Activate personalised marketing and sponsorships

Once sports have put the building blocks in place to own the fan journey, the next steps must have a direct impact on a league or team’s bottom line. This is achieved through sports using the rich audience data they have worked hard to capture in order to power personalised marketing and activate league or team sponsorships.

From running highly targeted merchandise campaigns to retargeting fans with adverts linked to their abandoned ticket baskets, sports can put their audience data to work through personalisation. The same principle applies for sponsors where traditional tactics such as shirt and pitchside branding no longer cut the mustard. All sponsorship spend has to be justified and sports can go to the negotiating table with rich data and insights that create new opportunities.

For example, when creating the 20-Ball Predictor game for The Hundred, we helped the England and Wales Cricket Board to maximise its headline sponsorship with Cazoo. This game saw a 67% increase in registrations ahead of the start of the second season, with Cazoo branding the predictor game and running a competition for a ￡10,000 car voucher prize.

From a personalisation perspective, the NFL used the Genius Marketing Suite to drive their international audience expansion, delivering 1:1 personalised videos after the 2022 NFL Mexico Game. By replacing physical tickets with digital memorabilia, the NFL is extending the game-day experience while putting its audience data to work through a unique piece of personalisation.

These steps are built on engagement, personalisation and data, helping leagues and teams of all sizes to monetise their fans and stay ahead of the latest developments in sports entertainment.?

This extract is taken from Judd Goldstein's (Head of Sports Fan Engagement at Genius Sports) conversation with SportBusiness where they discussed how sports can own their fan journey to fuel monetisation. You can read the article in full?here.