Category: Uncategorized
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Sponsorship isn’t just about buying eyeballs
Unofficial Partner is a brilliant podcast covering the business of sport. I highly recommend it. I’ve never been a guest, but I have written a few pieces for their website. A recent episode featured Peter Hutton, a guy with a pretty stellar sports media background including Sky, IMSG, Eurosport and Meta. He’s also a fellow…
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The role of sports sponsorship in shaping reputation
This is an article a recently wrote for Linq Advisors (a new consultancy focused on creating impact through reputation). I’m one of Linq’s advisors, specialising in how to use sports sponsorship to shape and drive reputation. Sport has, for many decades, been a powerful vehicle for establishing, shaping and improving reputation among brands, businesses, and…
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Is the Women’s Euros audience just a load of ‘big eventers’?
Like 16 million other people in the UK (mostly in England I guess) I was glued to my TV yesterday watching the Lionesses pull off a magnificent, if slightly surprising, win. I’m a pretty avid football fan, and I took my family to the 2022 final at Wembley, which was amazing. But if I’m honest,…
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Are Wimbledon fans posher than the UK average?
The Wimbledon Championships are a staple of the British summer sporting and social scene: a genuinely premium event with a set of brand partners to match. This premium image also brings with it a reputation for fans of Wimbledon being, for want of a better word, quite posh. And this might be exactly what those…
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Things to consider for brands new to sponsorship
Sport can be an amazingly powerful marketing platform. It has the ability to connect with people like virtually nothing else can; creating opportunities for brands to connect with an audience around something they feel genuinely passionate about. Done right, sponsorship can propel brands forward; helping to rapidly grow awareness, shift perception, engage customers and drive…
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The power of the unexpected winner in sport
As fans, what are we looking for from sport? I’m going to guess that not too many of you were watching the final stages last night of the Valspar Championship on the PGA Tour? This is Peter Malnati, who won the tournament, celebrating with one of his young sons. This was just Malnati’s second win…
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REPORT: Football fans across the generations
Football (soccer) is, by a distance, the most popular sport in the world, reaching hundreds of millions of people right across the planet. This presents an opportunity for teams, leagues and events to grow and monetise their fanbase. It also makes the game a magnet for all sorts of brands looking to tap into the…
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Do sports fans care more about social issues?
It feels like there’s more discussion than usual right now around sponsorship in sport, and whether it’s “OK” for a certain type of business to partner with a sporting property e.g. 🚴♀️ British Cycling x Shell 🏏 Cricket Australia x Alinta (energy) 🏀 Netball Australia x Hancock (mining) And I’m sure there are plenty of…
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Sponsorship strategy webinar
This morning I did a webinar with Tim McLoughlin. Tim is a former head of sponsorship at cinch and Hotels.com, so has some excellent recent experience of running sports marketing campaigns for major brands. We covered a number of aspects of getting sponsorship right – from the impact it can have, through to using data…
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The fan intelligence index 21/22
Ear To The Ground is an agency with a really valuable consumer insight platform called the Fan Intelligence Network. This is a collective of over 11,000 sports, esports and gaming fans from all over the world – all plugged into what’s going and with a finger on the pulse of local culture. It’s a powerful…
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Let’s play the sports marketing cliché game!
I wrote this piece for the Unofficial Partner blog, but thought I’d share it here as well because it’s quite fun and hopefully useful too. Sport loves a cliché, Brian. And, at the end of the day, sports marketing is no different. In fact, quite a lot of the discourse and strategic thinking that surrounds…
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ESL: No-one likes us, we don’t care?
Yesterday I wrote up a few thoughts on the ESL and the concept of “future fans”. YouGov have now released some initial data on how the ESL proposal has gone down with fans in the UK. The topline result is that 79% of football fans oppose it, with only 14% showing any support. Even among…
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ESL and the ‘fans of the future’
So the proposed European Super League has caused quite a stir. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a proposal be met with such universal disapproval from fans, media, NGBs, federations and governments. Putting aside the general debate on whether this is good for the game as a whole (I don’t think it is), does the…
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An extraordinary statement
The story of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bidding to takeover Wrexham AFC is quite extraordinary. Two movie stars buying a National League club from a (let’s face it) not especially glamorous corner of Wales and wanting to turn it into a ‘global force’ has corny Hollywood script written all over it. But, they produced…
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The most culturally relevant brands in sport?
Ear to the Ground is an agency I sometimes work with – one of their unique assets is a global ‘Fan Intelligence’ network of 11,000+ culturally influential young people. They’ve tapped into it to create a top 40 ranking of the most culturally relevant brands in sport today i.e. brands in sport that are leading culture…