Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle

There’s a problem with “local” sponsorship

Over the years, national sponsors have placed NFL teams into a tidy little place in their media mix. Inside the home town stadium. Most big brand sponsors look at the Colts, for example, as purely a local, or at best as regional asset. They leave the buying and activation of these “local” sponsorships up to local marketing managers with geographic responsibilities and budgets.

Viewed this way, sponsors historically have invested most of their “local” money to gain rights to stadium assets and local, team media inventory like radio , print and hospitality. These deals are often significant, but they often miss the larger part of the market now available to sponsors via the Web. Even with heavy national TV buys, brands cannot penetrate the hearts of fans without going online.

The Web has changed everything – for the better

Thanks to television and the Internet, NFL team fan bases cannot be contained by geography. In fact, the Colts fan base has grown to over 10 million Americans 12+. And every time a game is broadcast on TV, the Websites of the participating teams get more traffic. The Colts’ official Website, colts.com, draws over 8 million unique visitors per year, most of whom are AVID fans. Clearly, you don’t have to live in Indy to be a Colts fan anymore. In fact, most fans don’t.

Because most sponsors don’t recognize team fan bases for what they are, national AFFINITY GROUPS, they’re missing a golden opportunity to maximize their sponsorship investments by engaging the vast, online fan bases. Beyond geography, sponsors tend to think of the NFL as a seasonal thing, a series of Sundays in the Fall, even though it has clearly become a year-long phenomenon for its most devoted fans. Colts.com does spike during the season, but it does a full 40% of its page views in non-season months.

As long as sponsors are in the dark about what’s really happening online, they will continue to miss what seems to be the biggest opportunity, and the best kept secret, in sports marketing: the team Website(s). Teams like the Colts need to do a better job educating sponsors and bringing this opportunity to light.

That’s what I’m trying to do…who’s with me?

I’ve been hard at work blogging about this subject for over a year, and now I’m hitting the road to go face to face with any sponsor or agency willing to take my call and have a conversation about this opportunity. If you’ve read this far, then I hope we get a chance to dialogue on this subject. And if it fits your needs, perhaps we can create a digital sponsorship package that helps to build your brand with the Colts Fan Nation.