Hillsdale College, USA Shooting Show A Potential Rise In Politically Driven Partnerships

BY ADAM GROSSMAN

Numerous properties have been examining novel partners and approaches to address sponsorship revenue shortfalls caused by the Coronavirus. Hillsdale College’s new multi-million dollar partnership with USA Shooting illustrates properties’ increased willingness to activate politically driven, and potentially controversial, partnerships.

This is not the first time that political or issue driven campaigns have impacted sports sponsorship. While political advertising in sports increases during the political campaign season, my co-authors and I highlighted past examples of sports organizations and political entities using sponsorship to build awareness around campaigns or issues in The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry.

This included the Boston Red Sox helping to promote the state of Massachusetts’ new requirements to purchase health insurance in 2016. The Alabama Development Office partnered with the University of Alabama and Auburn University to promote state commerce and local businesses in 2012.

However, the rise of companies and private organizations entering the cause or issue marketing space by using sponsorship has happened more recently. In a past post, we highlighted why companies were willing to take the “risk” of using sports sponsorship to tackle controversial issues that their customers care about. More specifically, companies could use relationships with leagues, teams, and athletes to show that they care about issues important to their customers.

This included Dick’s Sporting Goods’ decision to remove assault rifles from stores after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Dick’s saw its stock increase 21% in the immediate time period after making the decision.

While Dick’s still sells guns and ammunition at its stores, Hillsdale is making a clear commitment to guns rights through its new partnership with USA Shooting. The Wall Street Journal headline describing the relationship as, “An Olympic Sport, a Christian College and a Unifying Cause: Gun Rights.”

Hillsdale is now set to “invest more than $15 million in shooting-facilities construction, upgrades and endowment in a sponsorship deal with USA Shooting, along with cash support and in-kind contributions. Starting this year, USA Shooting will relocate three major competitions and some team training camps to the college, and has agreed that Hillsdale can call itself the home of the U.S. National Shooting Team.”

There is no question that this is a significant investment that makes a tangible difference for USA Shooting. For example, the team recently had to practice by firing air guns inside an old Macy’s when it lost its ability to practice at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs due to COVID.

Hillsdale is also achieving significant brand awareness for both Second Amendment rights and for the school itself. This is particularly important when smaller colleges and universities, like Hillsdale, are facing significant issues with attendance and tuition because of COVID.

The question for properties comes from deciding to accept sponsorship investment for what many people perceive to be a controversial cause for both Olympic and non-Olympic sports. The answer for USA Shooting according to its CEO Matt Suggs is yes. He stated, “We believe in developing not just world-class athletes but also world-class citizens that are going to be supporters of the broader shooting sports and our Second Amendment rights going forward.”

However, answering whether a property should work with a partner whose views an organization supports is still not an easy one for many. For example, the connection now between Hillsdale and USA Shooting is substantial given the investment. Yet, USA Shooting will have relatively little control over Hillsdale’s choices for its marketing campaigns around the Second Amendment while still having to understand their impact.

This requires properties to take a proactive approach in monitoring the conversations around their partners because they will be directly impacted. B6A’s Social Sentiment Analysis Platform (SAP) is designed to evaluate conversation in social media in both owned and earned accounts. In particular, SAP uses natural language processing (NLP) to “read” posts to determine positive or negative lifts while also examining the value of overall post engagement.

Keyword analysis Audience Inference Platform (AIP) augments our SAP insights. AIP uses NLP to examine the organic conversation of the followers of specific accounts to determine the keywords of interest for this audience. Properties and partners can use AIP to see if a controversial topic is one that is resonating with their targeted audiences.

It is clear is that politically driven sponsorships will be something that partners will likely increasingly pursue and that properties will increasingly consider in the current environment. Not only is this a potential way to recoup sponsorship revenues during COVID but it also does align with companies / organizations placing increasing importance on cause marketing. Sponsorship decision makers can augment their process with technology, data, and analytics to determine whether political partnerships are a good fit for their organizations.