The New Era of Sport Sponsorships

The old way of sports sponsorships = a brand pays a fee for varying levels of brand exposure. The new way = including performance-based incentives into partnership agreements. 

"The traditional sponsorship model, based on fees and media commitments, does not deliver the best value for us at a time when most leagues and teams are facing challenges with live attendance and TV ratings,” said Joao Chueiri, ABI’s vice president of consumer connections and the former Nike marketer who has been reshaping the company’s sponsorship model during his first year on the job. “We want to evolve the model and encourage fan engagement … with an awareness that each deal is unique.”

These incentives can come in many forms; attendance, brand awareness, consideration, social media and fan engagement. Of any medium primed to cultivate a relationship with fans and encourage engagement, it’s social media. 

What's this mean? Content is going to have to work harder. And it will need to be an organic and social listening model that succeeds. If you drown content with paid media, it defeats the purpose of the sponsorship in general. Paid media is a form of exposure, the old model. 

It also means that this will trickle into influencer marketing as well. As with the sponsorship model, you pay x to reach x people. The same with influencers, you pay x based on the influencer's amount of followers and their niche within the market. Many times reporting figures aren't even scoped into contracts. That will change, engagement rates on content will play a much larger role at determining an influencer's worth.  

More in the article here; https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2018/04/02/anheuser-busch-inbev-rewrites-sponsorship-rules.html.