While the talk about the next great revenue streams for teams and leagues continues to be focused on sports gambling, or how to make more noise with gaming and esports, the NBA announced the unlocking of a new cabinet this week which will have ancillary and immediate benefits for teams looking to expand dollars and brand, one which is only open to various shapes and sizes of deals in American sport, but one which some of the biggest soccer brands in the world have been seizing more and more in the last few years
According to many published stories, NBA Owners approved a three-year test of the International Team Marketing Program at their April 12 board of governors meeting in New York. The move will allow each of the NBA’s 30 teams to sell global marketing rights to two current or new sponsors beginning next season. Previously, the league controlled all international sponsorship inventory while teams are limited to a 75-mile marketing territory, a policy that remains in place.
According to John Lombardo in the Sports Business Journal…
“The international program allows teams to include global advertising and marketing rights outside the U.S. and Canada; activation at retail locations globally outside the U.S. and Canada; and rights to post non-game team content on the sponsors’ own digital and social media sites such as their company Facebook or Twitter pages. Those global digital rights also include the U.S. and Canada.
The move follows the league’s decision to allow teams to start selling jersey patch advertising starting with the 2017-18 season. Those patch sponsors may be among the brands most interested in the new international inventory. While teams can sell the new global rights to any two sponsors, many team naming-rights and jersey patch sponsors are global brands and would be likely targets in the new program.
The NBA’s Amy Brooks said that while the new plan offers teams more revenue, that’s not the primary goal. Instead, she said it’s to take advantage of the global reach of team partners and to create more targeted non-game content. Under the new plans, sponsors can use non-game content such as behind-the-scenes features but game highlights are prohibited.”
While the ability for teams to work better with their existing global brands…Amway in Orlando, Infor with the Brooklyn Nets, Rakuten with the Golden State Warriors, Harley Davidson in Milwaukee were some of those cited, the value for new companies issuing the images of players, and the ever growing powerful brand logos of teams is really the great potential here.
This is certainly not a new idea: Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment have made numerous forays aboard and have created a business unit to try and bring non American endemic brands to these shores in the form of sponsorship for several years. The Sixers and formerly the Knicks while under the leadership of Scott O’Neil, were regular seekers of brands to bring back to engage in the U.S., and maybe even bigger has been Monumental Sports using the allure of the multinational city of Washington, DC to bring in both brands and leaders who are regulars in business in the Capitol District.
Away from the NBA and even the NHL, which has let some teams do limited marketing deals outside their geographic area, the Jacksonville Jaguars have attempted to put stakes down in London, as Shad Khan’s team has taken a more disruptive and proactive approach to growing their brand abroad (they also own Fulham, and you can listen more about the Jags business here).
The cosharing and promoting of team brands, if not always business partners, has also existed in a more fluid form with American owners who have put down roots with soccer clubs as well. The idea was if you had made the investment in clubs like the Premier League, you had a better understanding and opportunity to cobrand and even co sell, at least be able to provide a seamless entry point into American sport for companies looking for a toe dip across the pond. All of that activity, and potential marketing and sales goals, was a secondary revenue plan, which, at least for NBA teams, can now move up to primary, with the allure of helping existing companies now use their powerful names to go direct to consumer outside of the radius of the local business.
However the even better example of how this could work is what the dozen or so European soccer clubs have done here in the U.S. Without geographic restrictions, clubs like FC Bayern Munich have put down fan activation programs, have found new brands and been able to better engage with their global partners like Adidas and Audi here in North America. The FC Bayern brand can be used in consumer promotions even when the team may not be in America for a year or to. That doesn’t mean fans can’t still engage and brand value be built through media partnerships and promotions. We now see La Liga and FC Barcelona and Chelsea all doing the same thing. As they see the US as a fertile and untapped opportunity for their club with few restrictions placed from above, they captured and are still capturing, brands, fans and dollars.
Now the NBA, at least on a limited level to start, will allow the same.
Does this mean that suddenly there will be a treasure trove of new cash and names flowing into NBA arenas next season? No. there will be some limits, and at first, will become probably more of a value add for existing brands, with some others who have been cultivated and are not in existing occupied categories, waiting in the wings. Does it also mean the Phoenix Suns will be opening an office in Hamburg? Not yet. But what it does mean is a team like the Houston Rockets, who have long eyed China as a prime established area given the amount of business being done in their area and the influx of fans (not to mention the ties to future Hall of Famer Yao Ming and his interests) can now crate am effective and lucrative plan to grow beyond their borders with less restrictions.
Will other leagues follow suit? Probably, but as we have seen with the NBA patch program, the other bigger players (NHL, NFL and MLB) will test the waters in their timeframe, not rush to copy the NBA at least in this area. MLB recently tested logos on helmets again in Japan and Mexico for games there, and are getting closer to a patch program, but it takes time and testing to make sure the marketplace is right.
Regardless, the NBA test comes at the right time as teams look for dollars and a global audience now craves engagement with teams as much as athletes and league. While only a three year “test” for now, it’s one from a business side will be sure to pass, with lots of extra credit for those who can do it will.
An interesting thing happened on Thursday morning at the New York Athletic Club during the annual Cynopsys Sports Media Awards breakfast.
Amongst the usual parade of media accolades…various entities in the FOX SPORTS world took home 12 winners on their own…there were two excitable tables who seemed to also be trading winners every few minutes as well. They are certainly big competing media outlets who have built solid storytelling and production reputations over the years, but they weren’t who you may think of first, especially if you are English language speaking.
They were Telemundo and Univision, and between them (Telemundo four, Univision two, along with another half dozen nominations), they served another message that the Spanish speaking Latino sports fan s becoming more and more savvy, more discerning and more disruptive as this very fluid media marketplace continues to unfold. Now to be fair, the awards won by both revolved around one of the three sports that are key to Latino and Hispanic culture in America (that being soccer, with the other two being basketball and baseball, with boxing not that far behind), and we were coming off a World Cup year.
However, as I have noted in our writing for Portada, the Latino/Hispanic audience continues to be a force to be reckoned with; brand loyal, digital savvy, passionate fans who are becoming more and more engaged not just across generations, but with a fast rising female demo as well. They are also not just Spanish speaking, as the popular site La Vida Baseball has found out; they enjoy storytelling from their cultural roots in both English and Spanish, and can toggle back and forth between both, something which a large swath of English speaking audiences cannot.
Now this is not to say that engaging with a Latino or Hispanic audience is easy. Those words mean many things to many cultures, and appealing to Brazilian and Dominican and Puerto Rican, or even Spanish or Mexican, is not one size fits all. Each presents an issue that needs to be addressed as a segment of the population, but analytics is making that a bit easier and much more quantifiable. It has been a long process, and risk adverse brands not willing to make the time to understand and engage in the space may have missed out on a wave, but the wave is still rising.
So angst the Bleacher Reports and the WWE’s who were also honored Thursday were two Spanish first powerhouses whose creative, insightful and groundbreaking storytelling did not go unnoticed
It wasn’t the first time these to have shared a stage of honor, but it was perhaps the most impactful, at least on the sports media side where we see much of the same old collecting the honors.
Another evolving space to watch.
