Popular athletes on social media are changing sponsorship business
Athletes such as Ryan Sheckler have large followings on social media and are bypassing traditional sponsorship avenues for social media sponsorships. Athletes are starting to be able to earn more money through sponsorships on social media than though television, said a buzzfeed.com article.
According to statista.com, broadcast companies have a viewership average of about 3.5 million people during the NBA Draft. This sounds like a large number until you consider that NBA player Kobe Bryant has 7.84 million followers on Twitter alone.
“When the players become more popular on social media sites than they are on traditional media outlets like television and radio, the pressure to move sponsorships to social media companies increases,” said TCU’s marketing and communications professor Erin Smutz.
Advertisers would be more likely to go straight through athlete’s social media than through television programs that happen to feature the athlete. Advertisers can get more reach and focus on the product if they were able to get a popular athlete on social media to feature a personal ad on athlete’s Facebook page.
LG sponsored Sheckler to make a video (only using their LG phone camera) and post it to Sheckler’s Facebook page;
LG is able to see the impact the ad has gotten by looking at the “like” count and how many times the video has been “shared.”
The power is shifting to the athletes as they are the ones who bring the attention to the ads. Athletes are now using social media advertising companies such as Wasserman Media Group to find sponsors for their social media site.
These companies are taking over networks and communicate and work agreements between athletes and their sponsors for cheaper and sometimes more effective advertising on social media.
Jason Stein, CEO of Laundry Service and Cycle, told Buzzfeed News that these social media sponsorships are the “future of advertising.” The advertisements would be personal to the athlete’s page and style and reach the athlete’s followers.
This system will eventually hurt traditional media outlets by taking millions of advertising dollars out of the pot. However, it is good to see that the ones who are attracting the views in the first place are benefiting the most now.
