Juli Ferre joins Omnicom Media Group as Head of FUSE Spain, and will be responsible for leading the launch of the brand in Spain.
FUSE is the OMG agency which specialises in sports & entertainment marketing, present in 12 international markets and headquartered in London. FUSE works with both brands and rightsholders; providing brands with end-to-end partnership solutions including strategic consulting services, partnership brokering and negotiation, activation and measurement, and supporting rightsholders with commercial product consultancy and go-to-market services.
Juli, who has 20 years’ experience in the sector, has worked with brands such as Cirque du Soleil, FIBA, FCBarcelona and AS Monaco FC among others. His expertise will be a huge asset for OMG in Spain – a country which ranks fourth in Europe terms of sponsorship investment and which has a high growth trajectory due to its hosting of major sporting events such as the America’s Cup Sailing in Barcelona this year, the FIFA World Cup in 2030 and the considerable growth in e-sports and gaming in the market.
Regarding his new role, Juli Ferre commented “Leading the launch of FUSE Spain presents an exciting opportunity to capitalise on the growing sports sponsorship market here. Sport has become an increasingly important part of today’s culture – so for brands this offers a big opportunity to drive deeper connections with their target consumers.”
Joan Jordi Vallverdú, CEO of Omnicom Media Group Spain, added: “It is a pleasure to announce the addition of Juli Ferre to our team as head of FUSE Spain, our sports and entertainment agency. Juli’s extensive sports experience will undoubtedly strengthen our commitment to excellence and innovation in this exciting growth area. We are looking forward to seeing the positive impact that this will generate for our clients as well as sports rights holders.”
Louise Johnson, CEO of FUSE, also commented: “We are delighted to welcome Juli Ferre into the Fuse global family. Spain will be a key market for our sports partnerships division and Juli’s wealth of experience will provide a significant advantage to unlocking this business opportunity for the group.”
Omnicom Media Group (OMG), the media services division of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC), the leading global advertising, marketing and communications company serving more than 5,000 advertisers in more than 100 countries. OMG offers solid solutions that impact our clients’ business results, based on an end-to-end process, always keeping the client at the center. Omnicom Media Group exists to promote its agencies and specialized services (OMD, PHD, Hearts & Science, Annalect and Transact).
Fuse is a leading Sport & Entertainment marketing agency working with some of the world’s top brands and rights holders to drive brand and business growth through the power of people’s passions.
Services include partnership strategy, valuation & negotiation support, creative development & production, activation and digital planning, rights management, PR, major events and effectiveness.
With a London HQ of 120 employees and an international footprint across APAC, EMEA and the US, the integration within Omnicom Media Group allows the agency to be at the cutting edge of modern marketing, able to access the very latest tools and capabilities.
For more information, please visit https://fuseint.com/
For more information: Alejandra Iglesias [email protected] // Raquel Altelarrea [email protected]
2024’s summer of sport will benefit those brands who take the opportunity to leverage the huge excitement and national pride surrounding the Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as Euro 2024.
Not only is it a great time for brands to connect with existing fans but, there’s also a chance for them to reach new audiences, some of whom may have never engaged with sports before. For example, breakdancing or ‘Breaking’ is a new addition to the Olympics this year which will bring with it an existing fanbase and continue to diversify the Olympic landscape. On top of this, Paris 2024 is aiming to make these the most sustainable Games to date. The potential is huge for brands aligned with this ambition to activate around this.
It’s important to recognise that while brands may jump at the chance to get involved in the commercially appealing Olympics, it will be a competitive and crowded space. So it’s worth considering the benefits of the Paralympic Games. Paris is expected to reach its largest ever audience, with total broadcast revenue increasing by more than 20% compared to the previous Games. This additional exposure inevitably creates more sponsorship opportunities and space for brands to play. An example of this is the British Gas campaign featuring Ellie Simmonds.
Lastly, let’s not forget, Paris is only a 2-hour train ride from the UK, with only a 1-hour time difference. So, from a UK/Europe targeting point of view there’s significant potential for brands. They should be assessing their marketing efforts and looking how they can target untapped spaces to ensure cut through during what is as close to a home Games as the UK will get for a while.
Leading sport and entertainment marketing agency continues its international expansion setting up a new office in São Paulo, Brazil’s centre for sport.
A One Poll study of 2,000 adults has revealed that Wales is the kindest region in Great Britain, with those in the country carrying out an average of eight acts of kindness each week, compared to the six that people in the East of England will accomplish.
Londoners took second place, closely followed by the West Midlands, and adults in the North West.
It also emerged one in four adults in the UK volunteer, dedicating an average of eight hours of their spare time each week. Whilst 56 per cent would volunteer to help a disabled friend or person complete a sporting event, if they were equipped with the right tools and training.
Results of the survey were released as Nissan UK is working with The Richard Whitehead Foundation to train amazing volunteers to support disabled runners around mass participation races – through the Supported Runner Project. The initiative is helping to make this year’s TCS London Marathon more inclusive than ever on Sunday 21 April.
Gold-medal winning Paralympian and Nissan GB’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Ambassador, Richard Whitehead, said: “It’s fantastic to see how people support each other across the country and so many would be willing to help disabled runners if they had the tools and training to do so.
“Helping others is not only incredibly important, but also very rewarding, so we’re delighted to give people the opportunity to do so around mass participation running events like the TCS London Marathon.
“The Supported Runner Project provides comprehensive training to volunteers. Allowing them to offer all-encompassing support to runners with physical or neurodiverse disabilities before, during and after each event, helping to remove some of the challenges and barriers to entry that they may encounter.
“We’re looking forward to seeing the impact this will have at this year’s race and hopefully we can inspire even more people to take part in the future.”
Supported Runner Project volunteer Gill Menzies, who is helping her friend Julie McElroy become the first female frame runner to complete the TCS London Marathon, added: “I’m excited to be supporting Julie – it’s a real privilege to help her both physically and mentally complete the marathon and a rewarding experience for both of us.
“Volunteers are vital to the project – helping to break down those barriers to entry giving people a chance to take part in amazing events. With the training process being tailored to the needs of each athlete and support runner, it provides everyone involved with the best chance of completing their challenge.”
Runners who are interested in volunteering as a Support Runner for mass participation running events in 2024 can visit www.whitehead.foundation/supported-runner-project-overview or contact [email protected].
Kindest regions, ranked by weekly acts of kindness:
Top 30 things adults do regularly to help other people:
Key Stats:
We need a ‘Drive to Survive,’” said many a rights holder at some point in the last five years.“You should do a behind-the-scenes documentary,” said pretty much every sport sponsorship agency at some point in the last five years in response to a client brief.
Many sports industry professionals have drunk the sports documentary Kool-Aid, deeming it a panacea to any number of marketing ills. Make *insert sport here* famous among a peripheral audience and the growth will look after itself.
But as marketing commentator Bob Hoffman regularly reminds us, “There is nothing about marketing that is black and white, true or false. All we have are likelihoods and probabilities. Fame is no guarantee of brand success, but it’s the most reliable driver.”
For every success story, such as “Drive to Survive” (DtS), there have been (and will continue to be) failures, such as “Break Point.” The latter was scrapped by Netflix largely due to the underwhelming narratives of tennis tour professionals relative to the depth of A, B and C storylines that are endemic to F1. Data released by Netflix shows that “Break Point” amassed a “mere” 30.5 million viewing hours in the first half of 2023 compared to 90.2 million by DtS season 5 — 121st on a list of over 18,000 titles.
It’s encouraging to see rights holders “up” their marketing ante. However, the approach involves outsourcing their most valuable assets — namely their IP and audiences — to partners in exchange for a quick buck. It seems illogical that rights holders should let someone else tell their story, but the reality is that they are not set up to execute such marketing endeavours. As a result, many of these partners, Netflix included, are successfully building businesses from this relatively “cheap” way of working.
“Drive to Survive” is perhaps the strongest manifestation of this challenge. The hope was to bring new audiences to F1 which, in turn, would drive commercial value. However, it could be argued that outsourcing these efforts to Netflix has had an unintended effect.
Instead, DtS has mostly succeeded in building a secondary audience, one that has limited interest in the main event. As a result, much of this audience sits outside of F1’s commercial ecosystem which, in theory at least, hinders F1’s ability to commercialise this newfound fandom.
In 2023, F1 saw increased revenue, operating profit, attendances, and team valuations. It also saw a decrease in the average age and male skew of the fan base — much of this attributed to the ubiquitous “Drive to Survive Effect.”
However, if DtS has really fed the F1 funnel, it’s reasonable to assume that audience growth would be directly affected.
F1’s social media channels have certainly benefited. Social analytics tool Tagger suggests that Instagram alone has seen a 440% follower growth since Series 1 in 2019 (from 6.1 million to 26.7 million). According to F1, their social channels ranked second among all major sports leagues for follower growth rate in Q2 2023 — bettered only by Spanish football division La Liga.
Similarly, 6.15 million attended races in 2023, up from 4.16 million in 2019 (albeit the number of races has increased).
While these numbers may seem significant, they are dwarfed by TV audiences that average 70 million per race. Cumulative global TV viewership, however, has somewhat stagnated in the last 6 years, peaking at 1.92 billion in 2019 and clocking in at 1.55 billion in 2023. And despite the Las Vegas factor, TV audiences in America fell 10% during 2023 to an average of just 1.11 million — a small figure that belies supposed U.S. growth narrative.
Matters are not helped by the absolute dominance of Red Bull and much of F1’s broadcast ecosystem sitting behind a paywall, but from a commercial standpoint, a rights holder’s viability is largely determined by the size of its TV audience. And while F1 still presents a unique proposition — it’s an annual global sports platform that runs the best part of 10 months per year — and commands a strong audience, it’s difficult to validate a DtS related growth story unless there is tangible evidence that new audiences are tuning in to watch the main event.
It now seems that F1 has two main audiences — one whose primary motivation is racing and another whose main interest resides in everything but the racing.
This audience, younger and more female, inhabits a world of (scripted) off-track drama, subplots and personalities of F1’s main protagonists — spearheaded by Netflix and amplified by social media. For this audience, racing is a means to an end, a single plot line within a much bigger narrative.
To put it another way, Christian Horner’s early-season antics have already set up the opening episode of DtS Season 7 a year in advance. Unfortunately for F1, this will likely prove more compelling than yet another Red Bull 1-2 finish.
Sport’s business model is primarily B2B. It has profited from selling off its primary assets to broadcasters, sponsors and content platforms alike. In doing so, however, many rights holders have inadvertently relinquished control of their IP and audiences to third parties.
In the case of DtS (and others), a new subaudience has been created that exists in isolation from the rights holder’s commercial ecosystem. And while you could argue that sponsors receive a degree of “added value” due to the exposure generated via DtS, the real winners are Netflix and, in all probability, the social media platforms. It would not be a surprise to see Netflix monetise DtS through advertising and product placement given its need for new revenue streams.
While DtS has been a resounding success as a content play, its commercial impact on F1 has been overhyped. Despite this, F1 have played a blinder — capitalising on the bull market narrative generated by the supposed “DtS effect” to create tangible value out of something largely intangible. The real proof will come during the next broadcast cycle — given the depleting audiences, uncompetitive racing and challenging economic climate, it may be challenging to justify higher rights values.
For other rights holders, it’s important to be aware of the potential consequences of documentary-led endeavours and ensure the commercial model can capitalise accordingly.
This article looks at the opportunity for brands presented by the annual music competition, Eurovision.
Eurovision provides brands with an opportunity to strategically resonate with a huge and diverse audience across Europe – an opportunity that hasn’t yet been fully utilised. It is a rare moment in the music calendar that truly transcends markets and encourages sharing of the experience in real time.
Eurovision’s scale and multi-market appeal should not be underestimated. It provides an opportunity for
brands to tackle the fragmented music landscape, with a ‘one-stop shop’ akin to those found in the sports landscape.
While Eurovision is both playful and entertaining, it can also be controversial so brands must understand
their role in the platform before committing.
To succeed in the space brands should:
Music is the biggest universal consumer passion point and provides brands with a huge opportunity to
strategically resonate with a multitude of audiences. The true scale of music fans is difficult to quantify but taking the music subscription service market alone you’re looking at a global audience of over 616 million users (massive). Then when looking at festival attendees this is over 37 million and for concerts 30 million….in the UK alone. With fans who attend live music events sharing their experiences at a rate of 92% and the hype around global tours such Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour being far reaching, it’s safe to say the influence of these events goes beyond their venues, making them an alluring tool for brand engagement.
However, time and again major brands are opting to invest in sports sponsorships instead. Of course,
established properties such as UEFA Champions League, Ryder Cup or F1 have huge global audiences, in-built media, local-level access and relevancy across markets, as well as having tried and tested activation playbooks with proven track records.
The challenge in music is that, for the most part, there isn’t the same fix. The European landscape is fragmented and can be challenging to navigate without the right stewardship (and even then, it can require a deep level of effort). The European festival landscape has a few major players, but these represent partial offerings in individual territories versus a one-stop shop for multi-market, consistent activation. The nuance of popular music also varies market by market. While a German football fan looks much like an English football fan (they are passionate about the same game), with music, the binding factor is a love of music, but it’s often very different music. This means ambassador or tour deals need to be with the highest-level artists to ensure multi-market cut-through (which of course comes at a high cost). Tours also aren’t as frequent or predictable as sports fixtures and rights can be inconsistent due to venue prohibitions and, for the most part, a lack of broadcast agreements.
These factors often result in brands struggling to find truly global or European platforms for local market
exploitation, which can result in brands having a fragmented multi-market music approach or being sworn off the space altogether.
Eurovision is somewhat of a unicorn in the music landscape. A single property that resonates across European markets and beyond. It provides brands the opportunity to buy into the ‘disco magic’ centrally and activate credibly across local markets, using a platform that consumers genuinely care about. However, it’s a property that hasn’t yet been fully utilised by brands.
The scale of Eurovision cannot be underestimated, with a viewership of 181 million it has over 60 million more viewers than the Super Bowl Halftime show. When considering the NFL were looking for a reported $50m in rights fees for the sponsorship, which Apple Music took up in 2023, that’s pretty impressive. Interestingly there has been huge growth in both YouTube and TikTok streams of the event in recent years, up to 7.6m and 4.8m respectively in 2023. The growth in digital viewership is particularly positive for potential brand partners when considering varying degrees of brand limitations with the public service broadcasters who show Eurovision.
As well as drawing in huge numbers, Eurovision provides a rare moment in the music calendar where viewing live is inherent to the experience, and where the event invites ’watch parties’ akin to those you see for major sports finals. However, the audience make up for Eurovision is altogether more diverse, attracting youth, family, and LGBTQ+ audiences in their droves. These social-first audiences are hungry for content, expect brands to be playful, and are open to sharing their experiences.
Eurovision’s ability to resonate with LGBTQ+ audiences is of huge benefit for brands, especially when
considering the purchasing power of this group is over $3.7 trillion globally and the fact that 72% of
consumers, regardless of orientation or background, make purchasing decisions based on a brand’s inclusivity and diversity. Much more than a camp and playful event, Eurovision should be considered a major platform for engaging valuable audiences with huge purchasing power and cultural sway.
It would be remiss not to mention that, as with any sponsorship or partnership of this scale, there will be risk factors for brands. In a politically turbulent period, with a platform that millions of global fans feel passionate about and, just as has been seen in sporting environments, there can and has been controversy with fan groups and in the press – most recently, the ‘boycott’ in light of Israel’s inclusion in the competition for 2024. When entering a scaled partnership of this nature, it is important to acknowledge that there may be passionate social sentiment that puts pressure on brands to comment on highly sensitive subjects. It’s important that brands analyse the risk involved in doing so, stay true to their brand ethos and understand their role in the ecosystem. Ultimately, what is appealing about Eurovision as a consumer is its unpredictability and how it reacts to culture, which can be both fun and playful but also has the potential to be political and controversial. This comes with challenges and it’s a brave brand that enters that space.
Taking a look at Eurovision’s current and more recent partners, there are some obvious categories taking up these sponsorship spots. Travel brands such as easyJet and Royal Caribbean have a natural role in the fan experience – from the clear link with travel to and from the host nation to fun-filled entertainment for consumers. Morrocanoil, the presenting partner, leans heavily on behind-the-scenes storytelling and glamourous on-stage looks told through the lens of social to engage with Eurovision’s social-first audience. Baileys, a playful and ‘the world’s most loved spirit brand’ showcases unique cocktail recipes and encourages communal enjoyment and watching parties. TikTok, Eurovision’s Entertainment partner, focuses on being ‘the go-to destination for all things Eurovision’, hosting streams, behind-the-scenes content and performances in the app. A strategy for driving users and generating content on their platform which is implemented across their broad partnership portfolio.
We are yet to see the full breadth and scale of the official (and not so official) partner activity in the coming weeks, but looking back on 2023’s Eurovision, some key principles for brands to ‘get it right’ this year can be seen.
In the UK, nearly 85% of the population is on social media, so while there is such a huge opportunity to reach a big audience, it can be harder to cut through. Being creative, unique and playful is imperative to reaching the Eurovision audience. For example, last year Tesco’s campaign #Cheese4Cheese saw the brand launch a singing competition on TikTok spearheaded by The Fizz – the group spun off from Bucks Fizz, which won Eurovision in 1981. This tongue-in-cheek campaign saw winners receive giant cheese wheels as the top prize.
Whether that be for those fans travelling to the event, following their countries’ representatives, or planning their own watching events through brand-relevant moments, brands need to be able to cater for the entire fan journey and consider where they can have a meaningful role in the fan experience.
More than 80% of Gen Z and Millennials say an influencer would have at least some influence over their
purchasing or viewing habits. Last year, John Lewis’ Eurovision Disco leaned into nostalgic music talent and focussed on the communal watching aspect of the event by having Sophie Ellis Bexter host an iteration of her Kitchen Disco in their Liverpool branch. Booking.com also enlisted Eurovision icon Conchita Wurst, who won the contest in 2014, to front their campaign focussed on ensuring they were the go-to for booking a stay in the host city.
This year and in future iterations of Eurovision I would love to see brands take these learnings and fully
recognise the global to local market power of Eurovision, treating it as a major platform that can unify their approach and deliver a genuine multi-market music activation.
The last 18 months have been hard financially for consumers and brands alike.
Marketing budgets have been stripped back and non-necessities questioned. Across the board, there was concern about how long the financial crisis would last. “Brands who weren’t in partnerships were putting a pause on investing in new partnerships,” says Louise Johnson, CEO of sports marketing agency Fuse.
“And brands that were already invested were doing less with what they were doing, and focusing on ‘less is more’,” she adds.
However, this looks to have changed. “I’ve definitely noticed in 2024 more brands coming into partnerships, brands who haven’t been in sponsorship for, like, 10 years,” says Johnson.
Fuse has had more briefs and more pitches in 2024, she adds, which reflects the increasing drive for brands to get involved, or re-involved, in the sports space.
Brands now think sport can help them modernise and “build trust back”, says Johnson. Plus, as media continues to fragment, connecting brands with culture through sport is a “great way” to go about it.
The Men’s World Cup in 2022, followed by the Women’s World Cup last year, were marquee moments for sport, and moving into 2024’s big summer, “marketers are being more optimistic,” says Johnson, while still being “very cautious” with their budgets.
“I definitely feel people are leaning into partnerships and sponsorships as a way to drive their brand, not just through traditional media and marketing channels,” she adds.
The Olympics has long been heralded as the pinnacle of global sporting events. But, as consumer behaviour and the media landscape evolves, brands must innovate to remain relevant – and there are three key ways brands can win big at the Olympics this year.
1. Brands need to attract younger, more diverse audiences by ageing down their marketing and advertising strategies. With the inclusion of more niche sports this year, including breaking, sport climbing, skateboarding, and surfing there are new opportunities for brands to attract viewers. With TikTok an official partner of team GB and sport-related hashtags garnering billions of views, brands who tap into the power of social media will win gold at this Olympics. Furthermore, recent news revealed that global advertisers are hiring more female athletes to launch marketing campaigns ahead of the Olympics – a move described to capitalise on record ratings for women’s sports in the US and Europe to reach new audiences.
2. Creative storytelling and humorous content were two recurring themes drawn from the Cannes Creativity Festival last month. When it comes to sport, it’s refreshing for consumers to see brands take a lighter approach to marketing and celebrate performance and all things good about the games. As we know from our own research with System1, tapping into humour is a great driver for effective advertising.
3. Brands who prioritise a fan-first approach to advertising are already reaping long-term rewards. Fans thrive on inside stories and unique moments – which has been driven by a surge in sports docu-series – and want to feel like brands are genuinely connecting with them in a meaningful way while understanding their culture. The Olympics is a great platform for brands to encourage people to try new sports and appeal to non-fans with ‘behind the scenes’ content. For example, in the lead-up to Paris 2024, Deloitte’s “The First Effect” showcased inspiring athletes who defied barriers and made history – something that may be of more interest to someone than watching the game itself.
As we reflect on a busy summer of sport, it’s been clear that brands have been going for gold in the sponsorship category. But the effectiveness of measuring these sponsorship investments is all too often coming in as a last place consideration.
Sponsorship is a complex marketing platform that rarely has just one objective, but media equivalency is still being used as the primary form of measurement used to determine its holistic value. While this makes sense for the media assets included in sponsorship, as the industry evolves brands are missing out on the real prize of sport sponsorship by only taking media value into account.
While some sponsors have become more sophisticated in the way they track sponsorship, this remains the exception rather than the norm.
There is inherently nothing wrong with the metric itself. It is crucial to understanding brand exposure and having a view on a “Marketing Return” vs. the sponsorship rights fee — therefore a key player in negotiation, shaping rights packages and comparing different properties.
However, equivalent media value unfortunately can miss many of the nuances necessary when dealing with sponsorship. It does not tell you how your target audience is reacting to the sponsorship, how noticeable your branding is, how your ATL campaign is performing, or give you a true sense of how fans are engaging with your sponsorship.
Too often referred to as ROI analysis, the method is still the norm for measuring partnership success. Suppliers often repackage the measurement process, updating it with current AI terminology — but apart from normalisation of social monitoring and better on-screen tracking capabilities, the metric has not meaningfully evolved in the last 20 years.
So yes, you should use media valuation, but not as the only metric for success — it’s just one part of the puzzle.
The basis of measuring any activity is to understand what success looks like from the start. As emotions and belief are still very strong drivers of decision making in the sponsorship industry, it is not unusual that clear objectives and KPIs are not set from the start.
While ultimately the aim of marketing is to drive sales, there are numerous steps to get there — whether this is shifting perception, increasing top-of-mind awareness, or building relevance to an audience.
To build an effective measurement framework, brands and their agencies must be clear from the outset about the objectives and KPIs for the partnership. They should identify which ones will be tracked over the long term and which in the short term, and then map them against each stage of the sponsorship cycle or burst of activity. For example, as sponsorship is a long-term brand building platform, any significant shift in consideration is unlikely to happen in the first year.
Additionally, clarifying not only the core objectives but also understanding the depth of usage of the partnership across the entire business will be key to ensuring holistic reporting and assessment. Questions such as: what parts of the business are using sponsorship assets and IP and how are we measuring success across these? The measurement framework should cover all of these elements even if deemed secondary at the start.
All of this to say — there isn’t one single metric that will really help you understand impact of sponsorship or success. The measurement framework should be the bible to refer to at any point to understand how we are measuring success.
Sponsorship doesn’t answer just one objective, as previously stated. This means that various techniques must be put in place to understand impact, requiring agile researchers to tie it all in together.
At Fuse we look at measurement across three pillars: media performance, impact on brand health and econometrics modelling.
We use various research methods and combine media research and our consumer research experience to extract the right story and insights from all the data points.
We have been used to waiting for an entire competition or league to end before reporting on performance. This is historically due to the focus on equivalent media value and the fact that metrics such as global TV audiences can be hard to collate on a frequent basis. This has been topped off by the lack of flexibility in sponsorship rights, meaning optimisation wasn’t possible. However, growth of digital and social rights combined with the growing role of paid media, means that inflight optimisation and reporting should be a fundamental.
This will provide the ability to test different assets, be reactive and culturally relevant to immerse the brand into fans conversation, shift distribution strategy in real time to ultimately deliver better results.
Measuring actual ROI is still a challenge for the entire marketing industry. When this big question comes up, it’s pertinent to investigate how the brand is currently measuring ROI of its marketing mix and map out if we can replicate the existing and trusted methodology for sponsorship.
Econometrics modelling has been improving and becoming the norm across the media industry. The good news is that models are becoming better at measuring long-term impact and we have been successful in integrating sponsorship into these for some clients.
In order to do this, getting the fundamentals of data collation is key. The model is only as good as the data that goes into it. So even if businesses do not currently have MMM in place, it’s still possible to collate the data in the right way for future integration.
If companies really want to go for gold in their sponsorship activities, they need to step away from an over-reliance on old measurement systems and look to set up detailed frameworks that allow for ongoing adjustments based on the sponsorship output, audience outtakes and business outcomes.
128 years after the modern Olympic era began in Athens in 1896, an historic milestone has been reached in Paris 2024 – equal male and female athlete participation. While this is undoubtedly something to be celebrated, gender parity has still not been reached across the board.
There may be equal male and female participants in the Olympics but in terms of sponsorship, media rights, prize money and fans, parity does not exist.
The gender parity debate has dominated conversations among brands, advertisers and media since the commercial and marketing opportunities for women’s sport began to emerge.
We’ve seen brands and sports clubs successfully launch new products and services to tackle inequality, change perceptions and make sport more attractive for women, but one area that could do with a little more love is fandom. Because more fans mean more attention; brand investment follows the eyeballs and is the secret sauce to parity.
Real gender parity in sport requires a ground up approach. If brands, sponsors, governing bodies and rights holders are to entice wider audiences and drive long-term change, while increasing their own awareness, they need to move from comparison between men’s and women’s sport to implementing tangible ways of driving fandom.
This means a more systematic approach to recognising – and encouraging – fans across sports regardless of their sex. To focus on overturning the lazy assumptions that only women watch women’s sport – or that it’s only the male fans that matter to the male sports.
Recent deals demonstrate the investment that is coming into women’s sport. The Caitlin Clark and Nike deal was the biggest ever sponsorship deal for a women’s basketball player, but why didn’t they offer Clark a venture deal (including shoe sales) as they did for Michael Jordan?
The WNBA just agreed a $2.2 billion broadcast deal over 11 years with NBC, Disney and Amazon which is worth more than three times its previous cycle. This investment is really encouraging and will give an even greater platform to the sport with an inevitable knock-on effect on fandom.
In the UK, the Women’s Super League has announced YouTube as a new broadcast partner. It means that non-televised games in the upcoming season will now be broadcast on the league’s official YouTube channel which again will support women’s football’s growing popularity and increasing access and viewability among fans.
Social media offers a powerful platform for fandom. More than 90% of Gen Z fans turn to social media to watch and create sports content and this audience is increasingly diverse, young and open-minded.
This is a gold mine of an opportunity for brand campaigns to lead with personal athlete stories, humorous content and tactical videos that appeal to the interests of those that don’t class themselves as die-hard fans.
We are seeing this played out to the full this Olympics – the first true TikTok games. Not only has the Olympics partnered with TikTok, it has also relaxed its rules for athletes. This means fans can enjoy more direct interaction. Expect to see new personalities born these games, not only as medal winners, but also as short-form storytellers.
Female sport stars have often excelled in this medium and smart brands will be watching carefully, ready to sign up new stars come the closing ceremony.
Using creative ways of celebrating women for being good athletes will drive fandom. We saw some standout examples win at this year’s Cannes Lions where creativity is celebrated with the much talked about WoMen’s football campaign from Orange using highly creative storytelling techniques to expose and challenge gender bias in football winning a Grand Prix.
While social media channels grab a lot of attention, people still access content across a variety of platforms, allowing brands to play with different content formats – and here long-form cannot be underestimated.
Docu-series, such as Drive to Survive and Break Point, are part of still relatively new premium content formats that continue to shape fandom. And now with the release of Netflix’s Simone Biles Rising, a female athlete is finally securing this long-form attention.
Long-form options allow the industry to garner two types of audiences who can appear very different: those who already love the sport and those whose interests lie in everything but the main event. For example, Drive to Survive’s audience is much younger and more female, as the off-track drama, juicy sub-stories and F1 drivers’ personalities gain a different type of attention.
As the digital world evolves, so do contemporary fan behaviours. From video games to the use of technology in physical activities, humans are hard-wired to pursue goals for rewards. Gamification taps into this motivation to shift habits from passive media consumption to active participation – and gains fans along the way.
Bringing women’s sport into these arenas could build on the cross-cultural benefit of sports and gaming to boost fandom – the slow recognition of the role and value of women’s sports is mirrored in the treatment of women gamers so strength and synergy will come from bringing these two together.
The gamification market is set to reach more than $30 billion by 2025, playing a crucial role in the global development of the sports industry – and a key tool in enticing diverse fans to sports they may not otherwise have considered.
F1 is a “tried and tested platform for a number of manufacturers,” said Alex Charkham, chief strategy officer at sports and entertainment agency Fuse, and Aston Martin’s re-entry is a “significant marketing exercise” for the brand.
On race days, the brand’s marketers can step back and “let the Formula One team do the marketing for them,” said Charkham.
