New study shows few fans can identify official sponsors, but brands and leagues say partnerships working just fine
By BILL KING & TERRY LEFTON
Staff writers, Street & Smith’s (from Sports Business Journal)
Published December 10, 2007 : Page 01 (Here’s a link to article - it’s password protected, by you can get a free copy).
Here is an excerpt from a recent article that questions the value of sports sponsorship:
Thumbing through the results of a recent Turnkey Sports & Entertainment survey conducted for SportsBusiness Journal that explored whether fans knew, or even cared, which companies sponsor the sports leagues they follow, you can almost hear Joel Goodson, grilling chubby Stan.
Companies spend millions to become the official beer, soft drink or fast-food joint of one of the major sports leagues, and most back that with tens of millions advertising the connection. Like Stan, they lead with their wallets, hoping, sometimes against the odds, to court their way into a lasting relationship with fans.
The results of the survey indicate that, like Stan, their efforts go unnoticed more often than not.
Among the findings:
Fewer than 20 percent of avid NFL fans correctly identified Coors, which has been the official beer of the league since 2002. Almost 60 percent still thought it was Super Bowl uberadvertiser Anheuser-Busch, which dominates the NFL landscape with its team deals and has been the only beer advertiser for the past 19 Super Bowls.
Barely 6 percent of avid baseball fans knew that Taco Bell was the official fast food of Major League Baseball. Slightly more thought it was McDonald’s or Burger King, but most — 57 percent — conceded they weren’t sure who it was. Taco Bell has been an MLB sponsor since 2004.
Fewer than 6 percent of avid NBA fans correctly picked out Toyota as the official vehicle of the league, although the deal only dates back to 2005. Almost half thought it was either GM or Ford, and more than one-third said they weren’t sure who it was.
Are the deals working?
All of this raises an intriguing “tree falls in the forest” sort of question. If companies sponsor sports leagues in the hope of connecting with avid fans, but most avid fans don’t realize they’re doing it, are the sponsorships working effectively?
Are you much more or somewhat more likely to regularly consume a product/service if it is an official sponsor of the following LEAGUE?
Are you much more or somewhat more likely to regularly consume a product/service if it is an official sponsor of your favorite TEAM?
Those who question the value of league sponsorships frequently point to a lack of connection between leagues and consumers. Fans root for teams and embrace favorite players, often connecting passionately to both. They don’t root for the NFL shield, the NASCAR bar, or Jerry West’s silhouette.
The lack of recall for league sponsors would seem to bear that out.
Does it matter?
A marketing executive from one of the brands that received a relatively low recognition score, MLB sponsor Taco Bell, said recall wasn’t the way the company would measure the effectiveness of its sponsorship of baseball.
“It’s sort of not how we do things,” said Debbie Myers, vice president of marketing services for Taco Bell. “I’m in the business, and I couldn’t tell you who the official is of this or that. That’s a small piece of an overall thing.”
I wish I knew more about why big brands do these deals. I cannot understand why more brands don’t want to work with the teams directly rather than just doing deals at the league level.
Anyone out there have any thoughts?
It’s another form of national advertising, and it’s a timesaver when you have a kajillion dollars to spend. Why bother contacting all 32 teams, when you can contact the head office once?
The smarter advertisers would try to select the teams with the highest percentage fan base. It would be like applying the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) — how many teams could reach 50% of the NFL fan base? And would it cost less to reach them that way, than it would to reach them through the NFL?
And more importantly, if consumers are more likely to use a company’s product because the company sponsored their favorite team, then it makes sense for the company to sponsor a team, not a league.
I think this is interesting. I worked at a company that did a deal to become a sponsor at the “league” level with a major sporting league, the company, a smaller co, lost money on the deal and are still paying for it because of the contract they signed. The recognition they thought they were going to get didn’t happen and they did little to leverage the relationship. I think (they didn’t ask my opinion at the time) that they could have hooked up with influential regional events and had an impact at the community level, similar to choosing individual NFL franchises. I think team/community levels allow brands to truly interact with fans which is crucial to recognition, more so than a few “official Sponsor of NFL/NHL/NBA commercials, product logos etc.