Hey <<First Name>>:
Hard to believe that we launched ADC Partners 15 years ago this month. Our heartfelt thanks and gratitude go out to the many clients, advisers, friends, and colleagues who've been with us throughout this wild ride. We couldn't have done it without you!
(And in case you're wondering, 'crystal' is the traditional gift for a 15th anniversary... just throwing it out there... no pressure.)
We're trying a couple of new sections in this issue:
- Viz Whiz: We like pictures as much as the next person, so we've collected (or as the kids say these days, "curated") some of our favorite infographics.
- Just Saying: A few interesting, unique, and controversial quotes from people connected to the sports and marketing worlds.
As always, hope you enjoy this issue. Have a friend you think would also enjoy Partners' Posts? Click here to forward this issue to them!
Enjoy!
-Dave & Andy
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Tough to Make the Pieces Fit
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The last couple of months have seen a LOT of companies create or expand sports media offerings. Keeping track of all these new content delivery channels can be a tough exercise... In fact, maybe it's too tough. In this issues' Brain Food, we take a look at accelerating fragmentation in sports media and its implications on teams, advertisers and fans. Is it too much of a good thing?
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Greg Ivry
Sr Director of Business Development
DraftKings
Twitter: @ivry4
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Football season is officially here, and with it comes cooler weather, tailgating, and fantasy sports. No one knows this better than Greg Ivry, Senior Director of Sports Partnerships at DraftKings. In his 5 Tweets, Greg reveals how brands can use partnerships with technology companies to build connection with sports fans.
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- Both sides need a #win for partnerships to work. ID what each side brings (tech, data, etc.) to the other to create something sustainable.
- Show, don’t tell: Integrate not only your brand, but your brands’ technology into as many partnership touch points as possible.
- Think beyond your industry. For @DraftKings, increasing our audience and engagement beyond #sports properties expands our category.
- Evolve! Our partnerships and campaigns have become much more experiential across several platforms as fans' content consumption changes.
- Remember #sports should be fun. Fans crave authenticity. Partnerships should organically add value for fans first.
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Missed a previous #5Tweets? No need to worry. We post past versions in our blog so you'll never be without these 140 character pearls of wisdom.
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In our last issue we asked if you believe the Olympics were still the gold standard of sports marketing, and your responses were... mixed. A clear majority of you acknowledge that there's a bit of tarnish on the Rings, but it's still possible for marketers to benefit. The rest of you were evenly split between those that feel the Games still have a lot to offer and those that think their best days are past. Click here to see how the voting broke down.
The NFL season kicks off this week, and the League office will be keeping an eye on their TV ratings with a sweaty brow and crossed fingers. Why? NFL ratings were down 8% last season, and with ~ $6.3 billion in revenue from media partners, the most popular sport in the US can ill afford further declines.
What do you think? Will NFL TV ratings recover, or are League owners in for long fall (pun intended). Click one of the options below, and we'll present findings in our next issue.
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Each year in June, Kleiner Perkins' Mary Meeker releases her much anticipated Internet Trends report, an in-depth look at how the web is evolving. Meeker is seen as something of an oracle: her pronouncements are treated with the reverence of a Warren Buffet stock recommendation or a new Bon Jovi lyric (we do love us some Bon Jovi...)
The biggest section of her 355 page 2017 Internet Trends report focuses on Interactive Gaming and eSports, and for good reason: the Internet has fundamentally changed not only the way we consume sports, but also the way we perceive and prefer sports. For example, according to Meeker's report, the millennial generation prefers watching their favorite eSport and their favorite traditional sport at equal levels, compared to non-millennials who overwhelmingly favor watching traditional sports.
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"We hope Watch will be home to a wide range of shows - from reality to comedy to live sports."
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing the launch of the social media behemoth's video service, instantly causing rights holders to salivate and giving traditional sports broadcasters heart palpitations.
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"People love sports- it's big, engaging, it really motivates people... I think it's definitely an opportunity we'll explore."
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Amazon Studio's chief Roy Price indicating an intention to expand their live sports streaming portfolio, which also caused rights holders to salivate and sent traditional sports broadcasters into further heart palpitations.
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"We have an incredible fusion of data and analytics that would be the envy of most companies. [But] these are human questions we're trying to answer on a human scale, and when [your brand] doesn't respect that, the culture can reject it. Bringing back this balance between mystery and science is tough to get back if you lose it."
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Clorox CMO Eric Reynolds on the importance of mixing art and science in building brands. Clorox brands including Brita Water Filtration have invested heavily in sports as a key method for building connection with their audiences.
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"How do you have tennis in an English garden when you need all this technology around it?"
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Sam Seddon, an IBM client executive for Wimbledon, on the difficulty of keeping the tournament's historic atmosphere while simultaneously meeting the technology demands on the modern spectator.
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Jeez, we take a little extra time off during the summer before putting together our next issue and the #sportsbiz world goes nuts. Here's a longer-than-normal list of the bigger deals we're tracking.
- Wham, BAM: It's no secret that Disney's ESPN has been struggling. Well, the House of Mouse thinks they've found a solution, and it involves spending over $1.5 billion to increase their stake in video streaming innovator BamTECH to 75%. Disney will use the tech to launch an Over The Top (OTT) subscription sport service.
- Salesforce Partners with San Francisco: Most companies seek to put their name on stadiums, but Salesforce isn't most companies. To whit: the CRM giant recently completed a 25 year, $110 million deal with the City of San Francisco to put their name on a new downtown Transit Center. While the deal is not without critics, it's seen as an essential revenue stream given an estimated $1 billion in project cost overruns.
- AT&T Redials MLS: In a comprehensive deal estimated at $14 million annually, AT&T recently renewed its sponsorship of MLS, The telcom giant is now thoroughly embedded into multiple North American footie properties, including the MLS, US National Men's, Women's and Youth teams, and the Mexican National Team's annual US tour. AT&T sponsorship brass indicated that soccer's "young, diverse and tech-savvy fans" made the partnership a must have.
- Crack in the (Under) Armor?: Once the darling of the sports apparel equipment category, high flying Under Armor has stumbled a bit recently with missed earnings and company-wide layoffs. A number of explanations have been given (intractable category challenges, resurgent adidas, impossible to sustain growth. etc.), but it's definitely an inflection point for the brand: growing beyond its aspirational athlete/performance roots and into a more broadly appealing lifestyle brand changes everything the brand has stood for.
- Hyundai's False Start with the NFL: If you've got a minute, this Ad Age story on Hyundai's fraught sponsorship of the NFL is worth the time. It's got some great lessons for brands considering sports, including how critical it is to account for activation expenses. Hyundai's team was obviously stung by the story, as evidenced by their rebuttal.
- MLS Passes on $4 Billion: Sometimes the biggest deals are the ones that don't get done. Sports media distributor MP & Silva dangled a $4 billion rights fees carrot in front of MLS that had one very significant string attached: the league would have to adopt European-style promotion and relegation for its teams. While a 4x increase on its current rights was clearly tantalizing, the time's not right for promotion/relegation. Yet.
- Gratuitous Lacrosse News: Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai just dropped $5 million to bring a National Lacrosse League franchise to San Diego. (With a net worth of over $11 billion, he can afford it.) Speculation is that Tsai, who played lacrosse at Yale, will use the NLL investment as a test bed for future sports acquisitions.
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It's the time of year when casually strolling into someone's office means potentially disrupting the most time-sensitive and stress inducing project of the week: setting a line up for fantasy football.
The folks at Sports Management Degree Hub took a look at the immense (and growing) fantasy football market that now includes 60 million+ fantasy sports players in the US and Canada. Click on their image below to take a deep dive into the financial and cultural impact of this $18+ billion market.
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Clearly you all enjoyed last issues' list of "unusual' meetings, as it was the most popular item we've ever featured. And thanks to those of you who wrote in with your own tales, including:
- "I finished an hour long meeting with a new prospect and was riding the elevator down. I took a look at their business card and only then realized I met with the wrong person."
- "I had a conference call with someone who refused to mute their phone and called the host 'Pickle Boy' throughout."
For this issue, we're taking a look at those inescapable bits of lexicon that we all love to hate: buzzwords. Here's our list of "Top 5 Buzzwords that Should Immediately Be Taken Out Back Behind the Office, Stuffed into a Weighted Burlap Sack, and Thrown into a Pond."
What'd we miss? Which buzzwords make you roll your eyes back into your skull cavity when you hear them? Click here to let us know!
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ADC Partners helps
sports businesses and marketers
grow, improve and compete.
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