Sleeve sponsorship & 19 other ways sports clubs can cash in on the brand value of their social video content
Following the FANtastic response to our 20 creative social video drills blog post, our latest scouting report features a different squad of social video examples. This time around we are flagging missed opportunities from last season to turn sponsorship brand exposure into a commercial advantage.
While TV rights are contributing a vital role off the pitch
to a club’s bottom line, the impact of social video content produced by teams is still yet to make its commercial debut. That looks set to change next season, with elite sports clubs increasingly investing in social video valuation tools and reports. The issue of providing a credible monetary valuation that brand marketeers can buy into remains a problem clubs must tackle.
It is estimated that social video posted by Premier League clubs last season was worth £88m in kit supplier brand value. We’ve selected one playable video example from our game-changing social video monetisation report, Putting a Price on Social Video, the first ever in-depth practical guide to placing a commercial value on creative video assets.
In addition to featuring sponsorship branding, they were also among the 1,000 best performing pieces of content produced by the 20 competing 2015/16 Premier League clubs that feature in our research.
To discover the inner workings of our valuation methodology and commercial framework we recommend clubs follow, you will need to purchase a copy of the Putting A Price on Social Video report. But here are the two key ingredients that make our approach unique:
• moving beyond passive views in favour of video engagement. We turn social engagement into social currency
• relating sponsorship brand exposure value back to real world marketing spend. Including the original cost of the brand partnership (per season) makes our value calculation a simple and effective ROI figure for deals already in play
Our creative social video drills blog also included the Burst Engagement Scores for every team, which can be found in our Premier League Social Video Index.
This commercially focused post includes the ‘average kit sponsor brand value per social video’ for each club and kit provider. This is based on the sample Instagram, Twitter and Vine video sets, analysed in the first edition of Putting a Price on Social Video. Clubs (and their kit partners) appear in order of highest average video value.
Press conference content. Pre-game interviews and ‘special’ signings are popular fan fodder on social media, often receiving more air time than on Sky Sports News. Five of Manchester United’s high performing and dominant sponsor exposure videos came in the final few days of the season at Mourinho’s press conference unveiling, in front of sponsorship boards.
Partnership campaign logo idents. Would you run a TV ad campaign without your brand logo making an appearance? No way! If you are putting the production effort in to your partnership social videos, fans won’t mind a flash of branding linked to a campaign strap line.
Branded graphic overlays. Liverpool showed how to integrate a sponsor brand without their direct involvement, through graphic overlays and a training ground challenge. It featured two players attempting to score #dizzygoals for the UN Global Goals charity campaign - a cause supported by Standard Life - with their branding appearing in all four corners of the video introduction.
Celebrity associations. Involving sporting and celebrity assets of your sponsorship partners in your video content can help you earn some lightning quick engagement scores. Last season, Arsenal sent fellow Puma ambassador (and Manchester United fan), Usain Bolt, an Arsenal shirt after he lost a bet.
Stadium hoardings. Manchester City had the highest percentage of game footage among their best performing social videos, providing extra exposure for match day sponsors. They were also the only club to feature a dominant (kit supplier branded) sponsorship hoarding, via this skilful Kevin De Bruyne reaction GIF
Promoting meet & greet events. Fans love an opportunity to get close to their idols. In this clips, Spurs showed off their slick sponsor competition skills, through a stop-motion video featuring the squad photo of players looking dapper in Aquascutum, the club’s official suit tailor. The video helped promote a fan competition to meet first team players at an Aquascutum store, generating fan engagement around their brand partner.
Product endorsements. A brand who joined in Leicester’s title winning (sponsorship) party was Football Manager, a footy sim video game. The Foxes shared the simple social ad - featuring Jamie Vardy challenging a few of his teammates to a managerial match - on the day of their open top bus tour through the city of Leicester. This kind of social video activity involving clubs in the spotlight represents a golden opportunity for brands to reach their new found followers.
Exclusive club TV rights. With football clubs increasingly opting for a freemium TV channel/app model, there is an opportunity to link sponsorship brands to exclusive behind the scenes content. A West Ham TV ident graphic appeared across five of their top performing videos. A cast iron recommendation would be to include some sponsorship branding within these idents, hammering home added sponsorship value.
Help brands show they care about your community. While there are more important messages at play than delivering sponsorship exposure, clubs should be encouraging their sponsor partners to develop deeper brand affinity by capturing the hearts and minds of fans through community driven content. We covered the story of George Shaw extensively in our report, here is another example of how to use content captured at press conferences.
New partnership launches. Sharing video content focused on their new kit partnership with Under Armour gave The Saint’s a significant boost in the sponsorship brand exposure value rankings last season. Southampton’s own launch campaign was supported by five individual stop-motion videos Under Armour posted on Instagram during April, citing its #IWILL campaign partnership promises.
Goal GIFs. Newcastle’s real-time GIF goal updates included sponsor logos, giving fans a flash of brand exposure when celebrating on Twitter. A dozen featured in Newcastle’s best performing Twitter video assets, demonstrating the importance of seizing brand exposure in the moment.
Training ground product placement. Training ground footage appeared in 80% of club’s most liked video content. With training kit and facility brand partners on the rise, this Sunderland video shows the opportunities to boost sponsorship exposure through training kit design, ad boards, technology partnerships and equipment (product) placement.
Team Lineup announcements. Clubs are often the first ones to announce their starting eleven. A big contributing factor to over half of West Brom’s most liked short social videos featuring adidas branding last season, was five Sky Sports style ‘walk up’ team line-up graphics.
Spreading global awareness. Swansea showed that sharing official Premier League’s content can help increase a clubs own international fan aspirations. Among their top performing videos was the Premier League’s #BPLLive Mumbai visit video ahead of their own appearance on the Cape Town stop of the Premier League’s World Tour.
Tunnel cams. Aston Villa’s popular pre-match footage saw players running past the camera in a blur, delivering a mixed bag of sponsorship exposure. If your club is producing tunnel footage, then there are opportunities to generate sponsorship exposure beyond kits. With new shirt sleeve sponsorship opportunities being introduced next season, savvy clubs will see this kind of footage as an ideal opportunity for some branded close ups.
Match day outfits. Sharing exclusive game day clips on social media builds up a lot of fan engagement that can be turned into highly valuable sponsor exposure that broadcast programming rarely captures. The design of Norwich’s pre-match tracksuit, featuring Errea prominently down the trouser leg, was the main contributor to their kit supplier brand valuation featured in our report.
Selling video ad space. Crystal Palace showed that they weren’t shy in using popular goal clips to promote club events. We believe that if you establish a clear value exchange, there is nothing wrong with using your everyday video content to draw fan attention to a promotion they might get even more value from.
Interview insights. Watford’s ability to get interview close ups was a key factor in generating the fourth highest number of sponsor exposed videos in the league last season. The knock-on impact of a commitment to interviews is the content that can be generated in and around the training ground.
Award sponsorship. Stoke City used their social video assets to attract additional regional as well as main brand sponsorship opportunities. These included sponsor branding and idents in their goals of the season compilation video and all ten real-time goal GIFs that featured in our analysis.
Kit sleeve sponsorship. Despite finishing in 20th place for kit sponsor brand value, Bournemouth proved a valuable lesson for all other Premier League clubs. Having a bold kit supplier logo on your shirt sleeve will add a significant impact to brand exposure results. Along with training ground kit deals, this is going to be the biggest area where regular social video content posted by clubs can have an impact on sponsorship exposure next season.
Capturing sponsorship exposure within the social video is only the first step in commercialising this content. In order to prove and improve the value you are generating for your sponsorship brands, a reporting framework needs to be set up between the commercial and creative teams within your club. If you would like to chat about the necessary steps to make this happen, drop me an email and lets chat about unlocking the commercial potential of your social video.
simon@burstinsights.com.
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Here are some other blog posts related to our Putting a Price on Social Video report that you may enjoy:
How To Get Your Hands On Our Sports Sponsorship Social Video Monetisation Report
Printing the one thing more valuable than money
Ten reasons why sports clubs will make money from social video in 2017
Will Live Match Streaming Boost The Bottom Line Of Sports Clubs?
Do football fans only share when they are winning?
[slideshare] 20 Creative Things All Sports Clubs Should Be Doing With Social Video
