I believe in constant auditing of what you’re doing. The way we keep from being complacent is to constantly challenge what we’re building, creating, and putting out there in the world to connect with our fans.

It allows us to push to be the best at what we do.

We get into such a process of where we post our content. We start to get singular in the platforms (Instagram, Twitter, etc.) that we neglect the other platforms.

One thing that I believe we overlook is the fact that our fans are experts on how they consume the content from our team.

I want to dive into the concept above, and really take a hard look at this concept to ensure that we get better at harnessing active listening.

Your Fans Are Experts In How They Like To Consume

Let’s dive into what that really means.

When you consume your favorite sports…how do you like to consume your sports? Is it the same as your brother? Your partner? Your children?

The answer is probably…no.

In order to understand the statement above that we are diving into it is vital to understand this concept.

Your fans, although usually broken into age groups, are the absolute experts in how they like to consume their sports.

This means that we should not be looking for ways to force them to consume our content.

If fans don’t like consuming through a complex pay-wall streaming platform…we need to listen to it. They are the experts on how they like to consume.

If the majority of our fans engage with and ask for more content on a certain platform…we need to listen to it. They are the experts in how they like to consume.

Really the first step is to have a mindset that fans are experts on how they like to consume our content and where they like to consume our content.

As we build strategies on how to reach them. This is what we need to focus on.

We cannot dictate how our fans consume.

This is the most frustrating thing I see in sports, we are reluctant to try new platforms and get stuck on the few that make the most sense to our team.

Twitter is one of the worst culprits for us.

We get it stuck in our head that this is where fans are most comfortable consuming because we put the content out there. By process, we then force our fans to consume on Twitter.

And what really upsets me on this is we justify why we aren’t on a platform (TikTok laggards, I’m looking at you all) based on the justifications on what is best for our team…usually not what is best for the fan.

When we dictate how our fans consume…we are essentially telling the fan we don’t care about what you need. This is when businesses usually start to fail.

One of the biggest takeaways from our podcast, The Inches, I’ve had is when we had a 17 y/o fan on our show to chat about how he consumes his favorite team.

First, we asked, “Where do you consume your team the most?”

His answer was Twitter. This made me take a step back. Knowing how kids his age consume, Twitter is not on the top of the totem pole.

This sparked me to ask a follow-up question that we all should be asking:

“What platforms do you spend the most time on?”

Instantly the answer was Snapchat. I didn’t even get the whole question out.

The next follow-up, of course, was why he didn’t follow his team on Snapchat…his answer was a complete depiction of the problem.

His team didn’t post enough great content there, this forced him to follow on a platform that he wasn’t comfortable with.

The next question “If your team posted more content there, would you consume more?”

YES.

This is what we need to understand about our content and the platforms we post on. We cannot dictate how our fans consume. Well, we can, but there is a huge opportunity lost by doing it.

As we think about our platforms, first we need to understand the consuming habits of our fans. If we can do this we can adjust correctly.

The first step, ask and listen to your fans

You may be thinking, where do I start?

If you were seeking to understand the advice of an expert, what would be the best place to start? It would be by asking the expert directly if possible.

You need to become obsessed with how your fans consume, and to be obsessed you need to directly ask them how they consume.

The conversation with Tyler above is the way you do it. Put yourself into situations where you can authentically ask your fans how they consume.

The key is how you ask as well.

We made a mistake at first when we asked Tyler “Where do you consume your favorite team.”

We fell into confirmation bias here. Knowing that most teams are especially active on Twitter, we asked a question that we knew (but didn’t understand at the time) would confirm a bias that Twitter is the best way to reach fans like him.

When asking your fans a question to gain this information, we need to understand how they consume overall. Literally with the question of “What platform do you consume the most on?”

The question we need to ask is what platform they consume the most on. These are the platforms I am most interested in starting with. This is the information we can use to grow.

We absolutely need to ask. If we don’t ask and assume, we dictate how they consume and it may not be a fit.

Someone once told me that your customers are the cheat sheet for the test. They literally have all the answers. In order to get the cheat sheet, we just have to work up the courage (and toss aside ego) to ask.

Well, the easiest way to change here is to ask. Our fans are the cheat code.

This can be your competitive advantage

When we dictate how our fans consume instead of looking at them as experts and asking them…we better hope our product stays strong and no one comes along to snatch up attention on those platforms.

We talk a lot about the company that is closest to their customer will win. There is no difference in how our fans consume.

If we can understand that they are the experts on how they like to consume sports and deploy our resources to those channels. we can create a product that is the best to serve them.

We can deploy a product that is better than most other offerings. This can be our competitive advantage.

Think about that. Building content specifically for Snapchat and filling your channel there, as simple as that is, can be the reason your team wins. That simple change can be the reason you can reach fans better than anyone else.

And ultimately it is as easy as asking your fans.

This simple change can be your competitive advantage…and on the flip side can be the reason you lose if you don’t take advantage of it.

When I see that a team, for whatever reason, is not on Snapchat all I see is opportunity & dollars floating out the door. With just a few tweaks to our content schedule and strategy, you can grow revenue and reach.

With opportunity comes sharks. If you aren’t at the forefront of this attention for your team, someone else will come in and take that value. With just a few videos they can be the foremost creator on a channel that is massively important to your team.

They can literally become an influencer on that platform more than your team. This scares the shit out of me in the sports world.

All of this can be avoided with a few questions to fans on how they consume. This can be your superpower if you understand one thing:

Your fans are experts on how they like to consume your sports.

The value to ticketing & sponsorship is massive

Lost attention is lost dollars. In today’s age attention is gold.

Whether this is the attention to reach a new fan who decides to give a game a try for the first time (buys a ticket) or another fan connected to your sponsor through content. This attention is, in my opinion, the entire game.

If you are not asking your fans where they consume…and then are not fanatical about creating content for them you are losing massive amounts of revenue.

The worst thing? You may not even know it.

Building a following on Snapchat and linking with a sponsor can easily double your sponsorship assets. If your fans are there and want to consume your content there…you need to be there.

And I know I have said this many times. It all comes back to the simple task of asking your fans how they consume and not dictating it yourself.

This comes back to the simple mindset that:

Your fans are the foremost experts in how they like to consume.

Your Fans Are Experts In How They Like To Consume

Before you start your next campaign, social, video, whatever…you have to face the brutal question.

Have you truly asked how your fans like to consume?

And honestly, really dove into the above question?

If you haven’t how is it possible for you to create content that will truly build value? If we don’t understand our customers (fans) how can we say we are truly building value?

We need to take our ego and throw it away. We need to dig in deep and ask the hard questions of our fans.

What they let us know may not be what we want to hear…but we need to honestly come forward and set up situations to ask them.

If the answer at large scale is a mix of Snapchat & local newspaper…that should be the heart of our strategy.

We need to stop dictating how our fans consume our content and push forward with a strategy based upon the thesis of this article:

Our fans are the experts on how they want to consume your content.

Lead with that idea and you will see value, success, and growth.

Many times, we focus on the tactic TO do to keep our sponsors as opposed to NOT to do.

But understanding the landmines, we can avoid them early before there is a problem. Mostly though…we need a map in order to navigate the way to success with our sponsors.

I’ve said it before, I’m blessed to be able to lean on Rich Franklin and his expertise here. His knowledge through decades of sponsorship sales never ceases to bring value.

This week on The Inches Podcast, Rich and I dive into the top 5 ways we lose our sponsors in sports sponsorship.

You can listen to the whole episode HERE, but as always I break down the highlights below.

#1 Lack of communication/ only communicating when we are selling something

Nothing is worse than a transactional relationship in this game, or any sales game really. If this was a fully transactional industry then we might as well set up an online shop where sponsors can just buy off the shelf.

When you create a relationship where you only communicate when there is a transaction, it will be hard to maintain it.

If you want to lose a sponsor quickly, only reach out when it is time to sell something.

As Rich puts it, you don’t want to be overbearing and hassle them every week, but keep in contact as the year goes on.

Congratulate them on company milestones, send messages for holidays, invite them out to games for new hires.

These are all great ways to help build a relationship with your sponsors.

Overall, this communicates to the sponsor that you are in it with them for more than their money. You are there to help build something great, drive sales, and create a long-lasting relationship with them.

#2 Not knowing the deliverable

The fastest way, in my opinion, to lose a sponsor is not knowing what they expect from the partnership.

Emotional selling in our industry is a big part of closing deals, but I’ve said it before sponsors are paying us for an outcome.

We have to understand the deliverable for each sponsor, tie it into our packages with a clear line to the deliverable, and then present it with an emphasis on the deliverable.

If we don’t know the destination, how can we build a map of it?

With this DON’T, you can lose them in two spaces:

1. When you present the proposal with the assets and there is not an emphasis on the deliverable…obviously, why would a sponsor buy something that doesn’t fit their goals?
2. After the season when your recap doesn’t focus on that deliverable stat on the value you have created. Why would you re-invest into something that didn’t produce?

This is such an easily solved problem, all we have to do in our first call is ask “What is the biggest business problem your organization is looking to solve today?”

If we ask this question, we can build a package that will be desirable to the sponsor for purchase.

Ask the question and build the package around that deliverable. If you don’t, you will lose the sponsor.

#3 Not enough time invested in building the relationship

This is tied a bit to the first reason we lose sponsors, but this is still a relationship business as we sell our packages.

If you don’t spend time in building a relationship with your sponsors, you will lose them.

This has both a business side and a personal side to it.

On the business side, if you aren’t invested in learning how their business runs and their industry works, you can’t do a great job at helping them thrive.

Invest time into learning their industry, what is most important, how it runs, and for their company how they are successful.

In this realm, there are two resources you can lean on heavily for success.

1. Ask the sponsor. Be very curious about their industry. Not only doesn’t this build a personal relationship, but it shows you care and you will be better equipped to serve them.
2. Google News is a savior. If you type in the industry name you will see articles in the industry explaining problems and opportunities. This will help you come into a meeting and ask questions that make you look like an expert in their field.

On the personal side, people buy from people they like. If you don’t build a relationship on the personal side with your sponsor, you become as we talked about in DON’T #1 a transactional relationship.

Look on social media channels and see what they are a fan of. Are they tweeting about basket weaving? As you build the relationship be curious about their needs.

Do they have a dog? Are you a dog person? Ask about it.

Obviously don’t be fake here. Either show an interest genuinely or not at all. But these will help take it from a transactional relationship to one that is a true relationship.

#4 Not showing Value or ROI

Ultimately a sponsor is paying us for an outcome. In today’s world, that outcome needs to have a quantifiable number with it.

If you can’t show a tangible ROI or value number…you will lose the sponsorship.

This ties back to understanding the deliverable. Is their goal to get more community awareness? You need to show how many unique eyeballs they reached.

Is it leads? You have to prove how many emails were collected and why they have qualified leads.

At the end of the partnership, there needs to be a golden number that you show that shows the undisputed value you have created for the sponsor.

If you can’t show this number, it will be hard to keep them on as a sponsor to keep spending dollars with you.

Shorter overview here, but it is pretty simple. If you aren’t bringing value…you can’t be valuable to the sponsor to continue their investment.

#5 Lack of innovation/ not listening to the sponsor’s needs

Change happens. In today’s age mediums, technology, and even the way customers buy changes every day.

While we need to listen to the sponsor’s needs, we also need to understand how their world is changing and how we can innovate to help.

I use Tik Tok here as a prime example here. Today, Tik Tok is the go-to platform for reaching consumers (give or take its future in America with government intervention).

But a year ago it was not as well known to many brands and consumers. The reach was there…but it wasn’t mainstream.

If you were a team that invested in building a following there early, when it became mainstream you would have the keys for your sponsors who would be looking for a way into that awareness.

If we don’t innovate and bring new ideas and options to our sponsors…we’ll lose them. This is really about creating the best product for them to reach our following.

If you don’t have these new tools in your toolkit, it is like selling a fax machine to a Fortune 500 company. There is simply a better product out there to sell.

Stay innovative in your offerings and you will be able to keep your sponsors. Stay in old ways & assets you will lose.

Overall, all of these are customer-centric. Be focused on your sponsor to make sure you don’t lose them.

I asked Rich what his top one was, and he gave an answer that included a bit of all of them. As I looked over the list a key item popped out to me.

ALL of these are customer-focused. They all are grounded in making sure you are bringing value to your sponsors.

As we look to service our sponsors we have to be thinking about what is best for their goals OVER what is best for our own organizationally. If we find that alignment…we can be successful in our own goals as a team.

As we navigate this time, it is more important than ever to get back to the basics. This is a key list to really study and think about as you service your current and new sponsors.

Stay away from these and you will see your sponsors ecstatic with your service and product.

I’ve said it here time & time again that our biggest “competitor” for sponsorship dollars are digital ads.

The efficiency and traceability of these ad platforms really make them attractive to brands to dump their money into.

Most valuable though is these platform’s ability to hyper-target AND retarget their customers. You can hyper-segment the exact customer you want to reach, and when they visit your site or interact with your ad you can serve it back to them for another at-bat.

In sponsorship, it is vital to understand these systems & platforms and why brands are shifting their dollars there. If we can understand them, we can find opportunities where our value and assets fit and flow to maximize value.

Welp, there is a MAJOR shift in how these platforms distribute ads…and with this shift, there is a major way we can instantly add value.

Below I’m going to dive into why Apple’s iOS 14 update has a new privacy feature that will significantly drop the amount of value they can receive from ads on platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram…AND how you can help them overcome it with your sponsorship assets.

The foundations of why your sponsors rely on data for digital ads

Let me start with a bit of a foundation of how your sponsors utilize data in apps like Facebook & Instagram. Within these apps, brands can set pixels that collect information on each user. Some of this may be interests, age, and how they engage with other users.

With this information, brands can create extremely focused marketing ads. For example, if you wanted to sell dog collars, Facebook will know which users either own a dog or are interested in dogs based on what they post and the

I watch a lot of sports videos…so the ads I receive come with a lot of training equipment ads. Someone is making the bet with their ad targeting that if I watch sports videos…I probably work out or train so I need an agility ladder or new workout shorts.

On Facebook ad tools you can build audiences based on actions and interests from the collected data and choose whom you send ads to.

Yup, that means that brands can choose to target your fans…in your city…who like a certain player and run ads to them. They can even use your colors in the copy to build that connection and play off the affinity they have for your team.

Yes, yes I know…they can’t use your logo, and “you have so much more power over your fans, this campaign will fail.”

But this is a real possibility that without “earning” a single piece of first-party data (email, phone number, etc.) they can serve ads to hyper-targeted audiences that they think will respond well to their ads.

Sorry if this is a recap, but it is important to understand the basics and why this move by Apple affects your sponsors.

Apple boosts privacy in iOS 14 that affects targeted ads

Recently Apple has been on a push to increase the privacy on their phones…you may have noticed the increase of questions about allowing apps to use your location in the last few updates.

Well with iOS 14 has added a question to opt-out of any type of tracking on an app when you open it. It will ask you if you would like the app to be able to gather information on the user as most pixels do for apps.

Here’s what Apple is saying:

“Users should know when their data is being collected and shared across other apps and websites — and they should have the choice to allow that or not, App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 does not require Facebook to change its approach to tracking users and creating targeted advertising, it simply requires they give users a choice.”

For apps like Facebook, Instagram, and others that are ads based, this means the information collected to help companies strategically target advertising will be limited. If users opt-out of this collection, your sponsors won’t be able to hyper-target them with ads.

With fewer data points collected, the audiences brands can create will be massively limited depending on the level that users opt-out of having their data collected.

Facebook, and the businesses who use it for marketing, rely on data tracking to target users with personalized advertising. If your sponsor was running digital ads…this means the ads that worked in the past will be limited. The game plan and bread & butter tactics will be affected.

*Let me caveat this with however you feel about data collection…I am analyzing this from an aspect of what is happening. I think that it has been the wild west with our data for far too long…but regardless of how you feel about it, we need to understand what is happening and adjust.*

What does this mean for your sponsors running digital ads?

It means that the audiences that brands once relied on Facebook to create using data collected from interacting on the app will now be extremely limited. As more people opt-out of data collection Facebook won’t be able to help you reach as many of those users.

If they can’t collect data on you…they won’t know if you like dogs or not. Therefore your ads won’t reach as many dog owners.

Here is what Facebook is saying about the change:

“As more people opt-out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences, and website Custom Audiences may decrease.”

You may be thinking “well how many people use Facebook solely on their apps?” It’s pretty high:

96% of Facebook visits are made on smartphones.

So this will affect a large number of their users. Even though the majority of Facebook app users access through Android, most of their overall traffic comes from the mobile app that will be limited.

Your next question might be “Ok how many people will opt-out of data tracking?”. First with the recent developments in abuse of our data on social platforms…A first guess will be this will be very high.

But again, let’s hear what Facebook predicts. In a recent statement, they are saying that it could affect as much as 50% of their Audience Network.

Yes…half.

Again bringing this back to your sponsors…but if they are running targeted ads based on the data that Facebook collects (demographic, interests, etc.) they could see half of the results they previously saw before this update.

Imagine running an ad that has a 4X return on ad spend and overnight you say it cut to half the reach.

Now, will this be an instant shift? We don’t know. Will Facebook and other apps find a way around it? Probably. They make $67Bn a year from ads…they have a lot of incentives to.

But we do know that in the near term, your sponsors will see less reach on the targeted ads they run. It should be a red flag for them.

What will this lead to and how can I help as a sponsorship department?

As marketers our job is not to complain about situations…it is to adapt. If we can adapt to the environment and obstacles faster than our competitors…we can win in a big way.

The same goes for this situation. If Apple takes something away, we in sponsorship can offer an alternative to fill the void.

So how do we do this…with our audience.

If this holds, and Facebook is affected on the reach as much as they expect, access to a targeted audience will become a premium to keep the momentum going.

Here are the two items that will trend:

• Influencers: Instead of relying on Facebook to find those perfect customers, brands will shift dollars to the accounts that have sway over that same demographic audience. It won’t be as targeted…but it will be better than blanketed reach
• 1st Party Data: In FB ads you don’t own the data that you target and re-target. Facebook owns it, you pay for the pleasure. This is 3rd Party Data…meaning you don’t own it and most of the time can’t see individually who they are. If you have 1st Party Data, you own the ability to build audiences and reach out directly.

Well, in sports we have both….all mixed into one.

As teams we are influencers. We can tell brands the demographics of our fans, understand they have a high affinity for the products we introduce to them, and send out messages that are going to be way more effective than a blanketed ad buys on other platforms.

As teams, we also have great data on our fans that we can segment and build audiences with. Sometimes brands pay us to collect some of that first-party data through contests (enter an email, win a jersey).

Both of these are adequate solutions to replace the lost reach on these social ad platforms. For a brand marketer that is scrambling to replace something that was probably the backbone of their strategy, if you can offer these as a solution you will win their business.

So what does this look like in a sponsorship package?

Some people may be looking at this and thinking “Perfect, let’s run a contest…collect emails…hand them over to the sponsor and let them reach out. We’ll throw some branded tweets in there too.”

We could do this…but it would only scratch the surface of results and honestly wouldn’t be recreating the value lost.

We have to dig deeper into what we offer. We are replacing one of the most powerful advertising platforms we’ve ever seen. If we go about it lazily…we will lose.

I always go back to a campaign we ran with an automotive sponsor and a team we helped run. Their goal was to connect car buyers with dealers to obviously lead eventually to a car sale.

Sponsored tweets and cold leads won’t do this. It will look good at the beginning…but the bottom results won’t be the same as if they ran Facebook ads.

We had to deconstruct the path of a fan to the dealer and lay the groundwork. So here’s what we did:

First, fans played Trivia to connect with the brand while collecting an email

It was a branded pull for the fan and something more engaging than just a logo on the side of a tweet. Fans answered a question about the team…and if correct they won a prize from the car dealer.

A great first touchpoint that conditioned them to further branding, but the most important part…it collected their email (1st Party Data).

Second, add those emails into a custom Facebook audience and re-target

I know what you’re thinking…I thought you said Facebook was losing its ability to reach customers. Why would we add them back to Facebook?

This is the key to 1st Party Data. You don’t have to rely on Facebook to find your customers. You know who they are and that they will most likely engage with your ads if you run them.

We know these fans have engaged with the car partner. We know they are fans of the team. And by asking for Zip Code, we can even segment by where they live.

We don’t have to rely on Facebook to find these people. We know who they are.

We created audiences based on Zip Code and had the dealers offer free tickets to the branded corner right on the rink. The ad came from the Winterhawks account…but tagged the local dealer. It was a gift from the dealer to build reciprocity.

We knew they would stop for the ad because of the team logo. We knew they would take the tickets because they were a fan, and we knew it would be more powerful coming from the local dealer as it was the one from their neighborhood.

We knew all this from 1st Party Data. We didn’t need to rely on Facebook.

Last, the connection came in the corner. The dealers hung out with fans and built a relationship in a non-sales environment.

Fans that said yes and took the tickets came to the corner and engaged with the dealers. They put a face to a name. When that fan was ready to buy a car, that would be the first one they go to.

As you can see, we not only recreated the power of digital ads…but we built in the power of the team’s brand to help drive results. We made it a better option than just running ads.

We took the value of a $67 Billion advertising powerhouse and made it even more beneficial for the brand. We superpowered their ads and results all without relying on the 3rd party data Facebook provided.

Ok, quick promo. At SQWAD our activations like our trivia, scratch & win, and others are built to help collect 1st Party Data and run campaigns like this. They are killer at closing more sponsorship revenue in your packages with assets that drive ROI for the sponsor. Click HERE to see more info.

If we can understand the dynamics of digital ads, we can build our value into them.

The best coaches look at their personnel’s strengths and adapt their gameplan to put them in the best place to succeed on the field. But in order to do so, we must understand the fundamentals of the game.

If you understand how these digital ads work, their dynamics, and the shifts in the industry…you can put your players (sponsorship inventory and strengths) in the best position to succeed.

I guarantee you the sponsors you work with who run digital ads are worried about their reach with this privacy change. They are probably scrambling to make adjustments.

If they aren’t…they will be when it is a bit too late.

In either situation, if you can come in with a solution that solves this problem for them, you can win their business.

No matter the size of your team. No matter the size of the company you are going after. No matter if you never thought you could close them.

If you can solve their problem, they will buy from you.

Again, I don’t know the full fallout that will come from this. No one does. But if you understand the possible consequences, you can offer assets that help no matter what happens. If there is a crisis, you will be uniquely positioned to succeed.

In sponsorship, our job is to anticipate the needs of our clients and build solutions to help them reach their goals. How can we know the struggles they will hit if we don’t understand where how they spend their money.

This is an opportunity every sports team can take advantage of today. If this truly shifts the industry the way I think it will…the teams that have solutions for it will win.

2020 was a hell-of-a year for the sports industry. One that we’d like to forget. But as we look back at it, there are some shifts that will help shape the future of the industry.

We were exposed in many ways. But 2021 brings opportunities to thrive in the advertising industry.

We could all make predictions for the upcoming year…but really predictions mean nothing if you don’t take action on them.

This week on The Inches Podcast, Rich & I dove into the top opportunities we see in sports sponsorship for 2021.

Click HERE to hear the whole episode, but as always I’ve broken down the keys below.

Teams & leagues need to be fanatical about Gen Z attention

Some of you are probably sitting there reading this saying “duh”… but it will be more vital than ever to crack this generation, grab their attention, and be able to successfully connect them with your sponsors.

I think the biggest misconception here is the answer usually comes to “Well we need to be on Tik Tok”

That honestly is not enough. To really hit this target demo, we have to deeply understand what they need, how they consume, and how we can stand out to them in order to earn their attention.

Sometimes…it is as easy as asking.

For example, last year before the pandemic we had a 17-year-old come onto The Inches podcast and we asked him questions about how he consumes and engages with his favorite sports team.

A couple of keys came across:

Changing our business model to fit their needs

Tyler, the 17-year-old we chatted with, brought up a dilemma with the structure of ticketing prices.

He currently buys 10-game packs, a prime customer for the usual upgrade to a season ticket holder.

One key tactic we spoke about was a loyalty program, like a frequent flyer program, where Tyler could earn better deals as he purchased more 10-game packs.

His 10 game package would have earned him credit for this season and kept him in the system. A call or email to let him know that despite the increase in the ticket price… he could buy the same package and earn points.

As we look to attract these fans into our buildings, we have to start rethinking the way we structure our business models. In the same way Netflix disrupted Blockbuster with streaming and Amazon big retailers with 2-day shipping…we need to look for ways to stay relevant with this new type of fans.

Where they consume: Missing the boat on Snapchat & YouTube

We are pretty ass-backward on where we post our content to reach this generation of fans. And if we don’t go where they consume, someone else will steal our influence.

When chatting with Tyler, we asked where he consumes highlights the most, and his immediate answer was YouTube. It’s what he grew up with on consuming sports videos and is used to.

In sports, for the most part, we don’t have a great presence on YouTube. There are people who report on our sport in basements that have more subscribers than our teams.

We have to post our content to the places they consume. Many teams are missing the boat on this one and it costs us a ton of money.

Another key question we asked was “where do you consume your favorite team the most?” His answer was Twitter.

But in this, I immediately found a bias in my question. I followed up with “What platform do you consume the most on?”

His answer was Snapchat. If his favorite team put more effort into this platform, he said he would consume a lot more.

By changing the way we ask this question, we can open up so much more vital information that can point us in the right direction.

I can’t emphasize this enough. We are guessing way too much on how to reach this fan and are stubborn to change to fit their habits. The result is we will lose them to other forms of entertainment (think esports and other entertainment platforms).

This year, have conversations with your young fans. Understand where they consume and how they consume so you can adapt your channels to grab them.

The teams that do this over the next year will have a HUGE foothold going into the next decade.

1st Party Data & Fan Segmentation will be more important than ever

New advertising (digital) has a few big advantages over our legacy assets in sports sponsorship…targeting.

There is no more guessing if you reached your target demographic, with these platforms you can segment down to your perfect customer and test ad copy on them.

Even more, you can target different segments with different messaging. This means I can run an ad for 20–30-year-olds with one ad and a whole different message for 45+-year-olds.

For us in sponsorship, we usually have one segment. Our fans. You’ve all done it. Shown the buying power, age reach, and gender demographic break down on your presentation for your entire fan base.

This though won’t cut it moving into 2021. Any team that can segment their data into niches in their fanbase will win the dollars.

And it really is not so hard. If we can segment our fans into groups we can bring context to why the sponsor should pay for our packages.

Let’s say an apparel company is looking to reach families of youth players in the area. If we can segment out our fan base to the ones that have are a part of youth sports…we can build a package to target them.

This could be as easy as running a contest for youth families where they enter their email and which team they play for to win. Now you have segmented lists of fans you can batch together and send extremely targeted messaging, even to each individual team.

The package would have the overall messaging assets (signs, overall social media posts, and others) but without targeting we miss the opportunity to create messaging that really speaks to the fan.

With the above package, the sponsor feels better about the return they will receive. The assets show a clear path to their goals (reaching youth players and their families), you can prove the reach, and it is an asset that the sponsor can build a long-lasting plan with.

In addition, having 1st party data will be more important than ever with the recent changes in Apple’s privacy settings. Overall, brands will have access to fewer data points through ad targeting platforms.

This means they will rely on the audiences you have built more than ever to help reach their goals. Check out more info HERE on the change and what it means to sponsorship.

As my good friend Amir at Zoomph always says…the riches are in the niches. This unequivocally is true with your fan base. The packages that will win in 2021 bring context, segmented messaging brings context.

This will be another foundational piece to start building for your team. Start building your database and segment them. If you can create a menu for reaching your fans that is better than the overall demographics of your fans…you will win. Especially if other teams aren’t doing this.

Year-round fan engagement & sponsorship assets

Rich and I have talked a lot about this over the past 2 years on the podcast and I think 2021 will be the year it really takes hold.

What the pandemic did to us was expose our inability to reach our sponsor’s goals without the live game. So much of our assets were based upon having live-action and fans in the stands.

With this, it also brought out our creativity on how we can reach our fans without games. We saw cooking shows, throwback game streams, and countless other assets to keep our sponsors happy & paying.

And this is coming at a perfect time. I’ve talked about this before, but as we compete with digital ads the one item that really stands out is the seasonality of our assets.

With digital ads, they reach us while we are on our phones…which is all the time. The number of at-bats we have to reach the customer is every day.

With our assets, we have the length of the season….and sometimes only on game day. This limits our reach and the value we can reach our fans with.

As we look at 2021, your sponsorship department should absolutely be looking for ways to reach your fans in the off-season. What are ways we can keep in touch with them every day with content and pull them in?

What this will do by nature is double your revenue. More assets, more reach, more inventory to sell. This simple tweak can help your sponsorship department break records simply by adding more inventory.

I honestly believe this is the easiest way to take the North American Sponsorship industry from a $24Bn market to $50Bn and above. If we as a collective industry push forward with making inventory that works year-round…we will massively grow the revenue we can bring in.

Sponsors will make trackability mandatory. Your reporting should follow

I talked about this a bit in talking about segmenting, but brands more than ever will demand that we answer the question “How many sales did this lead to?”

Why? Digital ads do this in one swoop.

With a digital ad you can see how many views the ad got, how many clicks, if the person purchased, and then re-target those people to get them to purchase again.

You can even segment by customers that purchased and customers who didn’t to ensure that the messaging is correct when you retarget them.

In other words, they are efficient.

In sponsorship, many times we show how many fans saw the sign or tweet…and maybe who swiped up.

There is a missing piece to our assets to compete with digital ads. Marketing departments today are under pressure to spend money efficiently. The reporting is in real-time and they can say “We spent $X on this ad and got back $Y in sales.”

Today if your assets don’t have those metrics built in, it will be hard for the sponsor to buy them.

And if you are too late with adding this in, it will be hard to regain.

Humans are creatures of habit. The first company to build a stronghold on that habit usually takes a ton of the market share.

Think Netflix and Blockbuster. Eventually Blockbuster adapted, but by that time it was too late. Too many people had shifted their habits to home delivery and then streaming for Blockbuster to adapt.

This item is honestly the thing that scares me the most about our industry. As brands get more used to digital ads that show the results in real-time…they will pour more money into it. When they do, it takes away the budget normally spent with our team.

This though is also a huge opportunity for your department. If you can prove traceability to your packages, you can win those deals. More importantly, you can win by building a habit with your marketing managers.

When ensuring a package has traceability, I always turn to the sponsorship levels.

These are the levels we need to get our fans through in order to compete with digital ads. The more fans we get to the bottom, the more value it brings.

In addition, each level should be trackable.

We should be able to say to a sponsor:

“With this package, we reached X players who say your logo, Y of that X engaged with the content, Z of that Y took action and made a purchase, and of the Z that purchased we can retarget them with more authentic messaging.

You spent $A with us and it turned into $B in value.”

If you can offer that kind of traceability in your packages, your sponsors will have a reason to keep buying from you. Because you make them money and can prove it.

As you build these packages in 2021, you have to be able to prove the value further than views. If you don’t, with the slimmed-down marketing budgets we will see this year, you will lose dollars.

If you can prove this, you can build a habit with your brands for decades to come. In 2021, the teams that build in traceability win.

Live streams will see a BOOM in demand

The broadcast has long been the #1 revenue driver for sports. These huge deals will bring in Billions for leagues and Millions for teams.

In the past, we had to rely on local and national TV deals to get air time. There was no other alternative to reach our fans in a way that would make money sense.

Today, that has all changed with live streaming on social media platforms. You can add live broadcasts to your feed and reach your most avid fans and beyond.

I know what you are thinking. “I can’t stream my games, I don’t have the rights to that…my league does.”

This is true, but your league doesn’t own the rights outside of that time.

In 2021 every team should be streaming your:

• Pregame
• Postgame
• Practices

Fans crave this inside access. It is why we watch programs like Hard Knocks and All or Nothing in sports. We want to see the behind the scenes, we want to engage locally for pregame, we want to consume far more than just during the game.

The best part is…it has never been easier for us as teams to set this up and run it. In all honesty, an iPad, microphone, and a person can achieve amazing results.

You don’t need to be a huge team with a studio. You don’t need to spend thousands on the setup. You absolutely can…but it is not necessary.

The amazing thing is sometimes a simple live stream can outperform entire legacy media casts.

This year we saw proof in many areas, but the above is one of the biggest representations of what is shifting in attention.

Verzuz set up a ‘battle” between Jeezy and Gucci Mane (both rappers) that launched on Instagram Live. The production quality was decent (nothing crazy like say an MTV Video Music Awards would be) and probably cost 1/10th of what a full-scale TV production would be.

They got 9.1M viewers compared to 6.4M that the MTV Video Music Awards got.

A small company had more reach at 1/10th of the cost by understanding where attention currently is. We can absolutely do the same within sports.

No matter what size your team is, this is an asset that will be worth a ton of money to sponsors in 2021.

Any time that you have rights to, whether it is pre-game or post-game, you should be filling with live shows. This will be an asset in 2021 that sponsors will want to be a part of and purchase.

The industry is a few tweaks away from reaching our potential. I hope that 2021 is the year we do.

When I played football in college, my coach constantly harped on our team reaching their full potential. His speeches focused on the fact that being good is not enough. Your goal should always be to reach your full potential.

Sometimes that means adding one thing to their game. Better blocking for a wide receiver that can make the deep catch. Perfecting the read on a zone run play for a linebacker.

We spend the time in practice to reach our full potential. And a team that can reach their potential can grow to heights they didn’t think were possible.

I believe that we in the sponsorship industry are a few tweaks from reaching our potential. We have perfected content and pulling emotion out of our fans…usually the hardest part for most industries. Where we are missing the mark is shifting with attention, traceability to prove sales, and offering 24/7/365 value.

We all have huge communities (fans) that have allowed us to build this industry. But we cannot be complacent with where we are. We are far from where we could be.

We are a $64Bn industry. We just got kicked in the teeth. But the path to our full potential is close. When we reach that potential, it will take the world by storm.

No digital ad platform can compete with us when we reach it. But we have to have the conviction, courage, and drive to get there.

Make sure your team is putting itself into the position to reach its full potential.