Hello sports fans. This is going to be a new format for a Friday that combines what I’m finding interesting around the three core areas of what Vivrant is focused on: how fans are experiencing sport, how it’s being marketed and the larger forces that are shaping sport. There will also be a round up of the sports marketing that’s caught the eye over the last week.
This week I look at how the new era of the Hundred has been communicated, the massive fan opportunity in the WNBA and wonder what the sale of the LA Lakers means for sports power balance.
WHAT’S SHAPING SPORTS?
The habits, rituals and forces that shape the fans experience.
Nielsen has created an NFL Fandom Index that ranks fans by eight metrics to determine where the most passionate fans are, with Buffalo, Kansas City and Green Bay taking the top spots. Built from over 200,000 adults, the survey covers apparel purchases, event attendance, streaming, social media following, TV viewership, radio listening, betting intent and overall interest level.
Increased ticket prices to the US Open are not going down well with tennis fans. The sport’s ascent across fashion, celebrity and culture has turned the popular tournament into a must attend New York moment. Add the huge participation increase since the pandemic and we’re seeing demand outstrip supply even as ticket prices surge on official and resale outlets. A family of four are now looking at potentially a four figure day out and frustration has been expressed among fans of all ages online who are feeling priced out from an event they’ve had a hand in making culturally meaningful. An all too familiar story across sports.
The trends, opportunities and innovations in how sports are marketed
The Hundred’s standard is up, engagement is up, but people actually attending is down as year six becomes another adjustment year. The Hundred’s sixth and first under the new ownership model has ended with ECB painting a positive picture with increases in TV viewership (+7.5%) and social engagement and views increasing 36% and 55% respectively. The key metric of attendance was down on last year, with the total number of tickets sold and issued being 550,000, a 30,000 decrease. It’s the third-highest of The Hundred so far and the highest of the competitions that doesn’t follow major England Men’s series. The split in attendees were 22% of tickets for junior fans under 16, 40% for families and 28% for women which is positive in doing what the ECB set out to do. These are slightly lower than previous seasons which follows the overall drop off where only the Welsh Fire recorded an increase in attendances.
It’s been called an adjustment year with all the change brought about by new ownership groups with name, kit and colour changes and while some of the cricket was great, with a much stronger level of players this time round, both the men’s and women’s game could be better helped if the owners followed some key fundamentals. Advertising the games earlier and more frequent than they did, particularly the IPL owned teams who may have been preoccupied with that and treated ticket buying behaviour in India and England as the same. Ticket prices should be looked at with some adult tickets costing upwards of £40-55 at some grounds. While I wrote about this before, some teams have now admitted that more focus needs to be on signing players affiliated with the counties that play at the same ground to build familiarity and consistency. I went to watch Southern Brave and the women’s team had four Hampshire players involved including Lauren Bell and Maia Bouchier, while the men’s had none. Hampshire’s best men’s players James Vince, Liam Dawson and Sonny Baker were all playing elsewhere. The Hundred still feels like an experiment in manufacturing fandom, that ignores some of the fundamental factors that help develop it. TV rights are up till 2028 so next year has to surely show this is a format worth dividing cricket fans and impacting so much of the summer calendar.
The WNBA is an opportunity for brands to reach a distinct fan base. The discourse around the WNBA the last year or so and in particular this season has been crazy, taking the attention away from the fact that the players, teams and on-court output is the best it’s arguably ever been. I went to a New York Liberty vs Dallas Wings game last month and the game was great and the atmosphere incredible. A new report outlines the opportunity for brands to reach a fan base that is additive to the sports ecosystem. Comparing cities with NBA and WNBA teams, there is only a small correlation in fans purchasing tickets to both. The overall male/female split is closer to 50/50 and WNBA fans over-index their local NBA counterparts on overall affluence and income.
The NHL is the 4th of the traditional North American sports in popularity and now has the MLS pushing for competition, so it’s interesting to see the sport look to football to help grow the sport, through a partnership with Bayern Munich. German NHL stars Leon Draisaitl and JJ Peterka, with Bayern champion and Canada star Alphonso Davies were all present at the announcement which aims to accelerate the growth of hockey in Germany and the development of FC Bayern in North America. Germany is a key market for hockey with the NHL hosting games there next season, including the Boston Bruins in Munich. The early reaction on the partnership from fans is why? Whenever these cross-sport partnerships are announced, the growth and commercial aims are always the talk of the announcement press release, but beyond the “fan activations” mention, there is usually very little on the what’s in it for fans and why they should care?
TNT Sports will air their pre-match EPL build up for free on YouTube to take their coverage beyond the paywall and try to entice people to sign up for the game the closer it gets to kick-off and their investment level is high.
Publicis Sports and Travis Kelce launch the first Name, Image & Likeness consultation and activation offering called TEKTA. NIL has been the biggest shift college sports has ever seen and it’s completely changed the power balance between players, coaches and their colleges. Some athletes are not jumping to the pros as quickly with the money they can make in school, not just from marketing their name but essentially the salaries that are now paid as compensation from their schools, which see players move frequently to follow the money. Roster building and recruitment has been completely upended. The fact an agency offering hasn’t sprung up sooner is a bit of a surprise given the market is estimated to be a $4.5 billion opportunity, but we can expect TEKTA won’t be the last.
Michigan to allow advertising in their stadium for the first time. The big colleges in sports generate obscene amounts of revenue but now they’re needing to finally compensate players for all the money they help them generate, it’s got colleges looking at ways to bring in extra revenue in the NIL era. For some, it means giving in to advertising as Michigan Stadium, which holds over 107,000 people and turns 100 next year have signed up Coca-Cola, Meijer and Google Gemini to become the first advertisers at the Big House.
Streamers look to expand their sports offering, plugging gaps and taking on tradition. Sport is increasingly the last place for massive gatherings of audiences and streamers have to keep subscriber churn low and shareholders happy, so this week we’ve seen Apple throw their hat in the ring for the golf’s prestigious Open Championship as they look to further move into live sports. Disney has secured the rights to Formula E where Disney+ will become the global streaming home of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship across 144 territories. DAZN have partnered with KSI and the team he now owns, Dagenham & Redbridge, to enhance production and distribution of the National Conference League South side. The streamer could make inroads in the US while offering a solution for plugging the local coverage issue the major US leagues are having with various Regional Sports Networks collapsing. DAZN have just added 22 Indiana Pacers games to their deals with the Minnesota Timberwolves and become the exclusive direct-to-consumer home of the New York area MSG Networks and YES Network which shows most of the region’s NBA, MLB and NHL teams.
The changes and forces shaping how sports evolve
The LA Lakers broke the record for most expensive sports team for the second time in two years after Bob Iger and Josh Kushner bought the franchise for $12.5 billion. A $2.5 billion increase in just one year is insane. These eye-watering sums also help increase the potential valuations of other teams and in just the last three years, there have been six NBA ownership changes.
The days of local business people owning their local team is a memory, now we’re in the age of the deep pocketed billionaires from the land of tech, entertainment and finance who are seeing sports teams as a way to store their fortunes. With sports teams providing a regular growing revenue through ballooning TV deals and commercial revenue, as well as the cultural cachet and ego boost among billionaire circles, these ultra-wealthy parties are going to increase in sport. With that, comes ownership with financial power that leagues will find hard to control. There are a number of great articles that look into this shift from Derek Thompson, who outlines how American sports laws help a lucky few billionaires get much richer. True Hoop looks at who is actually buying the Lakers and the Washington Post at private equity’s race to own sports.
New Formats growth pains and strategy shift. LIV Golf is hanging on by a thread as they seek financial rescue to replace the money pulled by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund. The final tournament in Michigan was pulled, vendors are taking legal action over unpaid invoices and players may not have a way back to the PGA tour they jumped ship from.
Sky Sports have not renewed their deal with the Baller League after three seasons despite the broadcaster saying viewing figures are great, with the league stating they were always second to their streaming first strategy. Sky Sports showing Baller League may have been a move to appeal to younger audiences, but the league was readily available for free on streaming platforms so it always seemed an odd move if it didn’t have exclusivity.
A hat divide in golf highlights the tension between the traditionalists and new fans. Golf’s rise among younger and more diverse audiences is reshaping what is being worn on the course, with bolder hats and unconventional designs becoming a merchandise growth category and now a symbol of the tension between golf’s traditionalists and its new generation of fans.
SPORTS MARKETING WEEKLY SHOWCASE
EPL returns. It only feels like a minute since Spain lifted the World Cup yet domestic seasons are underway and the Premier League kicks off this weekend with key sponsors and broadcasters all hyping up the return. Coca-Cola returned to the Premier League last season (disclaimer, I worked on their Guess the Goals campaign and Superfan can last year) and has unveiled a big campaign with Central Cee rapping on an original track ‘The Team’ created for this campaign called ‘Taste Every Second’. The 2 minute film was created by VML with Riff Raff and rolls through the key match moments from anticipation to last minute winners. The integrated campaign is underway and given Cole Palmer has already featured as a Coca-Cola ambassador this year and is often featured with the West London rapper, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a link up on a coke campaign at some point.
Sky Sports is showing even more games across the season and invites fans to the season long spectacle with a ‘Welcome to the Show’ campaign across multiple channels and platforms, including a commissioned mural in Shoreditch and a landmark 3D takeover of London’s Piccadilly Circus Lights. The installation features a robotic arm spray-painting a white football with the Premier League, EFL, SPFL and WSL logos. Their competitor TNT Sports always seems to put more emphasis on its creative and production and heralds its trophy cabinet of wide coverage across competitions including the Premier League and proclaims ‘There’s levels to this’ in that pursuit of excellence. In the US, Ian Wright fronts a campaign celebrating the league’s growing place in US sports culture with an appearance of New York Knicks and NBA champion Josh Hart and showing the dedication showed to follow their teams across the Atlantic.
As the US Open approaches there’s a heap of activity rolling out from fan experiences in Hudson Yards, to IHG turning the journey from Arthur Ashe Stadium to select IHG hotels in Manhattan into a branded hospitality experience with food, beauty treatments and match content. Heineken 0.0 is rewarding Serena Williams superfans with a chance to score a seat in the exclusive Heineken Suite if they have kept tickets from previous US Opens. For fans who keep tickets as momentos, they can scan them and upload to the fan site, share a memory of Serena and submit for a chance to win. Electrolit is inviting Aryna Sabalenka fans to compete in challenges, including your best Sabalenka grunt at a special pop up, Saby’s Slice Shop where the star will also make an appearance. The drink of the Open is the infamous Honey Deuce, but Moët is trying to create a new consumption ritual with a champagne serve in tennis ball packaging designed for social media and a souvenir.
Nike celebrated one of the best to do it, Diana Taurasi, as the Phoenix Mercury retired her jersey.
adidas took a distinct turn last season to selling its premier football boot franchises by pitting them against each other and they continue to do so with a playful funfair filled world as Barcelona team mates Aitana Bonmatí pulls the strings as a puppet master, while her team mate Vicky Lopez harnesses the storm of chaos. We also see in another film Arsenal players in a tug of war between the wearers of the silos.
Stephen A Smith wants fans to find sports nirvana with the extensive sports coverage across ESPN, it’s the calmest we’ll ever see him.
Formation Games dares football fans who think they can run their club better to do so fin the game CLUB, with Jeff Stelling tracking down fans in a film to remind them what they’ve said and encourages them to step up and prove it.