It’s not just a numbers game: What brands actually want from sport sponsorship

There’s a lot of talk within the sponsorship world currently about how hard it is for rights holders to sell sponsorship with the dominance of data-led tech companies like Amazon, Google, Meta and TikTok combined with the ever-growing influencer market capturing the majority of brand spend.

But when it’s talked about what sport sponsorship can offer brands by comparison, rarely is a deeper understanding demonstrated in relation to the value beyond the headline numbers. This value is also rarely communicated in a way that reflects the way brands themselves talk about growth internally.

Yet doing so would help those selling sport sponsorships more clearly justify price premiums and compare more favourably with media alternatives.

The two bookends of the sponsorship conversation most often revolve around the media number and the database number. But that’s a very shallow understanding of what brands are actually looking for. The number itself is never enough.

So let’s dig deeper into these two in particular.

Getting reach right

Brands want to know the media number because they are interested in reach. Reach is one of the primary drivers of brand growth. The more people you can reach in your category the more opportunity to convert them to custom in either the short or long term. Growth comes from the acquisition of new customers not speaking to same ones over and over.

But you never hear about the quality of that reach and how different types of reach can have different effects on a brand.

Not all reach is created equally. Reach across digital display is not the same as reach across live TV. There are significant quality differences when it comes to "attention, emotion and authenticity" across all channels and all forms of communication. More importantly, these differences can impact significantly on business and brand outcomes.

Attention works differently from channel to channel. Scrolling through social vs watching a YouTube ad are different experiences and thus deliver differing forms of attention. But what attention can sport sponsorship offer vs media alternatives?

Emotional engagement with content also differs significantly and impacts brand recall and memory. But what type of emotion does sport sponsorship offer vs media alternatives?

Authenticity ensures greater connection between brand, content and media. But how contextually relevant is the sport sponsorship opportunity being sold vs media alternatives?

All of these elements are areas which sport sponsorship can over index on versus media alternatives. But rights holders never present such a case.

That’s not forgetting the biggest driver of brand growth which is fame.

Fame is one of the hardest things for brands to achieve today as a result of media fragmentation. Brands aspire to it through the synergetic combination of brilliant creativity and smart media planning but while consumers increasingly occupy media echo chambers, the challenge has become harder than ever.

But there is one exception to the rule, live sport. The bedrock of the sponsorship industry. The shared cultural understanding that can be created from millions of people concurrently watching live sport happens almost nowhere else in the entire media landscape.

Yet, you rarely hear this pitch from rights holders. The media number alone is the sole focus. But if rights holders want to compete with big tech and prominent media owners they need to dig further into understanding the value of their reach and the impact it could deliver for brands in both the short and long-term.

Contextually relevant category conversion

Brands want to know the database number because they want access to an audience who has given permission to be communicated with directly and can be sold to at contextually relevant moments in their buying journey.

Most rights holders, however, hold multiple databases with conflicting data, it's poorly maintained and not regularly cleaned, and it’s also not structured to provide category and brand insight.

The marquee case study used in the industry as a sign rightsholders have neglected their first-party data obligations was when Barcelona signed a sponsorship with Spotify. This revealed one of the biggest clubs in the world only held data on 1% of their 350 million fans worldwide.

Spotify’s reason for partnering was not solely to target and convert a database as some would have you believe. Reach in particular was important as they sought to grow into emerging markets. That’s not to say that Barca shouldn’t have a more sophisticated data strategy. But again there was little talk beyond the number itself as to where the real value lies for brands.

Central to brand growth is understanding buyers connection with the category. The where, what, when, how and why of brand growth, summarised best by the concept of “Category Entry Points”.

What most brands fundamentally want from these databases is an understanding of how someone enters the category and when they’re in the market for their product or service, so they can target at the opportune moment.

It’s not about a one size fits all communication to everyone who is interested in their category delivered a couple of times a year via email or messaging as a generic sponsorship right. Especially, as most buyers are only in the market for very limited time periods and at vastly varying times across the course of a year.

What’s more important than a large number is an understanding of when best to communicate to fans as category buyers. That requires sophisticated segmentation which most databases are lacking. So, the real value of a database for a brand should begin with category insight not scale.

Competing with tech companies on quality not quantity should be the start point. And fans stronger affiliation with the things they adore should make this challenge easier for rights holders than media alternatives.

It’s also important to realise that large databases per se are not some panacea that will deliver unrivalled value to brands. They are simply a small part of much bigger mix in a brand’s overall marketing strategy. Understanding where a rights holder can best fit into that mix is the key to better sponsorship sales success.

While the market is undoubtedly difficult for sponsorship sellers at this moment in time, until the case is better presented as to the value sport sponsorship can truly offer brands at a much deeper level and in the language they speak, all while competing with media alternatives sitting on mountains of insights and data, any significant growth is very unlikely to happen naturally.

At Adored, we approach sports and entertainment marketing challenges through the lens of “Effectiveness and Experimentation”, the two critical components in ensuring brands, rights holders and talent understand how not to be ignored and drive growth both now and in the future.