For a sponsor, finding the right club partner can be a difficult task. For the club, attracting a sponsor who will mesh well with their unique identity and also provide adequate monetary value is also a tricky proposition. Clubs and prospective sponsors are like single people looking for love, and data is the matchmaker which puts them together in lasting, mutually fulfilling relationships.
Clubs are unique organisations, with different histories, locations and fan demographics. Therefore to really understand a club, sponsors have to understand the lifeblood of that club… the supporters. Clubs are increasingly seeing that for them to really attract the right kind of partner, they have to have a complete picture of their own fans; who they are, where they live and their spending power. To continue our dating process theme, a club who attempts to try to find a sponsorship partner without having fan data to hand, is like a man on an online dating app describing themselves with only “Happiest playing FIFA and eating my dinner in front of the TV” accompanied by a picture of him and his Mum. Prospective partners will move right on to the next option.
To connect with a mass market, there is nothing quite like the world of sports. The value of the Premier League shirt sponsorship market in 2017/18 is a whopping £281m, and it is going up every year. Every brand wants to be associated with young, vibrant, passionate and ultimately successful organisations. However, what sponsors ultimately want is access to a club’s supporter base so that they can sell more of their product. That is the bottom line, the “raison d’etre” for sports sponsorship. With the amounts of money involved in sports sponsorship (FIFA earned approximately $1.4billion from 20 major sponsorship deals at the last World Cup), sponsors want to be shown data that they will get return on their investment.
Each supporter base is different, and so a club which understands their fans and is able to illustrate that knowledge clearly and accurately, is at an immediate advantage when looking for a sponsorship partner. Data segmentation allows a club to be able to show prospective brands that they have the target market they are looking for, and the means to access them in a cost effective, efficient way. That target market will vary greatly depending on the individual sponsor. Take for example a luxury car manufacturer, they will have a very specific target market in mind for their product, based on income level, current vehicle and location. Alternatively, betting organisations may wish to target young, male fans of an entirely different demographic.
A club armed with the data showing that they have “X” number of fans in “Y” location who match the profile of the target market, adds so much more weight to a negotiation than anecdotal evidence. If you add in the type of functionality dedicated mobile apps such as the Sportego Fanlink Platform, where personalised messages can be sent to users based on their location and segmentation, you have effective, efficient activation to the target audience… all thanks to the matchmaker called Data.
At Sportego, we take a complete approach to Fan Engagement, from data capture, cleansing and analytics, all the way through to the rolling out of technology to allow clubs to better understand their fanbase. If you would like to get in touch to find out more about our approach to fan engagement, just contact us via the tab on the left of your screen and we will be delighted to speak with you. Thanks for reading.
