As I’ve written about before, I was in college during the 08 recession. I wasn’t yet in the professional world & not yet selling sponsorship.

By the time I got into the game, the economy was pretty well recovered and I rode that into one of the longest and best economic eras of our lifetime.

When I chatted with Rich (article above), I dove into the tactics on a micro level that would help you on a one-to-one level with each sponsor.

But I didn’t look at the macro effects on the sponsorship industry. How did overall spending change when the economy took a dive…and how long did it take to recover to the same spending levels?

Well, thanks to the data from iEG we are able to take a look back. I compiled the data together with some opinions and insights on what we may see coming in the future from a macro level in sponsorship.

The numbers below are for North American Sponsorship. Selfishly this is the arena that SQWAD and I play in (for now). If there is interest in a global analysis I’m happy to dive into those as well.

Spending drop in overall sponsorship

So did sponsorship spending drop during the last recession in ‘08?

Yes…

2005: $8.31Bn

2006: $8.94Bn (📈10.5%)

2007: $9.94Bn (📈 11.5%)

2008: $11.4Bn (📈 11.4%)

Projected at the time 2009 spend $11.6 Bn (📈 1.8%)

Actual 2009 spend: $11.3Bn (-1%📉)

After double-digit growth for the 3 years prior we saw a drop in spending for 2009. On a macro level, the speeding train went backward.

I think we can expect something similar in 2021, and honestly, it will be a bit more severe (I’ll dive into why below).

On the micro-level will this affect you? Well yes. There is less of the pie to go around. With a $100Mn drop in spending, you can imagine that spending was consolidated into bigger properties with larger brand power.

Although I don’t have the data for this (but would love to see it) I would imagine this drop primarily came from smaller market & minor league teams. It could have been even larger than $100Mn as again this money could have been shifted to some of the more well-known properties.

So, what about recovery?

2009 was a tough year…but what about 2010 & 2011? How fast did it recover?

2010: $11.6Bn (2.6%📈)

2011: $12.3Bn (6.2%📈)

2012: $13.5Bn (9.7%📈)

As we can see, it took another year of very slow until we started to really see a jump back up to the levels we were used to before the recession (close to double-digit growth)

Can we expect the same this time in sponsorship? Maybe. But again this is a bit of a different recession period, it has a mix of both health and monetary reasons why sponsors may not invest in our live events.

How this may be different: A Pandemic inflected recession

Here’s the tricky part with this recession is it is coming due to a pandemic that shut our sports down.

Obviously, we won’t see just a -1% decline in 2020. Some sponsors will pull back immensely because we don’t have what they want to buy (games).

Even if we did have them back, not too many sponsors want to double down on events that include many people gathering and being worried about catching something.

But how much will we lose? FOS reports close to $10Bn.

That is a drop of 38%…not including whatever drop comes with a recession.

The tough thing here is we don’t know how fans will react when we get the all-clear. Will they avoid Fan Zones and party decks? Will we see a drop in attendance due to a mix of the post-pandemic scare and a recession?

These are hard to answer…but I think sport still has such a pull that we can still command a high price for our assets.

What we’ll need to do is adapt our assets.

Like any stock, a drop in sponsorship spend is a reaction to confidence in our ability to produce for brands and reach their marketing goals.

Sponsor budgets don’t drop because “budgets are frozen”. Ok, some might…but they are still spending on marketing somewhere.

I think the telling item here will be can we replace what was lost AND offer assets that brands will want to buy in a cash-strapped recession.

How strong are we as an industry to push through something that honestly should have killed us? How fast can we adjust?

I’ll be very interested to see what this actually shakes out to in 2020. It will be very telling about the state of our industry.

Ok, but how did internet spending fare?

If brands don’t spend with us…they will spend elsewhere.

We are constantly compared to digital options in sponsorship…so how did internet advertising revenues do with the recession?

U.S. Internet Advertising Revenue (source IAB):

2008: $23.4 billion (📈10%)

2009: $22.7 billion (📉-3.4%)

2010: $26.0 billion (📈15%)

2011: $31.7 billion (📈22%)

2012: $36.6 billion (📈15%)

Overall, internet advertising saw a drop just as sponsorship did (and it dropped more) but the rebound was much quicker. They saw growth in the double digits in just one year after 2008.

And I expect something similar for digital ads this year and next. Cost Per Click rates are dirt cheap right now, which is an auction platform (price based on how many people are bidding for the audience) and means fewer people are spending on digital ads.

Now I know this might not be the apples to oranges I am portraying here, but this is intriguing to me. Really in 2008 internet ads were fairly young. Facebook was a baby and their powerful ads platform wasn’t even built yet.

If I had to bet we will see the same bounce back, and maybe higher and faster from digital ads.

Why? Because mindset In value has shifted

One interesting thing that has changed here is what sponsors found most valuable in our packages. I think this will play a big role in determining where the dollars that are available will be spent.

Let’s look at what brands thought were most valuable in 2016

The top items come in with exclusivity and on-site signage at #1 & #2. Digital comes in at #6.

Just one year later, we see a much different story…

Digital drives to #2 from #6….on-site signage drops from #6 to #2.

So even BEFORE any issues with on-site signage through the pandemic brands were

And the numbers are telling on digital being the need. In 2018 digital ads in North America pulled in $100Bn in revenue.

Brands are telling us by both how they spend AND directly that they want digital options. To make up ground on the -38% growth we’ll need to adapt and add these into our packages.

I’ve written about this before, but the key here is don’t fight what your brands want to spend on. I don’t care if you have $1M in signage to offload.

If your brand doesn’t want it…you shouldn’t be selling it.

This is the best cheat code we have. This data is key as we build our suite of assets to present. If we want to win…we need digital assets.

The way out: Relevance

How can you be an outlier? I think the silver bullet here will be relevance.

How relevant are your assets to meeting your sponsor’s goals? How good are they at proving ROI?

Money may dry up, but brands still spend money on marketing…they just will spend where they think they will get the largest return.

To be the outlier you have to create a product that is more relevant to those goals than other options. You have to adapt and see the openings.

This means we’ll have to change our assets. More digital, more trackable, more reach, more engagement, more ways to build relevance as to why you should as a brand spend your dollars on my package.

You can do small things to be relevant to your brands. Hyper-localize your offerings, push the reach you have on social, & create new pricing packages.

The ones that innovate during recessions become the winners. They are the outliers.

On the macro-level the above says there will be less money in the pot, what it doesn’t mean is you should expect your revenue to drop. If you can be adaptable…you can win the dollars that others fail to grab.

The graph above should not tell us we should expect to make less money, what it tells me is we have to be scrappier and innovative to win those dollars.

Use the above to inform you that if you follow the same tactics…you’ll lose.

Be the innovator. Be the outlier.

(BONUS: An active worksheet your team can use to game plan your outreach…but first you have to read the article to understand & use it. It will be worth it…I promise)

I’m a fanatic about how to thrive in economic downturns. And what I’ve realized is most of it comes from fear of looking back and saying “Man, I missed that opportunity.”

With this, I had been reading constantly on the dynamics of a downturn in all industries and see how we can shift to our work in sponsorship.

In that research, I came across a great HBR article that looked at the changing purchasing behavior in consumer segments and how brands can adjust their offering to ensure that sales don’t slump.

There was such an alignment with our sponsors and prospects that I edited the process to fit our industry based on their framework. Here is the result (Plus again a worksheet at the end to jam on):

Overall, your sponsors can be broken down into 4 groups of customers

Normally we break our customers into demographics. Food partners, car partners, etc. and build packages that overall encompass all of them.

There is an issue there. Some restaurants make more than others. Some have different goals. Some are franchisees vs. mom & pop.

This article brings a new way to segment our sponsors into four groups: Slam-on-the-breaks, Pained-but-patient, Comfortably well-off, Live for today.

Slam-on-the-breaks

As the article defines the segment:

The slam-on-the-brakes segment feels most vulnerable and hardest hit financially. This group reduces all types of spending by eliminating, postponing, decreasing, or substituting purchases. Although lower-income consumers typically fall into this segment, anxious higher-income consumers can as well, particularly if health or income circumstances change for the worse.

These are our sponsors hit hardest by the shutdown and will most likely see a slow recovery when we get back. One segment that jumps to the top of my head are most restaurants…others are barbershops and in-person attractions like bowling alleys.

The biggest test on this is are they looking for money back or to break contracts. They will be slamming the breaks on any partnership spend.

Another test…have you seen any digital ads from this partner or category?

Pained-but-patient

Pained-but-patient consumers tend to be resilient and optimistic about the long term but less confident about the prospects for recovery in the near term or their ability to maintain their standard of living. Like slam-on-the-brakes consumers, they economize in all areas, though less aggressively. They constitute the largest segment and include the great majority of households unscathed by unemployment, representing a wide range of income levels. As news gets worse, pained-but-patient consumers increasingly migrate into the slam-on-the-brakes segment.

These are our sponsors that are less affected directly by the shutdown but have the ability to wait it out on their sponsorship packages. They still have a budget to spend…but they are waiting to spend as they think games are coming back.

Auto dealerships come to mind here. Right now they are pained with little to no purchases coming…but if this doesn’t change and they can’t get people back into dealerships that can drop into the Slam-on-the-breaks.

Comfortably well-off

Comfortably well-off consumers feel secure about their ability to ride out current and future bumps in the economy. They consume at near-prerecession levels, though now they tend to be a little more selective (and less conspicuous) about their purchases. The segment consists primarily of people in the top 5% income bracket. It also includes those who are less wealthy but feel confident about the stability of their finances — the comfortably retired, for example, or investors who got out of the market early or had their money in low-risk investments such as CDs.

Here we see the brands that are doubling down on marketing efforts. Notice I said marketing efforts…not sponsorship spend. While they might not be spending with you…you could still see them double down on digital ads.

Generally speaking beer, insurance, and banks come to mind here. Again we don’t want to place a whole industry here as microbrews could be in the Slam-on-the-breaks segment while big brews come into this category as comfortable.

Live-for-today

The live-for-today segment carries on as usual and for the most part, remains unconcerned about savings. The consumers in this group respond to the recession mainly by extending their timetables for making major purchases. Typically urban and younger, they are more likely to rent than to own, and they spend on experiences rather than stuff (with the exception of consumer electronics). They’re unlikely to change their consumption behavior unless they become unemployed.

On the sponsorship end, these are the wildcards. Sometimes it’s because they are well-funded startups…sometimes it is because they just had a ton of cash on hand before the shutdown.

As the description says above they will still spend but push the timetable of their big spending.

The next part: Segmenting how they will respond to our packages

So we understand the segments, how can we understand how they will purchase in the new world? Well, this article does a great job of breaking down the purchases & products into a few categories:

Regardless of which group consumers belong to, they prioritize consumption by sorting products and services into four categories:

• Essentials are necessary for survival or perceived as central to well-being.
• Treats are indulgences whose immediate purchase is considered justifiable.
• Postponables are needed or desired items whose purchase can be reasonably put off.
• Expendables are perceived as unnecessary or unjustifiable.

Again this is based on consumers, but it holds true to our sponsorship categories as well. This is how they will analyze our products in their heads before buying.

How can we know what items fall under these categories? You’ll have to be brutally honest with yourself, ask your sponsors, and do a bit of analyzing what they have purchased in the past.

For example, if a sponsor has always demanded couponing in their packages…most likely that is essential for them.

On the macro-level we can look at what they have said is most valuable as well, as IEG did with the below graph.

I’ll caveat this with the fact that this could be totally upside-down with the pandemic. I would imagine tickets & hospitality have plummeted, access to personalities (think IG Live with players) has skyrocketed. Use this as a hypothesis-building chart…but really challenge these with your conversations with partners.

Again what is expendable to one is essential to another. Really use the knowledge you have on a partner in order to finish this.

From here we can start to chart how each segment will react & behave to our products based on their classification.

From the chart above we can see where we will have success and where we’ll struggle for each partner. As you can see, this will allow us to adjust our sales pushes to set ourselves up for success.

From here we can start to look at what tactics will work for each of these behaviors.

So how do we put this into practice? We can use this to build packages & prices for all segments to maximize revenue.

The second graph the article has created a beautiful map to do just that:

Some of these again we’ll have to adjust based on our industry…but we can get a pretty good idea of where we will have to make adjustments in order to be successful.

For example, even though a slam-on-the-brakes sponsor might find an asset essential…that doesn’t mean they won’t be price sensitive. We’ll need to unbundle our $20,000 packages into a la carte items that may be $500 each. I’m thinking social posts here, charge by the tweet….not the whole season.

Understanding these dynamics could be the make or break to a deal.

Ok, now how do I get tactical?

As the article states:

Begin by performing triage on your brands and products or services. Determine which have poor survival prospects, which may suffer declining sales but can be stabilized, and which are likely to flourish during the recession and afterward.

Each sponsor will be different, each category as well. But the first step will be to categorize each one of your current partners into these customer segments.

Once you do this, you can understand which of your products in the packages you send out will need to be tweaked and which will be fine for the downturn.

Off the top of my head, I’m really looking at signage as a tough sale. For most brands this is an expendable item. Vanity metrics that don’t prove sales that you have to buy all at once.

If you understand that this asset will sell less in the downturn you can either adjust the pricing model or overall understand there will be a drop in sales here so we need to change our sales goals to push more essentials.

By breaking these down, this allows us to understand which products we can push at what price to each segment. This also shows us that we are going to have to get creative with our packages and how we price them.

One important piece in this is don’t forget your core brand when looking at these items. As the article states:

When sales start to decline, companies shouldn’t panic and alter a brand’s fundamental proposition or positioning. For instance, marketers catering to middle- or upper-income consumers in the pained-but-patient segment may be tempted to move down-market. This could confuse and alienate loyal customers; it could also provoke stiff resistance from competitors whose operations are geared to a low-cost strategy and who have intimate knowledge of cost-conscious customers. Marketers that drift away from their established base may attract some new customers in the near term but find themselves in a weaker position when the recession ends. Their best course is to stabilize the brand.

You don’t want to move down the market and start slashing prices. If you can understand the customer segments and their needs you can get more flexible with your prices and packages.

Don’t bring down the price of your packages, but offer alternatives and pieces. You don’t want to drop the value of what you are selling…rather your goal should be to re-structure your assets so they can fit the cash-flow budgets of the

Pepsi did this by offering single cans in supermarkets over the 12 pack. They cost the same…it just gives the Slam on the brakes customers the ability to buy within their budget.

Overall we should be making small but powerful shifts with this information.

We may have to piece together more deals…but you will be able to reach all segments with the packages and therefore have more customers willing to buy.

You are being empathetic toward the sponsor’s situation. You are offering them the ability to still be a part of your influence and reach even if things are tough. This is our goal with this structure.

— — — —

And now….as promised Click HERE for a free spreadsheet worksheet that puts this into a process. You won’t be able to edit it…but if you duplicate it through File-> Make A Copy you can have your own version to work with.

As always my goal is to help sports sponsorship thrive. If we can understand our sponsorship needs better than other options we’ll win. This is hopefully the blueprint your organization needs to offer the perfect products that will sell and be a fit with our sponsors.

We have no idea what sports will look like when we get back. How will our spaces change? Will the concourse still be a bustling corridor of energy & excitement? Or will it be empty and avoided with social distancing?

The reason why it matters for us in sponsorship? Many of our packages include boothing, tabling, player appearances, and other 1-to-1 assets to help brands connect with our fans.

If we don’t think about this, we have the potential of having to make up tens of thousands of dollars in value.

This week on The Inches Podcast Rich & I dive into how you can re-think your boothing assets to prepare for what our stadiums may look like when games come back.

You can listen to the whole episode HERE. But as always, I dive in more below with some of the key points.

First, you need to think about what that asset was put into your packages to accomplish

It is key here to understand that sponsors do not buy your booth or player appearances. They buy the result that comes from boothing.

As with all assets they are just a

Most of the time it is a one-on-one connection with your fans, an opportunity to introduce themselves and their brand in a large traffic area (your concourse). They want to connect with your fans in an environment that is in line with your team’s game day brand & experience.

The KPI on this? Usually, emails collected or promotions handed out. This is how we can tangibly prove ROI for the package they buy.

If we have to adjust boothing (or even eliminate it) the key part is understanding what boothing represents for your sponsor. Why did they buy it in the first place? What goal were they looking to achieve by purchasing the booth?

If we know this, we can start finding solutions.

Then, you can begin to think about how you can accomplish that with a no-touch experience

Again, we don’t know what the stadium experience will look like when we get back to games. Assumingly…we’ll be looking at no fans at first, then maybe social distancing.

First I’d like to acknowledge that…we don’t know. No one knows how fans will react to games & stadiums opening back up.

Although it is tough to understand how fans will interact with our stadium…I have really enjoyed surveys like these to at least give us a glimpse into where we may have to adjust.

Does this mean if you add a bottle of hand sanitizer to a booth that you will be fine? No. We need to think about systems outside of these to really put people at ease.

What it does mean though is if you highlight the most prominent items on this list (Hand sanitizer & communicating the venue is sanitized) you have a better shot at putting your sponsor and fans at ease.

Alternatively, you really need to think about how that experience looks. With social distancing, you will have a totally different experience there to re-create.

From top to bottom I would map this out. From the time someone walks into your stadium to what it looks like when they see the booth, the interaction, and the KPI (email collection, prize redemption, etc.).

Now, what if a sponsor wants to back out of boothing totally? This is why we first understand why they bought booth space in the first place.

If the answer is “Getting in front of your fans authentically” then you can find a digital alternative. The first that comes to mind is a Zoom happy hour the next morning after the game hosted by the sponsor representative.

How can you replace player appearances? Go live on Instagram with the players and have the sponsor branding there. Tell fans that they can enter for a signed stick at a certain link.

To adjust, we’ll need to think about how this changes it all and how we can re-create their needs to make sure it is fulfilled.

Coupons will have to be re-thought entirely (and made entirely digital)

I think the days of paper coupons are over. And to be honest…good riddance.

Before the shutdown, they were costly to print, house, and clean up when fans would litter the floor with them.

In the current environment…they are an almost immediate no-go. We can’t expect our fans to take them from staff and we definitely won’t want to sanitize each one.

But…our sponsors will still want the benefits of what they bring, which is the ability to drive fans to their stores and make a purchase.

At SQWAD we see this coming and are have our Scratch & Win platform as a solution for it. As Rich brings up we implemented one this past season with Jimmy John’s for the Portland Winterhawks and saw a great surge in redemptions for their offers.

You’ll most likely need to do this with all of the coupon offers you have in your stadiums.

If you have any coupons in your packages you have to look at replacing them with digital ones ASAP.

Overall, we need to look rethink our physical assets and how fans interact with them.

Looking into the next few months we absolutely have to tear down what we knew in the past and re-think all of our physical assets.

We cannot just assume that these assets will be relevant in the new stadium experience. A top to bottom re-design will be necessary to put our fan’s and sponsor’s minds at ease moving forward.

Take a week and think through how you can simulate or replace the need that our sponsors look to fill with a booth on your concourse.

For all the people who are going to comment with full caps about how traditional ads work and brands have been buying them forever…

You are right. Of course, they work. If they had a success rate of 0 they wouldn’t exist.

So before you throw this article in the trash and blast it, I hope I can shed some light through data that can help.

Do traditional ads work? Yes.

Are they the most cost-efficient way to grow a brand?… Well, let’s let data tell the story below.

First, let’s start with the goal of most marketing departments…leads

Overall, most marketing department’s jobs are to generate leads or purchases, depending on the industry.

Of course, there is branding at the top of the funnel, but mostly you expect that to come back to the leads you can generate.

With that, leads & purchases are how they are judged and tracked on success.

A marketer’s job is to squeeze as many leads, or purchases, out of the marketing budget they are given.

When you think about it, this is amazing. This ultimately becomes a math game. Where can I deploy my assets (dollars in paid media) to get the greatest return for my company?

On the sponsorship side, this simplicity allows us to truly understand where our value is and how we will be judged. This allows us to build assets that help them understand the value we bring them.

So how do traditional assets compare to paid social media assets?

Well, let’s look at some cost-per-lead data.

As you can see from above, the average cost per lead for “traditional” marketing channels is a HUGE range, with an average of $619 per lead.

Why is it so high for an average? Well, you are casting a wide net. Maybe you hit the right people, but most of the time you hit people with an ad for a product they don’t need.

Compare that to the average and range for paid social media advertising.

Compared to “traditional ads, paid social media ads are 13X LOWER in Cost Per Lead.

Why? Brands can essentially shoot fish in a barrel.

We can hyper-target our key customers with messaging we know they will respond to (or at least are the most likely to respond to). This is the money ball of advertising, and brands know it.

I’m not a math guy, but when I say that brands deciding to spend $1M on Facebook ads or your sponsorship packages…they will pick Facebook ads.

The math just makes more sense to spend on social media ads for the most part.

But wait, we don’t just stop there. The third level is retargeting. This is really the money maker for brands that understand the dynamics of digital advertising.

For those who need a refresher, re-targeting ads come into play when you get someone into your funnel (sees your ad) and don’t buy. If they don’t interact the first time you can hit them with follow up ads to get another at-bat to pull them into a purchase.

So what’s the math when we retarget?

As you see the lower end is higher…but if you get this right you can almost cut your high end in half.

If the brand you are pitching to has this process down pat (paid social media ads with retargeting campaigns built-in) you have a very low shot at closing them.

Why? Well, there is a better product out there for collecting leads.

This is why it is so important to go digital with your sponsorship assets. By the math, traditional assets are a bad bet.

Let’s bring Bill Belichick into this equation (whether you like the Patriots & Bill or not…you can’t deny he builds championship teams). Bill Belichick almost never takes a 1st rounder in the NFL draft.

First-round picks are a big risk…but honestly, all picks are a pretty big risk. We’ve seen plenty of players not pan out in the pros for various reasons.

But the risk isn’t the reason why Bill doesn’t take first-rounders…it’s because the cost of that risk is too much. First-rounders, more often than not, are a bad bet for the cost.

So what does he do? He trades out and gets more picks at a better value for the risk.

Has he missed out on some absolute hits doing this? Yes. I am sure he has. But he understands that he can get more chances to find that player that will pan out at a lower cost to the team with this method.

The same is true with social media ads. Smart CMO’s understand that for every 1 lead they get from traditional ads they can get 13 through paid social media.

What’s more, they get that they might miss on the big hits that traditional ads might bring (saw a campaign get’s written about or goes viral)…but they are fine with that because the slow and steady math will win for them in the long run.

Ok, Nick, so why are you bringing this up in sponsorship?

I bring this issue up with a sponsorship lens because as I have said before we are competing with a digital advertisement for brand dollars.

As brand dollars dry up most marketers will go with the safer bet. The best brands will let math dictate how they spend their dollars.

As we look to make up the dollars we lost with the pandemic we cannot keep selling the same traditional assets we always have. That may have worked in times of good economic standing…but it most certainly won’t in modern times.

BUT, in sports, we have passion & emotion. We have excitement. We have intangibles that can massively sway our fans to purchases.

If we can ad in the digital attributes to our sponsorship packages…sports sponsorship can be one of the best, and most financially beneficial in ROI, ways to advertise.

As times change and better advertising products come out we can’t just ignore their power. If we do, we will run the same fate as JC Penney & Blockbuster.

My hope is this article can help give a different perspective on understanding your sponsors and the other assets they have in the industry in order to drive value.

If my words can’t convince you that you need to make a big shift to offering digital assets…I am hoping that math can.

We’re on the horizon for getting fans back into our stadium barring a major health setback. (knock on wood). With fans back we’ll need to ensure that they feel safe, are safe, and still have a great experience in our stadiums while feeling healthy.

But in these regulations, we’ll most likely see our stadiums at half capacity. This means the sponsors that buy (or already bought) assets will most likely be looking for ways to connect more with your fans.

This week on The Inches podcast Rich & I dove into how you can authentically connect your fans with sponsors through health & safety messaging and campaigns.

You can listen to the whole episode HERE. But as always read below for some key insights from our chat.

Safety & health messaging with be vital for regulations AND your fan’s piece of mind

First, let’s talk about why you’ll need safety & health messaging. First…it’s the right thing to do for your organization. We always want to create spaces where our fans feel safe to come, cheer, and enjoy our game day experience.

To put the health & safety message on the back burner or at secondary priority is to say you take their safety as a second priority. We simply cannot let this happen nor should it be the stance of our team.

Our fans will feel some anxiety about coming back and being in large crowds. How can we take that anxiety and flip it so that they have no question when they walk into our stadiums? An overemphasis & communication on the ways you are keeping them safe. They need to without any hesitation understand that your stadium is THE safest place they will walk into this month.

Second, we can’t forget that fans have never experienced gameday post-pandemic. To expect them to be educated on the process of being healthy creates a huge problem.

Let’s ensure that we set the standard of how fans should interact in your stadium. How they should enter, sit, buy food, walk on the concourse, everything.

If you can over-educate, you can get the message of safety ingrained into the culture of your game day. Into the very ethos of your in-stadium experience & culture.

Ok, Nick. This is all great…but where does sponsorship fit into this?

Activation has a better recall, this is how you make up for the lost in-stadium reach

As we think about the process of notifying & educating our fans on health & safety we are actively attracting their attention.

It is not just a sign (most of the time). It will need to be an active action as opposed to a passive one (even if that passive asset is a sign, let’s put it into an active way to grab attention by being different…more later).

If we are actively reaching our fans there is the ability to help activate our sponsors. In fact, active activation in sponsorship has a greater recall & value for your sponsors.

This education and messaging process we go through with our fans will be a prime opportunity to help ingrain our sponsors into the activation.

As we push into this process of getting fans back we have an uphill battle to make up the assets we lost. We have to find any and all opportunities to make this lost revenue and connection up.

Simply put, it is too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Think about how you can sync messages with sponsor

Even though this is an opportunity to connect fans to our sponsors….we cannot just slap a sponsor on the messaging.

This is a very delicate subject of safety & health of our fans. It is a powerful statement that we care about the well-being of the fans that have supported our team.

As we look at ways to incorporate our sponsor the most vital thing will come with authenticity. How can you insert the sponsor and their values into the message so authentically that a fan wouldn’t think twice about it?

Obviously there are thousands of ways to do this…but I pulled some that came to my mind and listed them below to help get you started.

Food sponsor talking about concession hygiene on a message video

You may have seen it already but many of the large food chains have also had the task of educating their consumers on health & safety measures they are taking.

Many of these chains are big sponsors.

We probably will be making an ‘airline safety type video that informs our fans on the steps we are taking to be safe as well as how they should act in the stadium to be safe.

During that video, we should have the food sponsor go over the safety tips and steps for fans. This will immediately build trust with that restaurant from the fans and helps tell a vital message that their locations are also safe.

This simple activation & integration into the main health & safety video can bring an immense amount of value to the partner.

New spaces mean new assets, even in your restrooms

We’ve chatted about this before but prior to you open your building you’ll want to do a walkthrough and visualize where you will have open assets.

There will be physical situations where we have to social distance….and our restrooms are one of them.

If we didn’t take the time to think about our physical spaces…this is what we may see in our stadium restrooms:

This is economical, safe, and gets the message across. But is there an opportunity to integrate a sponsor into this situation?

A simple change of mindset can open up new assets and keep our fans safe. Imagine the recall and impression this will leave the fan with.

Now, in all transparency, I’m not sure this is the best sync up to sponsor with assets. Maybe a plumbing or specific restroom product would be a better fit than a soda can in the restroom.

The point though is simple integrations like these can open up a ton of new and unexpected assets in your arena.

Deep clean brought to you by the cleaning company

I big message will be how the arena is deep cleaned every night to help keep germs away and create a safe environment for fans. I envision that almost every game day will bring a massive wipe down of seats, chairs, tables, bars, all of the above.

If you have a cleaning sponsor, this is the perfect sync up. You’ll most likely need to create video content around this to show the process of cleaning the arena. This is a great moment to sync a cleaning brand with this educational content.

These are the sync ups you should be looking for. A transfer of your trust to their product. When fans go back to that cleaning aisle for their supplies, that brand will be top of mind.

Car partner/dealer faces cover that fits in the space between the fans (like bus stop bench ads)

We need to get very creative with our open spaces. Again we have $17Bn to make up in the sponsorship industry.

From what it is sounding like, we won’t have half of our fans in the arena. This will most likely mean there will be about 6 seats between families or groups.

We could just leave the seats empty…but open space brings inventory. And again we can’t waste it.

What if we filled those seats with print outs of the dealers (like literally their human image) at your car sponsor’s dealerships and put them in the empty seats.

They could all be wearing polos with the car sponsor logo. Some could be whole cars with the new model.

The first item here is fans will be able to see this on TV during close-ups and when it pans during the game. You will get the TV reach for the brand.

But you shouldn’t stop there. We put the dealers on there to help build that familiarity with the people at the company as buying a car is very much a relationship transaction. The fans in the stadium will literally be sitting next to the dealer (well, the cut out).

Take the fact that they will be sitting next to the dealer and create a selfie campaign where the fan tweets which dealer they are sitting next to. I would put the dealer’s Twitter handle on the board and have fans tag the dealer and a hashtag (#sittingnext2toyota) that fans can take a selfie with the stand-up.

The social media buzz & connections with that dealer is a bond that you are facilitating with this campaign. What are the chances that one of those fans is looking for a new car?

If they are, what are the chances that they call or tweet that salesperson to do the deal?

This is how you can take what most might just put a logo on and really create a deep connection with the salesperson. We can’t get lazy with logo coverings…we must get creative toward our sponsor goals.

Don’t overdo it or be too light-hearted

Above are just a few ideas of how you can integrate your sponsors into the health and safety messages and procedures. I am 100% confident you can find your unique ways to create assets like the ones above…honestly even better than the ones above.

One thing we must remember though is the pandemic is an extremely delicate situation. People have died and jobs have been lost.

We should not take this light-heartedly. We can’t overdo it.

Use your judgment here and ask yourself, “If I had someone affected by the virus, would I be comfortable with this activation?”

There is a fine line here. Make sure you are authentically integrating your sponsors.

This can open up more inventory for the ones we lost if done correctly.

I have been bringing this up a lot but it needs to be said as many times as necessary to make it stick.

We have $17Bn in sponsorship revenue to make up.

As we look at our safety & health measures and education there are ways we can absolutely integrate our sponsors and bring key activation to their goals.

If all goes well, we’ll have fans back…but at half capacity. If we can open new creative ways to connect them to sponsors through these safety measures…we can put a huge dent in the sponsorship revenue we lost.

Be safe, be authentic. But don’t be lazy. These are the assets that may save us.

I’ve always been intrigued with seasonal businesses. Summer beach restaurants, pumpkin patches, Christmas stores…they have a 3-month window to sell 90% of their inventory.

If they hit big, they hit big. If they have a slump, they have to wait until the next season.

In many ways, sports sponsorship is the same way. Each year we activate with partners for 3–6 months (depending on the league) and then re-negotiate toward the next season.

If they hit, they hit fairly big and we look for more value the following year with a renewal. If the campaign does not do well…or it gets off to a slow start…we only have a season to bring the promised value.

Well with the pandemic…we have had a tough season. It has exposed us to the fact that we rely on a season with live games to make money.

To battle back the industry pushed toward ways to connect with our fans despite the loss of fans in our stadiums and games.

I believe we have seen the last of sports sponsorship being a seasonal advertising platform. Here’s why.

This pandemic exposed us…but set us up to create a sponsorship world where you can drive revenue all year.

This pandemic has been terrible on all ends. We’ve had to shift everything that we do in order to survive.

With the huge reliance on live games…we in sports were exposed.

In most cases, 60% of our revenue came from ticketing & concessions. This is too much of a reliance on live games to happen in our stadiums in order to survive and pay the bills.

The same can be said about our assets in sponsorship. The majority of them relied on in-stadium signage and on-location activation. Both of these lose their value when we don’t have fans in the stands.

As an industry, we’ve been amazing at adapting. We’ve built new digital assets, campaigns, and even uses for our stadium spaces to recoup the value lost.

This has, ultimately, set us up to make more money when this ends. It has forced us into creating assets that have no reliance on live games.

This shift has given us the keys to billions of dollars…if we can see it and take advantage of it. We can take sponsorship from seasonal to year-round in the value we drive.

Teams are influencers…The Kardashians don’t only make money when their show is airing. They make it all year.

One thing I think we forget is we as teams are influencers in the purest form of the word.

We built, over decades, a captivated community with a common love…our teams. The influence many times is generational, which is the next level of the influencer process.

With this, we’ve built something that can sustain itself without live games. In the past, we relied on our stadium experience and broadcasts to carry our sponsorship assets. It used to be the only time we could reach fans on a large scale.

Then the internet came to be. All of a sudden we have access to multiple channels (email, social, video streaming) in which we can reach our fans at any given moment.

I liken this phenomenon to the empire that the Kardashians built through their reality show. What started on E! as the only way to consume the life of this family, they have all built an empire from their social media channels.

If The Kardashians show was canceled…it would have little consequence to their ability to make money.

The reason? They have diversified their attention channels. If the above happened, the family would simply post their content onto their own channels and integrate in brands.

That’s right…they’ve essentially built their own network with a built-in advertising platform ( promoting brands, etc.)

I say this with hesitation but in order to take sports sponsorship to the next level…we need to be like the Kardashians.

That is to say, we must build out our distribution channels and following so that if games are taken from us we have the diversified assets to still drive revenue.

It is no different from diversifying your stock portfolio. You can’t put all your eggs into one basket, nor should you as in an amazing market you make twice the money.

As we look at the end of seasonality in sponsorship, it hinges on our ability to build our own following so we can monetize all year long.

We must now be 24/7/365 because digital ads are.

I’ve written about this before, but sponsorship was at a disadvantage by only activating during the season.

The main reason? Digital ads are 24/7/365.

That is to say that a Facebook ad can make a partner trackable revenue all year long. In some cases, they make money while we sleep.

With our assets, really they were the most effective during the season…then dulled out when it ended. We threw in a few off-season golf tournaments to bring value.

If we plan on continuing to compete with digital ads, we must build the assets that make our brand’s money while they sleep.

And here is what I mean by that. If immediately after the season ends we launch the following digital campaigns:

-Top 10 videos for each star player

-Season recaps with individual players

-Rookie to sophomore reports

We’ve built assets that have long-tail consumption. We have content that the brand will see real value while they sleep as fans will literally be watching while the CMOs sleep.

By building a library up of content on digital platforms we become the Kardashians. We can reach our fans at any moment with our content…many times while we sleep as a team.

In order to really turn this corner and come out more powerful at the end…we have to build our assets outside of live sports to monetize. This is the way to do it.

This is how we dig out…but also how we go from $24Bn to $100Bn industry.

The North American sports sponsorship market is $24Bn. Our live games have built quite the market.

And we have content for the off-season to keep that attention all year…but have we really doubled down on it?

Let me put it this way. If we could double our partnership revenue with more inventory…would you hire a sponsorship & digital team with the sole purpose of monetizing off-season assets?

I think to turn the corner we need to totally re-think how we structure our departments.

Imagine if we were able to create a digital sponsorship department of our teams. A department whose sole purpose is to monetize our digital assets.

We could absolutely double, triple, and beyond our revenue.

In sports, we are on the verge of a transformation. A massive metamorphosis that will define our industry.

If we can push our monetization to not rely on live games. If we can recycle our content, give it new life, and understand the power and following we have online…we can take our industry to the next stage in its life cycle.

But ultimately, it falls on us.

As creative sponsorship industry people, we must understand that our organizations need to make this shift and take the steps today to build it. We have to make the scary, massive shifts to take advantage of what we have in front of us.

Sponsorship is no longer seasonal. It can’t be if we are to grow as an industry.