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It is now an undeniable fact that women’s football, and women’s sports in general, is the fastest-growing segment of the sports market. This is no longer merely an anecdote told by advocates, no longer merely a sentiment held by superfans. With record attendance figures and massive growth in broadcasting rights, the data supports that brands investing in women’s football now will reap the rewards of early adopters.

For brands, the time to invest in women’s sports is now. Here’s why:

1 Engagement

Whilst the audience for women's sports remains smaller than that of the men's game, data from the Sports Innovation Lab (SIL) shows that they are far more engaged. One possible reason for this high level of engagement is that, for the last decade, fans of women’s sports have been forced to actively hunt for unstable streams, follow their favourite players on social media for updates, and track down limited merchandise to display their fandom proudly.

Women’s football supporters are more likely to engage with, and purchase from, sponsors who provide and support content in a tangible and authentic way.

The SIL’s report introduces the “Fluid Fan” model measuring, tracking, and categorizing fan behaviour rather than just basic audience demographics. When the SIL tracked behaviour such as co-watching, learning, owning/buying, and access, it found that fans of women’s sports proportionally exhibited more of these behaviours than fans of men’s sports.

2 Price

Brands have the unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor of what is essentially the hottest startup in global sport. Record-breaking attendance figures and massive upticks in digital and traditional broadcasting viewership are only expected to grow even more with the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 on the horizon.

Women’s football broadcast rights cost roughly 2% of what they do for the men’s game, despite viewership hovering around 20% of the men’s football audience in the UK. This imbalance caused FIFA to reject a recent round of low-ball bids for broadcasting rights for the Women’s World Cup 2023. Sponsors who have already invested will see the value of their investment increase by multitudes when FIFA accepts a fair bid that more closely aligns with the audience figures.

In addition to increased viewership, Nielsen Sports estimates there was a 146% increase in unbundled sponsorship investment in women’s sports year over year in 2022. This growth, coupled with the rising but relatively low-cost of sponsoring women’s sports, makes it an especially valuable time to capitalize on the huge return brands are already realizing in sponsoring women’s sports. The unbundling of sponsorship opportunities not only increases the opportunities to sponsor women’s sports, but allows brands to create a strategy specific to the women’s game which can more effectively reach consumers that weren’t previously reached through sponsorship in men’s sport.

3 Impact

Like an early investor of a startup, early sponsors of women’s football can have a great impact on the future popularity and reach of the sport. Instead of simply being one of many brands displaying a logo, sponsors of women’s sports have an opportunity to shape the future of the event. Such an influence allows sponsors to work with the governing body to prioritise areas where there is a cross-over between business objectives and the objectives of the sport. One such example is Barclay’s focus on younger audiences.

In 2019, Barclays announced a deal to become the first title sponsor of the FA Women’s Super League. As the largest-ever investment in women’s sport by a UK brand, the partnership included an initiative that created opportunities for young girls to take part in football at school through their sponsorship of the FA Girls Football School Partnerships.

By investing in the professional level of women’s football, Barclays is hoping to increase the exposure of the game, attract further investment and talent, which will lead to a high-quality product on the pitch resulting in a virtuous circle.

In this way, brands are able to create and sustain their own market, ensuring they contribute to the growth of the game as well as the growth of their returns on investment.

Final thoughts

The popularity of women’s football has been on the rise and the time to invest in women’s sports was yesterday. With highly engaged fans and an opportunity to create a virtuous circle of investment, growth, and influence, it is now up to brands to take advantage of the double- and triple-digit growth numbers women’s sports leagues, teams, and athletes were able to achieve in recent years. And with a strategy specific to fans of women’s sports, the opportunities are limitless.

The post Three reasons why now is the perfect time to sponsor women’s sport appeared first on The Sponsor.

Dachshunds are cute. The moving graphic of Vitality's Stanley the Dachshund prancing around the side of a football pitch is hard to ignore. At first glance, this form of fan engagement seems like an effective advertisement, and as advertising goes, it is. However, for sponsors whose strategic goals go beyond pure brand awareness at all costs, the impact of such attention-grabbing promotion could be harmful in the long run.

86% of football fans said moving advertising boards distracted them from watching the game.

Competition for eyeballs is fierce as brands battle it out on the touchline of our screens vying for position. But the more desperate their cries for attention become, the more they serve only to irritate the loyal and passionate fan who, above all else, wishes to consume the content they love, ideally ad-free and without distraction. In a recent survey conducted by The Sponsor, 86% of football fans said moving advertising boards distracted them from watching the game.

Brands like YouTube, Spotify and, more recently, Netflix know this; it’s why they offer a premium ad-free subscription.

For many, brand awareness amongst the target audience remains the first, second and third objective of any sponsorship. However, for those brands willing to work a little harder, an opportunity exists to build deep-rooted long-lasting positive brand associations.

The Goodwood Revival celebrates classic motor racing in period theme attracting 150,000 visitors each year. Alongside the cars racing around the track, fashion parades and air shows is a dedicated car park for pre-1960s vehicles. Many festival attendees visit the area to see the rare and beautiful vehicles. However, the cars parked here were done so in the order they arrived. As a result, many of the most desirable and sought-after were hidden away simply because their owner arrived late.

When the wealth manager, Smith and Williamson, decided to partner with the festival, it would have been easy to simply position some logos and advertisements around the track. However, the company decided to provide a positive contribution to the event by transforming the pre-1960s car park into a competition and show. Their activation involved bringing the rarest and most beautiful vehicle's front and centre to be enjoyed by all visitors. The owners of these expensive cars fitted the sponsor’s target market profile and were subsequently invited to trackside hospitality. The area and competition were renamed the Smith and Williamson Owners Club, resulting in hundreds of new business leads.

This is an excellent example of triple win sponsorship; aligned on brand values, generates brand awareness and contributes positively to the event. Smith and Williamson’s activation improved the event without waiving their logo in people’s faces and as such enhanced their brand perception amongst the target audience. Read more about measuring sponsorship impact on brand and business value.

Of course, creating positive fan engagement with some properties is more straightforward than others. That should not stop marketers from trying. In the case of TV sponsorship, it can be something as simple as an amusing indent. Deep-rooted fan engagement has a far greater impact on our long-term memory. If you need a reminder of why this is so crucial, you may find this article, Have you forgotten about memory, useful.

The critical question sponsors must ask of their partnership is, does our presence improve the fan experience? The answer to that question is either yes or not really. If it's the latter, you are in a one-way relationship and in my experience, they rarely end well.

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What’s worse, a chairman who thinks sponsorship is a waste of money or one who wants to sponsor the golf tournament so they can get a good tee off time? I have come across both in my career when seeking to implement strategic sponsorship, and I can tell you that the sceptics are not confined only to the boardroom.

The psychology of persuasion is a subject well researched by academics and professors, so if you fancy some heavy reading on the topic, we recommend the works of Dr Robert Cialdini. For those of you that face the challenge of turning a fierce opponent of your sponsorship from a sceptic into a supporter, we have highlighted eight persuasion techniques to consider before your next meeting.

1 Make it personal

How is this going to benefit me? To gain greater buy-in to a sponsorship strategy from decision-making colleagues, we must address the benefits to the individual we are persuading.

What are their pain points, and how can our proposed sponsorship help alleviate them? If the organisation is struggling with recruitment or stale sales performance, for example, focus your argument on how the sponsorship can be used to attract new talent and motivate the team.

2 Consistency is key

Be clear and consistent in your approach and back it up with evidence. Now is not the time to be flip-flopping between seeking to sponsor football one week and rugby the next.

Repetition builds credibility and confidence in your argument. Persuading stakeholders to change their opinion and provide their seal of approval to a significant investment is rarely something that happens overnight. Sponsorship is a long road, so be prepared to repeatedly state and defend your position.

3 Manage expectations

If you are reading this article, you have likely experienced frustration when persuading internal stakeholders. Taking a shortcut by promising your sponsorship will deliver the world is an easy trap to fall into, especially when you are a passionate advocate for the partnership. However, a failed sponsorship is a sure-fire way to turn a moderate sponsorship sceptic into a die-hard.

Your partnership is not a flash in the pan, so while you may win the battle, you could lose the war. Take the time to discuss and agree on KPIs to be achieved by the end of the campaign. Read our article on what methodology should you use to calculate sponsorship ROI. Once your sponsorship exceeds these, you will have a stronger supporter in the future. If the stakeholders you seek to persuade are finance-minded budget holders, you may find this article on measuring the impact on brand and business value.

4 Listen and learn

Sponsorship stakeholders have skin in the game, and like most of us, they want to know that they have been seen and heard. A good way to pre-empt potential objections is to conduct an internal consultation. By taking a proactive approach, you can identify the sceptics and their concerns earlier and address them rather than having the Chairman raise an objection at the eleventh hour and scupper six months of campaign planning.

Only by genuinely understanding your colleague’s concerns can you effectively alleviate them. Persuasion does not have to be a win-lose scenario; perhaps by listening, you may also learn something that can help alter and improve your existing strategy.

5 Paint a picture

According to Aristotle, persuasion cannot occur in the absence of emotion. Most buying decisions are made because something feels good with the rationale provided later.

When it comes to sponsorship, pictures and computer-generated images of the company logo on the side of a race car look great and help paint a mental picture. To persuade stakeholders, we need them to visualise their involvement in the sponsorship and how it will benefit them.

6 Camaraderie

People buy things from people they like, so building rapport with your stakeholders is crucial. Sponsorship is a journey, and it is one that you will likely be going on with all your stakeholders.

Your positivity and passion for the campaign must always shine through as a leader. Be confident in your approach and allow others to share and contribute. By doing so, you may find a sense of camaraderie develops between you and your stakeholders, and together you can collectively become the sponsorship team.

7 Gather your followers and build momentum

My son is a fantastic negotiator; he is only two years old, but when he wants something, he can rapidly run through a repertoire of behaviours from nagging, screaming, pleading and crying until he finds the one that works.

For the record, I am not suggesting you throw a tantrum in the boardroom until you get the sponsorship you want. However, creating a following of stakeholders who agree with your approach and utilising their different behaviours and relationships to convince the remaining sceptics can be an effective tool if you find your efforts hitting a brick wall.

8 Keep it simple

The final but arguably most important tip is to keep your communication simple. This is who we are sponsoring; this is why we are sponsoring them, and this is what the results will be.

Of course, being the well-researched marketing leader you are, you will have a wealth of data and evidence to support your argument. However, when putting forward an idea to persuade stakeholders, simplicity and clarity of concept are crucial before you can even think about getting into the fun stuff.

The post How to persuade internal stakeholders and turn sceptics into supporters appeared first on The Sponsor.

Can I get a list of the world’s 500 most valuable banking brands?

This was the question asked of me by the Commercial Director of a Premier League Football team when I was working as a valuation analyst.

The data in question was publicly available, so I was happy to oblige. But curiosity got the better of me, and I had to enquire what this senior sales director intended to do with the information she had been given. "It's a great list for my team to call and try to sell our sponsorship".

I was shocked that a leading sports team could give little thought to the brand attributes they offer and the sponsors that could benefit most from partnering with them. This was quickly followed by a realisation that these experienced sales professionals act this way because their machine gun approach has worked in the past. The final sobering thought is the knowledge that CMOs have agreed to such proposals, perhaps unaware that they were simply number 72 on the list of 500 brands called that week.

I don’t envy sales professionals; their job is hard. But the reality is that the chance of the sponsorship proposal that landed on your desk being the most highly aligned and beneficial opportunity available to your organisation is slim to none.

"If you didn't initiate the contact, then it's probably not the right partner for you."

As sponsorship marketing leaders, it is our responsibility to conduct a thorough and honest evaluation of every facet of our organisation, our audience, what we stand for and how our stakeholders perceive us today versus how we wish to be perceived in the future before even considering searching for a new partner. Once that search begins, it must be proactive, internally led, with thorough due diligence on every opportunity that meets the sponsorship objectives.

This process can seem daunting, and when done correctly, it can and should be time-consuming, particularly for smaller organisations with limited resources. However, specific steps can be taken to whittle down the world of opportunity to just a handful of potential partners.

Most industries carry specific attributes that are true of all brands operating within them. All airlines, for example, claim safety to be the number one priority which can help marketers rule out associations with events that could be considered dangerous.

Once we have determined our industry attributes and the sponsorship categories to focus on, we can further filter the world of opportunity by examining the brand attributes unique to the organisation that set us apart from competitors. This is where words like innovation, heritage and experience come into play. Within our specified sponsorship categories of interest, some specific teams or events represent those brand attributes more than others. For example, sticking with Formula 1, a brand looking to increase stakeholder perception of their heritage, would be better served to investigate a partnership with Williams than the younger formed Haas Team.

Examining industry and brand-specific attributes allows us to reduce the ocean of possible opportunities into a refined grouping of well-aligned potential partners. Read the methodology you should use to calculate sponsorship ROI. It is at this stage, however, that the real work begins. Thorough due diligence of each possible partner, their existing partners, their recent performance, the cost and availability and, of course, assessing whether we as sponsors can provide some form of positive contribution to enhance the fan enjoyment or accessibility of the event.

With so much information to consider, the only possible way of benchmarking opportunities against one another to form a clear picture of which will deliver the best returns for your business is with a scorecard of sponsorship metrics pre-determined around the campaign objectives. Then and only then can we begin to at least have a serious discussion about which partner is the best fit. The only thing we know for sure is that if you didn't initiate the contact, then it's probably not the right partner for you.

You may also want to read our article on Avoiding cognitive bias in sponsorship measurement.

The post Why you should always say no to the proposal that lands on your desk appeared first on The Sponsor.

Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus. The term could just as easily be applied to marketing and finance professionals. One speaks a language of awareness, consideration and advocacy, and the other talks of compounded annual growth rates and EBITDA. For marketing and finance to agree on sponsorship impact, we must find some common ground. That common ground is brand value.

What is brand value?

Brand value calculates your brand’s contribution to generating revenue for the organisation.

It starts with an assessment of brand strength, the results of which are used to determine a brand royalty rate. The stronger the brand, the higher the royalty rate. For example, we expect to pay more for a t-shirt with the Ferrari logo than one with the Skoda logo. At this point, most of our marketing readers are still with us when talking of brand strength scorecards and royalty rates. Now for the bridge.

The determined royalty rate of each brand is applied to the forecasted revenues of the company. For example, if the company is predicted to turnover £500 million for the next five years and the brand-specific royalty rate is 1%, the brand revenue would be £5 million. Now for the finance bit.

That £5 million of future brand revenue is not money in the bank; it is subject to economic risk. We need to apply an appropriate discount rate to understand the present-day value of that future revenue. Discount rates assess the point at which your money is worth more today than in the future. Would you rather have £1 million today or £5 million in five years? After discounting our £5 million of future brand revenues, the figure we arrive at is a present-day value called brand value.

How does sponsorship impact brand value?

Sponsorship impacts traditional marketing measures such as awareness, familiarity, preference, and consideration. When calculating brand strength, these same measures are used alongside broader company metrics such as trademark protection, the share of voice, employee rating, and environmental and governance scores.

The uplift in these measures brought about by sponsorship increases the organisation’s overall brand strength. This has a knock-on effect on the royalty rate and, ultimately, the brand value. Using this methodology, marketers can demonstrate improvements in their traditional measures while highlighting the uplift in the overall brand and business value.

Measuring changes in Rakuten’s brand value resulting from sponsorship

Rakuten signed a four-year agreement to sponsor FC Barcelona for an estimated 220 million euros. Brand valuation firm Brand Finance tracked the impact of the sponsorship on key brand metrics using the above methodology. This research recorded a positive uplift in measures such as consideration.

When these uplifts were applied to the brand valuation methodology outlined, the result was an 8% increase in Rakuten’s brand value from €4.3bn to €4.7bn.

The process of evaluating sponsorship by conducting a brand valuation is not an easy one. However, marketing decisions, particularly sponsorship investment, are under greater scrutiny than ever. Presenting uplifts in awareness or media value equivalency won’t cut it in the boardroom anymore. So, before requesting sponsorship funds, consider putting some financial evidence in your corner; the results might surprise you. Here's why you must consider Market research and use this methodology to calculate ROI.

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In an interstellar first, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced a 10-year naming rights deal with the Moon. The partnership will see Earth’s natural satellite renamed the ‘SpaceX Lunar Station’ until at least 2033.

The deal, thought to be the first of its kind, includes custom built LED signage boards placed across the moon displaying the SpaceX logo making it visible from Earth.

Announcing the deal on Twitter Musk commented “From our perspective it makes perfect sense. This partnership gives SpaceX round the clock global brand awareness. When people look up to the stars, we want them to think SpaceX and this deal gives us that, not to mention it’s pretty cool.”

Commercial Director of Lunar Partnerships, April Foole added “We are delighted to have partnered with such an innovative and forward-thinking brand as SpaceX. This deal will provide much needed funding as we continue to develop a space station on the lunar surface. We also look forward to working with SpaceX towards our 2030 vision of hosting the FIFA World Cup on the moon.”

Critics of Musk have been quick to take to Twitter to vent their anger at the deal. One user, who goes by the name Jabbawat69 posted “It’s outrageous that Elon Musk is allowed to put the SpaceX logo on the moon, what’s next the Ambre Solaire logo on the sun!!! I’m not having it, from now on I’m closing my eyes at night!”

The deal is thought to be the first of many. Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are both rumoured to be considering a naming rights deal with Mars, however the 140 million miles separating it from the Earth is proving to be an early sticking point.

You can read more on this story on the SpaceX website here.

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