decades later a generation of fans may just remember that ‘You should know what Invesco knows.’ Mission accomplished for that partner goal.
At its heart, sports marketing and fan engagement is about the fans. Putting oneself in the fan’s shoes, serving them what they want, and remembering why fans are fans in the first place. The north star doesn’t need to be overcomplicated.
So while sitting at the helm of a historic, beloved institution like the Georgia Bulldogs, the athletic programs covering 21 teams for the University of Georgia, is a daily challenge, Jen Galas keeps the main things the main things — and that’s the fans and student-athletes. It sounds pretty simple listening to Galas explain the program’s social media philosophy.
“From a strictly social side, I think at the heart of it is we want to make sure that we give our student-athletes the best experience that we can and we want to make sure our fans get the best experience that they can get,” said Galas, the Assistant Athletic Director – Social Media and Digital Strategy for The University of Georgia Athletics. “So a lot of the stuff we do is driven to promote our student-athletes and our coaching staff and also make sure that we provide a top-notch experience for our fans. Not only the fans who come to Athens and come to games and are here in person, but also the ones who aren’t or can’t and making sure they know that they are also important to us because they very much are.”
Fans want to feel valued. Student-athletes expect to earn an education while making lifelong memories. But we are a goals-obsessed professional culture, chasing tangible outcomes. In sports that often means revenue — ticket sales, merchandise, donations (for college athletics), and sponsorship. While those are an important part of any sports business (more on that later), all of those revenue streams are fueled by genuine fandom. Without emotional investment, there is no financial investment.
So, for Galas and her colleagues, they know their first objective is to foster the fans. Everything else stems from that.
“Our job is to give somebody a bit of entertainment, a bit of joy when they’re scrolling through their phone or whatever,” said Galas, who has been at Georgia since 2011. “So I don’t know that you can draw a direct line [of fan ascendance] — I think it’s great to say you want somebody to follow you and then come to a game and then buy a mini plan and then buy a season ticket and think that in a dream world, sure, I think everybody would want that track, but that’s not reality. It’s just not. So I hope that happens sometimes.
“But I also think treating our fans very equally and putting ourselves in [fan’s shoes]. You’re like, ‘Well, what would I like to see? What would entertain me? What would make me happy? What do I want to know?’”
The focus on intuiting what fans want doesn’t mean Georgia Athletics doesn’t establish strategic goals that guide their execution. But it’s that focus that serves as the north star, the one unchanging philosophy; virtually everything else is subject to change, evolve, improve, or adjust in service to that powerful proposition. It’s easy to get sucked into pleasing the platforms, but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of having the fans at the center of it all. Goals that are too rigid can lead to a chilling effect on creativity and the ability to continue focusing on fans.
“Goals can change in the beginning of and throughout the year,” explained Galas. “They can and they should, especially in a medium that’s new and changes all the time — and when I say new like relatively — but that changes every day and something changes and happens every day, so your goals should change.
“Personally speaking, if I set and said this is the one thing we want to accomplish all year and if that’s the only thing I focus on, that means we’re probably slacking off somewhere else. Something else is suffering because of that.”
There are some things at a generationally important institution like Georgia Athletics for which change and evolution must be treated with care. And the growth of social media, with each of those 21 teams having its own Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, only made looking after the history and brand more challenging and important. Because while the fans and the feel of Georgia baseball, for example, may be different from that of Georgia women’s basketball or Georgia football, they are all their own entity but part of a powerful collective whole that is the Georgia Bulldogs.
If that all sounds a bit complex or even convoluted, that’s because it’s not easy. Fans are multi-generational. Platforms evolve. Programs evolve. And for Galas and her colleagues, the responsibility of keeping Georgia looking like Georgia while allowing for necessary evolution is a tough job.
The big puzzle is the identity of Georgia Athletics, and each one of our sports is a piece of that puzzle. So we have 21 sports, so there are 21 pieces to this puzzle that makes up everything,” said Galas, who oversees the Bulldogs’ ‘digital identity,’ among her other remits. “In an ideal situation, all of those fit perfectly together. So when you look at it as a whole, you’re like, ‘Oh shit, yeah, that’s Georgia.’
“Especially on social graphics, it’s the square with the G in it and that’s pretty much on every single thing that we do, and making sure that we don’t go nuts with every team having 27 fonts that they use…making sure that when we go into a process it’s number one, what’s the reasoning? And number two, how can we make this as Georgia as it can be? And I think especially in the last couple of years we’ve done a really nice job of giving people some identities but also saying we know how far to push it and then we know how to bring it back and I think we’ve done [that]
“I think for a while it was very one size fits all, which I think can work, but I also think there’s a couple of different approaches you can take to it. And we just sort of said ‘Wait a second, let’s have some fun with it, and let’s play around with some things.’”
The way the puzzle pieces, across the board, is starting to become clear, isn’t it? When the north star stays in place, everything else is easier to decipher and execute. That includes the increasingly integral way that sponsorships get activated on digital and social media. Georgia Athletics ensures the fan experience and value prop is at the center of sponsored social, too. It makes sense for all parties — the fans get a great experience (always the primary objective) and the partners see a better performance of their activation.
It all sounds good to say out loud, but what separates the best ideas from the most successful are thoughtful, laid-out plans. For the Bulldogs, that takes the form of a consistent, reliable ‘menu’ of activations — content they can be confident their fans want and will enjoy that can be tailored for sponsors. Galas was articulate in describing their sponsored social strategy, which aligns with the overarching philosophy that has been the motif of this article.
“I think we try to do kind of the menu of [sponsorship opportunities on social] saying, ‘Hey, these are the things that are tried and true that work. Sell these first.’ If somebody has an idea, let’s talk about it. Let’s not just blindly agree to it because sometimes it may not be possible, but I think we try to say like, here’s the menu, pick from the menu, this is available inventory,” Galas explained. “We have an inventory sheet for season-wide things, we save some things for one-offs that we oftentimes don’t sell for like a season-long campaign in case somebody wants to jump in the middle of the year we kind of hold some back for a couple of different reasons.
“But if there’s really great ideas — I mean we’re not opposed to any great idea, but we also want to make sure that — nobody wants to see a million ads on a channel that you like. Nobody wants to see it.
“So how can we incorporate our partners in something that’s going to resonate with our fans and make them click or make them watch through for the whole thing or make them engage in some way.”
When every idea starts with the fan at the center, everything else just falls correctly into place. There are often competing incentives and a lot of noise in devising and executing social media strategy, but even as one gazes up at a sky crowded with lights, there’s always that one shines a bit brighter, that always guides the way — that’s the north star, and in sports the north star is the fan.
What does the recap look like for your sponsored social media content?
It’s likely packed with the usual metrics — reach, comments, likes (‘engagement’), perhaps video views and completion rate, maybe even some audience demographics. And that’s great. But recognize that those metrics really only help the sponsor accomplish a couple of objectives — awareness and (more loosely) brand association.
But if the sponsor is investing in that partnership with your team or league and hoping to tie it to its bottom line, that’s going to be more challenging. Nick Lawson has been around the sports business for years and saw too many sponsorships churn over the years because of such limitations. When the partners assessed the effectiveness of their sponsorships to allocate budget, deals that delivered reach and awareness only were often the first on the chopping block.
Sponsors are trying to reach your fans, so, yeah, reach certainly matters. They want fans to interact with their brand, so engagement means something, too. But it’s after the reach and the engagement that the most value gets created and, even weeks or months later, can help a partner’s bottom line.
“…A lot of people forget, especially in sponsorship, the re-engagement,” said Lawson, who is co-founder and CEO of digital engagement platform SQWAD. “When you run a Facebook ad and you earn that email, even if somebody doesn’t make a purchase, you can create an audience that reengages that person who maybe put something in their cart. We didn’t have that in sponsorship [when Nick was coming up].”
These corporate partners are businesses with marketing and partnership budgets. Money spent on one avenue, like a team sponsorship, means taking away from another tactic to help drive sales or lead generation or whatever helps make money for the business in the short term and long term. That’s ultimately what the team is up against each cycle for a partnership, to prove that the ROI of the sponsorship is better than the ROI of spending that budget elsewhere. So it has to go beyond impressions, says Lawson, because when decision day comes, that’s what separates the indispensable from the rest.
“If you’re not giving a reason why return on investment a brand should come back with you, they’re gonna default to, ‘Okay, we’re gonna cut something, what’s it gonna be?,” said Lawson, whose SQWAD works with the biggest sports teams in the world. “Well, we don’t really need social impressions anymore. That’s kind of a vanity metric for us. So let’s cut everything that has social metrics.’
“If you have a thing that says, ‘Hey, we’re earning 1500 leads per month through this team. I can’t turn off that pipeline. That’s too important for my organization.”
It seems so clear and simple. But go back to that original question and envision what the sponsored social recap looks like across the board. Are those results that the partner can’t live without? That’s what Lawson is getting at, the results should be aligned with what the sponsor needs to accomplish. Sometimes that’s only awareness and the reach metrics look great. But if the way to maintain and grow the sponsorship goes beyond helping to drive awareness, you have to deliver more.
That can be a mindset shift, too, because engineering or delivering such measurement goes beyond the norm. The ‘typical’ sponsored social campaign still has a foundation of reach and engagement. It doesn’t have to be that way, Lawson told me.
“The tough thing becomes is just because [the sponsor] is not asking you for those numbers [that] doesn’t mean they’re not gonna make a decision based on, you showed that this social tweet got ‘X’ amount of views, if their north star metric was earning leads that means nothing to them,” he said. “And again, going back to if you’re not giving a reason why return on investment a brand should come back with you, they’re gonna default to, ‘Okay, we’re gonna cut something, what’s it gonna be? Well, we don’t really need social impressions anymore. That’s kind of a vanity metric for us. So let’s cut everything that has social metrics.’”
So what goes into developing a fan engagement post or platform for a sponsor? There are several ‘classics’ that one can find across teams and sports at all levels. Lawson and his team at SQWAD have spent years and built a business on, creating platforms that deliver results. That fans enjoy, want to engage with, and end up converting on. It doesn’t have to be rocket science; indeed some of SQWAD’s most popular activations include prediction contests and scratch-off sweepstakes. It’s all by design. Because successful concepts share a couple of key characteristics, Lawson explained.
“The first part of it is the activation should be fun and familiar,” he described. “Like, when we’re thinking of a new activation, the first thing is, is this fun? Would I actually have fun doing this? And that goes back to entering an email for a chance to win a jersey — is that fun? No. It’s only fun for one person because only one person wins a jersey. So the fun factor is very low on that.
“And then familiar. I always go to this [idea] of somebody says, ‘Hey, there’s a new card game that I want to play with you.’ If they say it’s like ‘this,’ then I’m much more obliged to play than if they just say it’s a brand new one [and] have to teach you all the rules. So familiar is the second piece of it. Is it fun? Is it familiar?”
Including all of the business objectives, all sides prize one common goal — a positive fan experience. Engagement is a good sign of that, it’s a store of value. But don’t forget about the partner in the equation, find a way to ensure they’re getting some of that value, too. Include that in the recap.
