Sponsorship Playbook – Thoughts and Visions
Each year PwC’s Sports Practice Group publishes insightful reports to support the Sports & Entertainment Industry. Since 2009, I have been closely following these annual reports and I am excited to say the 13 reports they recently published did not disappoint. Excellent work Sports Practice Group Leader, Michael Keenan.
Of the 13 reports I read, this one provided me with a “ you had me at hello” moment. In the 1st paragraph, the Sponsorship Playbook Report states, “The sports-sponsorship market is expected to grow from $63.1 billion in 2021 to $109.1 billion by 2030 as a host of new sponsors — such as sports betting and streaming giants — buy-in.”
That’s $109,100,000,000! That’s a lot of zeros and commas. As former Ball St. sports reporter Brian Collins would say: “BOOM, goes the dynamite!”
Since FanCompass launched its CORE for Brands division to help support our club & league partners to sell, package, price, and recap digital activations, we have seen a 387% uptick across our network in the last 24 months with digital <sponsored> activations that were priced & sold (not thrown in). We have found that our customers are partnering with brands and selling FanCompass with confidence not only in the typical “Sports Sponsorship 30 Industries”, but to what we like to call the “forgotten 5 million brands.” These brands love to get access to <arguably> the highest engaged audiences on the web to get their messages delivered & KPIs met. It’s a big opportunity and the $109B TAM by 2030 ties into what we are already seeing on the front lines, albeit we are only in the 2nd inning.
Another data point that this report provided was that brands are seeking much more than ad reach & audience demographics to place their ad dollars. Since our award-winning Fan Engagement Engine was built for fans, teams, and sponsors alike, it’s important to note that our progressive data collection tools & strategy rise to the top to meet all brand’s requirements & demands. Fan user journeys matter and data collection forms living on a foreign URL will not get you there.
The last point I’d like to make about this PwC report explains the deal size for when Spotify partnered up with FC Barcelona. In their requests when valuing the FC Barcelona opportunity, Spotify uncovered that the club only had 1% of their fan audience in their database. According to the article, this metric drove down the price and value of the package. However, Spotify and FC Barcelona partnered on an amazing deal and landed on a €280 million price tag. Regardless of a club’s size or league, I feel it’s never too late to start collecting fan data to get ahead of where brands like Spotify will partner in the future.
Just like the “had me at hello” moment above, the fan data ownership metric aligns with FanCompass’ mission statement. “Data is the new water (not gold)” one board member said to me several months ago. Further, I foresee more requests from brands asking for numbers around fan databases to be the standard and not a “checkbox.” Especially after 3rd party cookies are finally retired later this year when zero and 1st party data will be in the <revenue> driver’s seat.
Put another way, the bigger a club’s fan database, the more revenue opportunities a club will have in play.
Please take a moment to read the report by PwC.