Like pretty much every aspect of life, Sport and vicariously sponsorship, is facing a watershed moment.
With live sport being suspended, for rights holders it is time for ingenuity to take a front seat.
While rights holders’ content relies so heavily on live sport, players themselves are busier than ever on social media – from Ben Stokes’ family friendly home workouts to Alex Oxlade Chamberlain’s front room choreography.
Sport is still producing social content, albeit mostly through its athletes.
Social content naturally is more reflective of the athletes personality, interests and response to the current situation – which is in turn the only place the fans can engage with their idols and get their fix.
Athletes as influencers if you will.
This content is not only diversifying but growing rapidly, creating additional media real estate. Ronaldo for example added over 4m to his Instagram audience in March.
It’s this content that can still attract sponsors.
There is an opportunity for clubs to take the lead and not miss out on this potential sponsorship revenue at a time when it is needed most, as sponsors will go directly to athletes.
Sportskred is a technology business that allows clubs and federations to create a sponsorable asset to benefit both the club and its players, by combining the social media of their players with their own Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook accounts – reaching a huge amount of fans and creating an entirely new sponsorship asset – on average 10x larger than the social media channels of the club itself.
Also, it allows clubs to access crucial audience data, like brand affinity and personal interests, to spot new ideas for their commercial teams to pitch ideas to prospective sponsors based on the interests of both the players and their audience.
As to the sponsors themselves – new categories will come to the fore and find a natural home in sports sponsorship. Sponsors whose products and services have never been more in demand – such as apps, streaming sites, gaming, home fitness, gardening or photography for example.
Once added, clubs can then manage the resulting social media campaign with a skeleton crew, as the technology does the hard graft.
So to support the sports community we are offering our technology to all ESA members subscription free until July 1st – get in touch and we’ll get you set up so that you can maximise the value of your social media.
But what can you do in that time?
- Understand the monetary value of both club and players social media
- Use this new asset to protect existing sponsorship money
- Pitch this asset to new sponsors.
- We hope that this will give rise to a whole new outlet for your creativity – after all, ingenuity has always been the way through crises, big and small.
Neil Stephens: neil@sportskred.com for UK enquiries, or contact us via the website to find your local market contact in France, Spain, Germany, Holland or Turkey.
Find Sportskred on Twitter at @Sportsksred