ESA’s partnership with SPORTO gave Chairman, Andy Westlake, and Board Director, Sophie Morris, the opportunity to see how things are done in Slovenia. Here are Sophie’s key takeaways from last month’s sponsorship and sports marketing conference…
Firstly, the location of this conference is fabulous. The glamorous, beautiful vistas of Portorož and being driven to the conference’s luxury hotel in a SPORTO-branded Toyota (conference partner). What more could you want? Oh, a sauna in your hotel room!
Secondly, the people were so interesting. Everyone was very open and keen to share their experiences and discuss their challenges. I learnt a lot about the Slovenian sports environment and about the culture of the country and its people – it always feels good to broaden your horizons. But the main difference between this and other conferences was that I felt I had made true friendships, not just business connections.
Of course, I didn’t just learn from the delegates, I learnt a lot from the prestigious speaker line-up…
The commercialisation of women’s sport is underway but at very different stages of growth in different sports, regions and at different organisation levels. The marketing and commercial success of the Lionesses football team has marked a key turning point in England, as Marzena Bogdanowicz of the FA explained, and change is also happening in in Slovenia.
The Slovenian FA ‘unbundled’ its women’s commercial rights for the first time this year, explained Urška Končar, Head of Marketing and Communication at the Football Association of Slovenia: “we want to change the women’s product from being a CSR proposition to a commercial one.” ‘Unbundling’ appears to be a pivotal point, where the women’s rights become valuable enough on their own and there is demand in the market.
At club level in Slovenia, there are bigger challenges to overcome. The goal for Andreja Leskovšek McQuarrie, President of Radomlje Women’s Soccer Club, is to change the perception of the sport first and make it more commonplace before the structure for commercial interest can be built.
The use of content in adding value to sponsors is important for women’s sport and is a point of differentiation from the men’s game, particularly in football where there is less access to male players. Female players feel a need and responsibility to promote their game for themselves and future generations, so tend to be more available. Can you have too much content though? “The more, the better – it’s all about storytelling,” explained Sally Horrox and Sally Hancock of Y Sport in their presentation.
Talking about the upcoming Olympics, Hancock said that it will be hard to distinguish between Olympic sponsors in Japan: “a fair few will do very little and just make the most of hospitality, do a bit of content and consider it a job well done. It’s more political than commercial for many sponsors”.
This raised a good point about sponsorship objectives – they aren’t always based on marketing objectives – but we’d still like to see sponsors getting the most out of their investment.
The science behind our decreasing attention spans was delivered by Sally Burtt-Jones of Rakuten Viber (our third Sally of the day) and, in particular, what this means for sponsors who are trying to get and keep the attention of sports fans.
Sally’s challenge was in cutting through all the other sponsor (and club) content being delivered to FC Barcelona fans to deliver on tough KPIs – App downloads and engagement. The solution was to have a dedicated member of Viber staff positioned within the football club to produce exclusive club and player content, animated stickers, a chatbot and a community all delivered only through the Viber channel.
Breaking the run of Sally’s talking about sponsorship, my fellow ESA Board Director, Joel Seymour-Hyde, explained the criticality of creativity in sponsorship and showcased the best creative work in the sports industry, including Octagon’s own PaddyPower ‘Save Our Shirt’ campaign. He also gave the SPORTO audience his predictions for who would win the prestigious “Entertainment Lions for Sport” in the Cannes Lions next year. Here’s a tip… it’ll be those who are brave and bold in their storytelling.
I had the honour of opening the second day of the conference and I used the opportunity to encourage the audience to look beyond the promotional and marketing mix and to use sponsorship for wider business objectives too. Quoting examples of sponsorship being used for product development and process efficiency in Formula 1 (my favourite sport) as well as more typical uses in employee retention, recruitment and development.
Gregor Mauko of Toyota and Veljko Odobašić of Sport mts (Serbia Telekom) then joined me on stage to talk about the sponsorship challenges that they and many other brands face.
The hot topics included using sponsorship for business culture transformation, with Toyota changing positioning from a car manufacturer to providing ‘mobility for all’. Their Olympic and Paralympic sponsorships have been pivotal not only to product development but also to internal change.
Managing different rights holders was the key challenge faced by Sport mts, a Serbian telecoms provider that sponsors two football teams who are fierce rivals. This created a complicated situation that was solved by a careful balance in activation planning but also careful internal management and communication with staff who are typically fans of one or the other team.
SPORTO conference was wrapped up by Connor Terry of the Dallas Mavericks, where sponsorship makes a huge impact for the team. Having a new piece of inventory in the ‘jersey patch’ also presents a great opportunity – but the Mavs are playing the long game and waiting for a sponsor with the right fit. Connor also talked about athlete versus club deals and, whilst many brands want partnerships with individual players, a team sponsorship means that they can use more engaging content and attract other team fans.
So there was plenty of sponsorship talk amongst the conference sessions and the SPORTO Awards which are held in partnership with ESA. Andy Westlake and I were part of the judging panel and it was fascinating to see the breadth of the work done in the region.
SPORTO was a great hit and one to add to your conference calendar for next year.
I’d also like to thank SPORTO for the heartfelt tribute made to ESA Board Director, Toby Hester, who passed away this year. He received a standing ovation both at the opening of the conference and during the presentation of the SPORTO Awards.