BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Did our partnership assets reach the target audience or demographic? What is the broadcast media value of a jersey sponsorship? What is the impact on customer retention and acquisition? Those were the questions FlyQuest Sports was thinking about as the team headed into the 2018 North American League Championship Series (LCS) for League of Legends (LOL).
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Even though we have Block in our name, Block Six Analytics is not a blockchain company. However, we do see blockchain technology impacting our business in ways that are likely to surprise many in the sports industry. More specifically, blockchain could alter sports media and sponsorship in counterintuitive ways.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Famed management consultant and professor Peter Drucker is arguably most well-known for the axiom, “What gets measured gets managed.” That is one reason why the results of a recent study of sports partnerships by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) are so surprising. The ANA found that only “37% of respondents reported having a standardized process for measuring their return on sponsorship.” So why are so few sponsorships being measured?
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
The Tampa Bay Rays recently became the first North American sports team to go cashless at its venue. Top-line revenue growth from in-stadium purchases is only one benefit of the new cashless approach. Cashless purchasing provides, “a rich source of data that can be used to better understand consumer behavior, which helps companies sell in a way that is more targeted to the unique needs of individual.”
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Last year Anheuser-Busch announced a “revolutionary incentive-based sponsorship model.” One of the biggest questions became how would the company’s enhanced focus on tangible ROI and ROO metrics potentially change its spending on sports assets. This year’s Super Bowl provides new answers to these questions. One of the dominant narratives around this year’s events is that television ad prices have “stalled.” Why is the company increasing its spend at a time when it seems like viewership has declined?
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
The NFL and Lowe’s announced a new partnership earlier this week that made the company the “Official Home Improvement Retail Sponsor” of the league. . A key component of the new agreement is providing Lowe’s with the opportunity to “provide unique NFL experiences for customers and associates both during the regular season and off-season, and will become the presenting sponsor of Super Bowl Experience beginning at Super Bowl LIV in 2020 in Miami.” This focus on experiences may seem counterintuitive for Lowe’s particularly when it comes to an NFL partnership.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
One the most common reasons that companies want to partner with sports properties is to leverage their brand equity with leagues, teams, athletes, and events. As more companies pursue cause marketing, however, sports properties now will have to examine these partnerships with these companies in new ways. The most recent example is Gillette’s “Short Film” posted on YouTube as part of the company’s Super Bowl “the best a man can be” campaign.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
NBC Sports Washington Plus will carry an “interactive, alternate telecast of the Wizards-Bucks game” on January 11th. This will be the first of eight broadcasts that will have “statistics, odds and point spreads that run alongside game action.” Higher ratings, however, is only one reason that legalized gambling with have an increasingly important impact on sports sponsorship.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
In a post earlier this week in his The Sports Biz blog, industry thought-leader Darren Heitner analyzed ROKiT’s growing investment in sports sponsorship. For example, the company is already the current jersey patch partner of the Houston Rockets and is the official wireless partner of the Los Angeles Chargers (full disclosure: the Chargers are a B6A partner). One critical reason Heitner featured ROKiT is that the company “partnered with the Rockets and Chargers before it even had a product to sell, and justifies the spend based on the fact that those opportunities may not have been present if it waited until true launch.” Why would a company spend money on a partnership before it had a product to sell?
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
One way that sports sponsorships differ from traditional advertising is that they can create a two-way beneficial relationship where shared customers can lead to a shared strategy from which both the buyer and seller directly benefit through a partnership. Allegiant’s new credit card partnership with Minor League Baseball (MiLB) is an example of how this occurs.
BY USA TODAY
Twitter users and members of the College Football Playoff committee share positive feelings about the national semifinalists. An analysis by Block Six Analytics of 75,000 tweets from Sunday until Tuesday based on percentage of positive posts ranks the top four teams in the exact order as the playoff committee: Alabama with 65.57 percent positive tweets, followed by Clemson (65.22), Notre Dame (60.31) and Oklahoma (46.77). Those numbers also mirror expectations for the semifinals with Alabama and Clemson expected to advance to the national title game.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
For the first time ever, a Serie A soccer team will collaborate with an NBA team when the Brooklyn Nets will have a “special themed” Juventus F.C. night as part of its December 7th game against the Toronto Raptors. Why would the Nets and Juventus agree to do this, besides the fact that they share similar team colors? The answer likely focuses on increasing revenue through better targeting of the U.S. fan base. In particular, European teams appear to see an advantage in targeting specific cities and regions rather than relying on national activations.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Fanatics and Ticketmaster agreed to sell verified tickets and merchandise on each other’s sites earlier this week. While there are many interesting components to this deal, one driving factor for the new partnership is using data to drive incremental revenue growth. In the book The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry, we talk about how data mining can be used for sports organizations to target the marginal fan. This often means examining data to identify current or potential customers that are likely to make a purchasing decision in the near-term if targeted at the right time with the right message to drive the right call-to-action. Fanatics and Ticketmaster have identified a clear opportunity to identify and monetize the marginal fan.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
One well-known strategic challenge sports organizations face is monetizing their venue throughout the year. More specifically, the MLB, NBA, NHL, and NFL play 81, 41, 41, and 8 regular season home games respectively where the teams have maximum seating (and sometime standing room only) capacity that limits the number of tickets they can sell. One lesser-known challenge is that sports organizations do not fully utilize much of their venues even on game days. More specifically, most fans spend much of their time in venues watching games from their seats. That means locations throughout the arena are often unused for much of the game because fans are understandably focused on game action. The Golden State Warriors have discovered a potential solution to this problem.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Trying to make the intangible more tangible is one of the key priorities for Block Six Analytics. With our Corporate Asset Valuation Model (CAV), we determine a specific value for a specific sponsorship by applying how a company makes money and what a company’s marketing / brand goals are to a specific partnership. In essence, we look at how what is most important to the company translates to each sponsorship activation. We wanted to apply the same logic to players as we use for partners. More specifically, what is most important to teams is how does each player help that team win and generate revenue. Our Revenue Above Replacement (RAR) model specifically answers these questions by looking at an athlete’s on-court and off-court performance.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Arguably the best bet to make on the legalization of sports gambling in the U.S. was its impact on the growth of sports sponsorship revenue. In the past week alone, the NHL, New York Jets, New Jersey Devils, and Philadelphia 76ers have all signed new betting partnerships. What is more surprising is the structure of these deals and what they do not include. In particular, many of these new deals are not exclusive to a particular company, not exclusively focused on sports, and not exclusively focused on the U.S.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Learn why David Falk decided to join Block Six Analytics (B6A) as an advisory board member and investor. Falk, the founder of FAME, has long been recognized as one of the sports industry’s leading figures and most talented innovators. During a 40 year career, he has represented the top players in NBA history and has negotiated record-breaking contracts for his clients, both on and off the court. His vision and ability to read the changing landscape helped to shape the evolution of the business of sports over the past 30 years.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Can you keep up with Eliud Kipchoge? That was the question that Abbott Health posed at the recent 2018 Chicago Marathon expo. Attendees of the 2018 Chicago Marathon expo were asked to try to maintain Kipchoge’s 2:01:39 marathon pace for “only” 200 meters. Abbott Health’s goal clearly was not to make attendees, even marathon runners, potentially look foolish by trying to keep up with Kipchoge even for a short time. Instead, the company was likely trying to create an authentic connection with an audience likely to contain its target demographic in a way that would encourage people to engage with the brand.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
While Jacob deGrom may have been the best player during the 2018 MLB regular season, Giancarlo Stanton is the most valuable according to the Block Six Analytics (B6A) Revenue Above Replacement (RAR) model.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Senior business leaders are asking how a sponsorship is going to maximize a company’s ability to directly generate revenue growth and better engage with their target customers. Only nineteen percent of sponsorship professionals having an answer to this question is a fundamental issue for the $66 billion sponsorship industry.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Did our partnership assets reach the target audience or demographic? What is the broadcast media value of a jersey sponsorship? What is the impact on customer retention and acquisition? Those were the questions FlyQuest Sports was thinking about as the team headed into the 2018 North American League Championship Series (LCS) for League of Legends (LOL).
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Amazon recently announced that the company would become the 2018 IRONMAN World Championship title sponsor and Official Sports Nutrition Retailer. Amazon has recently been making news in the sports industry for signing streaming rights deals including NFL and US Open events and looked to be increasing its investment in this area. That fact that Amazon did not acquire streaming rights makes the IRONMAN partnership more interesting. Why would Amazon agree to this deal if it did not include streaming rights?
