Bally’s, Mercury Partnership Demonstrates Full Funnel Approach For Determining Value

BY ADAM GROSSMAN

Bally’s Corporation and the Phoenix Mercury agreed to the “‘largest official team sponsorship’ in the history of women’s sports” last week. This partnership demonstrates the importance of looking at both top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel metrics when examining an agreement’s potential return of investment.

Bally’s Corporation is a casino entertainment company that has a “growing omni-channel presence of online sports betting and iGaming offerings in the US.” The company had recently become a National Basketball Association (NBA) NBA authorized sports betting operator and appears to be increasing its basketball presence in the deal with the WNBA’s Mercury.

Block Six Analytics (B6A) is often asked to  determine the holistic value of partnerships. One definition of holistic is looking at the entire customer journey that typically breaks into top-of-funnel (or brand) metrics and bottom-of-funnel (or performance) metrics. In particular, we are often asked how brand metrics translate into performance metrics such as revenue generation.

One way we determine cross-funnel value is to see if partnership activations can reach the “right people.” Increasing brand sentiment, engagement, and / or awareness with the demographics that most closely resemble a company’s current customer base is one critical way to maximize value. More specifically, connecting with the right people increases the probability of maximizing revenue growth.

We used our Audience Inference Platform (AIP) to determine whether Bally’s can leverage its Mercury partnership to reach the right audience. The table below showcases these results.

Our analysis shows that Bally’s can more effectively reach its target demographics. More specifically, the Mercury should help Bally’s better engage the male, upper-income, and highly-educated adults with no children demographics that align with its current audience profile.

It may seem counterintuitive that that the Mercury audience is disproportionately male given that it is a WNBA team. This finding, however, is consistent with both B6A and independent research that males typically make up a larger portion of the women’s sports audience than females particularly when it comes to the WNBA.

The Mercury partnership also needs to be examined for how it can directly generate revenue for Bally’s. This partnership will provide “Bally’s with market access to a 15th US state once the Mercury receive a mobile sports betting license from the Arizona Department of Gaming.” In addition, Bally’s will open a retail sportsbook near the Phoenix Suns Arena where the Mercury currently play their games.

For additional context, sports betting laws vary by state with Arizona having unique provisions that are extremely beneficial for sports properties. More specifically, “major professional sports groups will be able to offer wagering on pro sports like the NFL and NBA. Online fantasy sports operations…can piggyback on the licenses.”

The Mercury join the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Phoenix Suns in partnering with betting operators to provide legally licensed sports betting in Arizona. Enabling Bally’s to expand its sports betting operation in Arizona clearly provides an opportunity for the company to generate revenue in a new region.

The Bally’s and Mercury partnership demonstrates how sports properties generally and women’s sports specifically can examine and communicate value to partners. Determining value across the entire marketing funnel enables properties and partners to understand the full return on partnership investments.