What’s your name and position within the organisation?
Lothar Rentschler, Senior Marketing & Sales Director EMEA
What are the main drivers for joining ESA?
Having held a board position within the German Sponsoring Association (FASPO) many years ago and now being a part of GLORY Kickboxing, it was clear to me that we want to be part of the wider sponsorship community to learn and share best practices and to develop opportunities.
GLORY Sports International, the parent company of GLORY Kickboxing has been around for many years now, and with being the world’s largest kickboxing platform, producing matches between the top fighters on the planet and being dedicated to place world championship level kickboxing and stand-up fighting before a global audience of fans, it was clear to us that we want to be part of a bigger sponsorship community.
Over the past years, the image of the sport and the strength of the brand have significantly increased, and now it is time to capitalise on that brand in a commercial manner. Now with a new structure in marketing and sales, we are more eager than ever to learn, share and develop best practices and opportunities. It’s time for GLORY.
What is GLORY Kickboxing all about?
GLORY is, where athletes, highly skilled in a wide array of martial arts disciplines, including Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Boxing, Karate, Kung-Fu, Tae Kwon Do and Capoeira converge under one set of rules to determine who reigns supreme in the ring. The combination of so many skill sets is always going to make for both terrifying and exhilarating viewing in equal measure, which is why so many fans gravitate towards it.
GLORY means 14 world championship level kickboxing events per year, all over the world in top locations. GLORY covers 7 weight classes and championship divisions (6 male weight classes and 1 women’s division). Per event, we organize 14-16 single fights and/or unique tournament concepts alongside a wide TV broadcasting with 100 hours of live fights per year and 33 broadcasting deals covering 125+ countries.
How did the organisation come to work with the current sponsors?
Firstly, I think it is worth mentioning that GLORY Kickboxing stands for a real sports event, less show. This makes our events so exciting and delivers the pure sports to our growing fan base. However, in the past we were very much focusing on the single events rather than offering the overarching GLORY series as an opportunity for partnerships. As a result, we do have a number of local sponsors, but just a few global ones – for now. This is now going to change as we are developing a solid brand building and sponsor partnership program.
We do know that the sponsoring environment has changed. It is no longer about logo placement and pure exposure. It is more about fully integrating in digital media and offline efforts as well as using data. Thus, we believe in true partnerships that expand over time. Our GLORY Sponsoring and Marketing staff are developing solutions that will support our partners’ brand and marketing objectives. From research to tailor-made solutions, to new pricing models and best practice sharing. Seeding and harvesting together is key to us.
We offer dedicated brainstorming sessions with our sponsors to identify the best opportunities to ensure that the sponsors’ brands shine and benefit from one of the most exciting event series in combat sports around the globe.
Even in business and exploring partnerships we plan, do, check, adjust and act from a kickboxers’ mindset. Showing enormous commitment to our partners’ goal(s), displaying mutual respect in and outside the ring to each other, and truly focusing towards a common cause. When you commit to a GLORY partnership, you commit to a true and reliable partnership, an opportunity to customize and to expand over time. The new sponsorship has to be a partnership on the same eye level.
What challenges have you encountered, and how have they been overcome?
As fight sports, more specifically kickboxing, are becoming more mainstream, we see a shift in the continuous expansion of sponsorships in our industry. Businesses are opening up to new opportunities with GLORY and its athletes in order to build an identity and define the values they wish to portray. However, kickboxing is not yet at the position where it belongs. TV-programmes are aired around midnight, the sport itself is not as broadly accepted yet by the general public as much as we would like to see it – and from a partnership perspective it is not yet on the same level as we see in other sports. Although, the acceptance is growing and we are working on changing that step by step.
A lot has to do with educating people about our sports, about our exceptional product and changing the somewhat unfavourable associations the mainstream public has with our sport. Just one of the reasons why we recently aired our own TV-show; Time to Fight, with our media partner Veronica. Shifting the focus from event to event-content to a year around entertainment business allows us to attract, educate and entertain a wider audience and partners.
Tell us more about the GLORY broadcasting set-up?
Broadcasting is a very important part of what we do. With a serious number of programmes, GLORY’s in-house content studio delivers high quality content to its target audiences and fans. Covering the GLORY flagship tournaments, the GLORY Super Fight Serie, GLORY Prelims and GLORY events are visible on all platforms.
In addition, GLORY offers tapped supported content such as GLORY Rewind, INSIDE GLORY and GLORY Kickboxing Archive Series – all in all 28 TV Live segments and about 4.000 hours of fight content.
With our local broadcasting partners, we develop uniquely integrated opportunities for our partners, such that they become a real part of the GLORY program formats. Going way beyond classical advertising spots or trailers. With 33 broadcasting deals covering 125+ countries and 100 hours of live fights per year, we reach up to 10 million viewers per event, globally.
What is your take on other media outlets and channels?
First of all, we are a kickboxing content creator, so creating visual and/or written content around our athletes, events and our sport is our core business.
GLORY’s in-house content studio delivers the highest quality content in our line of work with around 51 million people watching our streams every year and we are blessed to have a big social media following which exceeds well above 1 million followers. Digital media is great when used in the right way and it offers an effective two-way dialogue with our audience, whether that be through promotions or live updates during our events. Nevertheless, we are still learning in the online- and social environment and getting better and more visible every single day. Evolving both our digital environment and online imprint over time opens up interesting opportunities to make our partners shine.
Is there anything else you’d like to add before we step out of the ring?
Well, it is key that we keep educating people in terms of what the sport is all about, the rules, the ranking system and the passion and pride that goes with it. When a young kid starts exercising at an early age, trains and learns about the discipline, respect, fairness and the value of personal fitness and then ends up in the ring, fighting for the better and achieving fame within the GLORY family.
It is about emotions. This is what we want to share with our partners. And jointly, we can overcome any challenge ahead of us. In the end, it is a fight. And we do love challenges.
Contact Lothar: lothar@gloryworldseries.com