1) Who has got the biggest brand budget in sport?
This is a question I ask myself more or less once a month. Sometimes I do it out loud, and the responses range from ‘that always used to be Tony Ponturo at Anheuser-Busch, didn’t it?’ (yes, but not since 2008), to ‘it’s got to be a toss-up between Boutros Boutros at Emirates Airline and Laurent Delanney at Rolex.’ Well, I’d argue there’s a there’s a new contender in town in the form of HP CMO Antonio Lucio. Fresh from dropping a reported $300 million on a landmark Ferrari sponsorship (which we analysed in detail on this week’s podcast), Lucio’s HP is now the major partner of Real Madrid and the Prancing Horse. That’s got premium written all over it. A serial CMO, Lucio has done stints at Meta, Visa, Pepsi, and indeed HP itself before. And you don’t go back, surely, unless the conditions and the budgets have changed significantly.
2) Where is sports broadcasting going?
I’m sensing a bit of a backlash to the ‘personality-led’ approach to sports punditry that has been pursued across some major broadcast platforms of late. This post and the debate it has sparked on LinkedIn are instructive.
3) How many ‘Super Bowls’ are there around the world?
Kudos, hat-tips and fist bumps for the team at LIV Golf for a stonking effort in Adelaide this past weekend. Almost a million fans on the course is an impressive return on some serious marketing effort. And in my own little echo chamber at least, this has been quite a noisy event. Plenty of social media-happy sports executives in the hospitality areas I’d imagine. Will Staeger, the tour’s Media Director, has been calling it a mid-season Super Bowl. And while the Adelaide event probably shares more traits with the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Open than it does with the NFL’s finale, Staeger’s point did make me think: how many man hours in sports strategy meetings have gone into answering the question ‘how do we make our own Super Bowl?’ And how many of those ideas are worthy of the comparison?
4) How do you move your event from well-attended to sell-out?
Selling tickets is the bread and butter of the sports industry. But not everyone is an artisan baker using ancient grains and soft-whipped salted dairy products. It’s safe to say that the Chelsea marketing and ticket teams got their sourdough on in the lead-up to the club’s home Champions League semi-final tie with Barcelona. Despite success on the field, Chelsea have not yet had the sell-out successes for their women’s games that their counterparts at Arsenal have had. But that might be about to change. Chris Hurst, a consultant with Chelsea, has a comprehensive breakdown of what went into the sell-out last week.
5) How do you structure your marketing team?
You probably don’t divide them up into functional responsibility for different parts of your venue. Not yet anyway. The LA Clippers do.
6) Should we bring back baggy 90s sportswear?
My sources at Vogue tell me we’re in the midst of a 90s nostalgia fashion moment, so surely it’s only a matter of time before sportswear manufacturers get with the programme. Both Castore and Nike have been castigated for their (deliberate?) sweat-look, see-through designs across multiple sports this year. Nike will be changing their MLB uniforms for next season following the blowback. My bet’s on baggy.
7) How many political fundraisers take place in the hospitality areas at sports events?
One fewer than planned, now that F1 has shut down plans for a Trump fundraiser at the Miami Grand Prix this weekend.
8) When will Manchester United get some love again?
It’s difficult to say. They’re under the cosh. So credit where credit’s due, the digital team continues to do fantastic work – inlcuding in this WhatsApp strategy.