Dentsu discovers Holy Grail; Bonfire of the Acronyms; History v Money; Priceless Majors; The Numbers Are Always Wrong; The Moya Dodd Stand; Strategy is a Joke; Raine's new ball game; LIV as Threat
Overthinking the sports business, for money
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Nothing to see here, just the Holy Grail being discovered
My starting point is to not believe the claims of sponsorship research agencies.
It saves time.
This builds on one of the central tenets of UP: The Numbers Are Always Wrong.
But this week comes the news that Dentsu has cracked the enigma code of sponsorship attribution.
Cause and Effect.
If this, then that.
So that’s that sorted.
Sponsorship BI vs Sponsorship BS?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, I don’t believe Dentsu’s claim - I’m happy to get them on the podcast to prove me wrong.
It’s an over reach.
And btw, I wonder if World Athletics really wants TDK, Sony and all the other Dentsu sourced sponsors to really know if it’s working or not. But as we say, that’s a whole other podcast…
But I can see how they got there.
I’ve come to see selling sports marketing strategy as analogous with joke telling.
Both sides - the comedian and the audience - are complicit in a mutual conspiracy.
Most people want the joke to succeed. We’d prefer to laugh than not.
Jimmy Carr once said: ‘When you start to tell a joke, you’re effectively saying ‘Let’s all agree to suspend the normal rules for a moment’. That should spoil it for everyone, but it doesn’t.’
Likewise, nobody in the room wants a sponsorship to fail.
It’s in everyone’s interest to play along.
They just need evidence, to take and show the next bloke - defined as the board, the CMO/CEO, the Sports Industry Award judges.
Build: The CMO as Engineer
If Denstu really has discovered the secret of attribution, it changes marketing forever.
The job of marketing is now a question of basic engineering.
The CMO sits at the controls, pondering which marketing levers work best in any given situation.
A perimeter board here, a shirt deal there.
Home in time for tea.
I suspect though that there’s a limit to the lever analogy when applied to something as messy as the manipulation of human behaviour, aka marketing.
In engineering, a lever is pulled and SOMETHING IS GUARANTEED TO HAPPEN.
Whereas in marketing, a lever can be pulled AND LITERALLY NOTHING HAPPENS.
This gap - between something happening and not happening - is where the money is.
And the sponsorship industry would be wise to keep it that way.
History v Money
Old v New.
Establishment v Upstart.
Nice money v Saudi money.
The nut graf of many sports news stories comes down to this division.
Take this opener by Simon Briggs, The Telegraph’s tennis correspondent.
Some builds:
Majors are more valuable not less
Fwiw, I disagree with Simon’s analysis.
A PIF takeover of WTA/ATP would make the Grand Slams more valuable not less.
This is certainly true in golf and I see no reason it wouldn’t be the same in tennis.
Fans find the internecine wars - the bonfire of the acronyms - boring and irritating.
Why wouldn’t they? The message to the punters is crystal: We don’t care about you.
This is about (a few) already very rich players and money and financial arbitrage (ht Roger Mitchell).
Again, I think this paragraph gets the issue the wrong way around.
Since becoming ATP boss in 2020, Andrea Gaudenzi has been pushing a united model that would create a single streaming tennis service. But for that to happen, he needs the slams to join the party. This has been the most difficult proposition of his entire reign, because Wimbledon’s annual TV rights – which stand at around £65million ($83million) annually from the BBC, plus $95million from the American market, and another $65million worldwide – far outstrip the ATP’s ($151million in 2022).
Why would Wimbledon join the ATP’s party?
Wimbledon IS the party.
What if, the Majors took the money away
So..how about an endearingly naive thought experiment.
Take prize money out of the major championships.
Make The Open Championship like the Ryder Cup.
You earn your way in.
You get the kudos.
But the money goes to the pyramid.
If you can’t compete with PIF money - and nobody can - go the other way.
Play the history card.
In a world where the players have everything, they still want a Major.
If they don’t, fuck ‘em.
LIV equals OTT
The LIV of [Insert sport here] has become a shorthand.
It’s the threat hanging over every traditional sport.
The option for Saudi to grow their own, as opposed to buying the establishment governing body - see the PGA Tour, PIF, Strategic Sport snafu for a case study.
LIV is the lever in the negotiation, the hammer in PIF’s pocket.
We can buy you, or we can create a rival, which will fuck up your sport for a generation.
It reminds me of the OTT conversation, where the same argument is made the other way.
Rights holders try to add competitive tension in to the media sales process by setting up their own OTT channels. We’ll go alone if you don’t reach our number etc.
It doesn't seem to matter that they’re shit, they exist.
Which is not a bad campaign idea for LIV, now I think about it.
LIV Golf: It’s shit, but it exists.
See also: Beware the Siren Call of Tennis
Never Raine’s*
The NBA has hired Raine Group to size up the European basketball market.
UP sources tell me it could be seismic, but probably won’t be.
European basketball is one of the most confusing landscapes in sport.
And that’s before you get to 777’s BBL (mis)adventures.
I wouldn’t want to be tortured by anyone seeking information about the difference between FIBA Champions League and EuroLeague.
One of them’s got Real Madrid and Barcelona in, which is where I suspect Raine’s head will go first.
The LIV/F1/Super League for Basketball, with NBA franchise offshoots plus the big European soccer brands.
It’s another Sport by McKinsey play.
About 25 years ago, I went to Hammersmith to interview Heidi Ueberroth, who was then head of the NBA’s push in to Europe.
Then as now, the basics are very promising.
Basketball is the one big American sport with genuine cultural and participation resonance with young, urban Europe.
The question is a Gen Z test case. Do they want local or global? EuroLeague or NBA?
I can get to a place where basketball is (men’s) football’s only real rival for the next fan’s attention.
That’s the long term play for NBA. But who does long term these days, apart from oil rich autocracies?
The NFL has been about to open a London franchise for thirty five years.
So I’ve an inkling it’s more complicated than it looks.
*I'm aware this is nearly a good headline. The fact it makes no actual sense doesn’t deter me.
Moya Dodd Stands for Something
So it’s apt they’ve named an actual stand after her.
The former FIFA Exco member was trailblazing women’s football decades before it was fashionable.
She was modest as ever on WhatsUP:
Paris needs buttering up
It’s a bit weird how low profile the Paris Olympics is in the UK.
It took my own greed, and a TeamGB official partnership, to bring it front of mind.
Moral relativism
Another sponsorship story.
SXSW is/was the trendy tech-meets-culture festival-cum-conference in Austin, Texas.
It’s taken sponsorship from the US Army.
Some of the music acts have bailed in protest.
The cool kids are revolting.
Enter the crisis comms department wielding narratives.
Pro free speech angle; A nod to Gaza and other humanitarian disasters; Defence industry as innovation hub; Sunlight as disinfectant; Bomb maker as employer; Rousing unity call against injustice, undefined.
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*There are no prizes.
