Sporting partnerships are no longer the exclusive domain of B2C brands. B2B companies are entering the fray and recognise the business potential of partnering up with sports that have mass appeal and highly engaged fanbases. How can B2B brands use sports partnerships to engage the audiences that matter to them?
Visibility? Tick. Brand awareness? Tick. Both of these are expected outcomes for any high-profile sporting partnership. However, when executed correctly, the benefits of sponsoring a sports team are so much more – from increasing customer and employee loyalty all the way through to helping secure new business leads.
This might explain why sporting partnerships are no longer the exclusive domain of B2C brands. B2B companies are entering the fray – think Oracle’s link-up with Red Bull Racing or Salesforce’s partnership with TeamGB and Paralympics GB – as brands recognise the business potential of partnering up with sports that have mass appeal, and sports teams with highly engaged and passionate fanbases.
So how can B2B brands make sure they are investing their marketing budget wisely, and using sports partnerships effectively to engage the audiences that really matter to them?
Be led by your goals
Sports partnerships require big decisions from the outset. Which sport makes most sense? Global or local team? Tournament-level or club-level sponsorship? There are so many possibilities, all of which will likely dictate the eventual partnership parameters.
The most successful partnerships are always guided by clear business goals. A brand trying to position itself as an employer-of-choice within a specific city might be better off targeting the nearest EFL team rather than approaching a Premier League side at the opposite end of the country. Whereas a brand entering an entirely new geography and attempting to reach the biggest possible audience may wish to set their sights on those sports with mass domestic appeal – whether it be Spain’s La Liga or Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league.
Understanding the fanbase
For many brands, sports sponsorships are a way to create positive relationships with fans who might one day become customers. But it’s impossible to achieve this goal if the B2B brand doesn’t have a clear picture of the audience of the club or tournament it’s partnering with.
While a consumer brand may be looking to target a wide portion of the sport-loving public, a B2B brand’s target customer will likely be far more niche. Take a company like TeamViewer, a software platform and principal partner of Manchester United. As well as general awareness-building, the company will likely want to leverage its partnership to interact with a far more focused audience of business decision-makers at enterprise level organisations.
B2B brands must therefore look to partner with those sporting organisations that have invested in truly understanding their fanbase – without this data, brands can’t be certain the partnership is helping them to reach relevant audiences, or that their budget is being spent wisely.
Brand awareness isn’t everything
Sports partnerships need to be more than a logo emblazoned on a team’s chest or perimeter advertising. That’s not to say that raising brand awareness doesn’t have value. It’s great for helping ensure that future business customers are familiar with – and therefore more trusting of – a brand, making them more willing to do business. But it’s only one of the many benefits sports partnerships can offer.
For B2B brands, securing business leads will be just as – if not more – important than simply building awareness, and in these instances, sports partnerships should go beyond traditional, logo-led advertising.
For example, as part of our sponsorship with West Ham F.C., we are introduced to a set number of potential clients each season. It requires negotiation, but many sports brands will be willing to include this type of stipulation within their partnership models.
There is no right or wrong way to follow-up with these leads (the traditional way is via email introductions and a follow-up call), however, more creative tactics – such as exclusive ‘viewing parties’ where prospects are invited to watch games in the club’s stadium along with a B2B brand’s representatives – can pay dividends by creating an exclusive opportunity to combine sport and sales.
Forget brand-first content
Once a sports partnership is in place, one of the biggest challenges can be working out how to create fan-worthy content to differentiate the brand from other sponsors.
The biggest mistake brands make is putting themselves, rather than the team, first. This is a huge turn off for fans. If you want to really engage them, you need to connect with their passion for the sport, the team heritage, and the players. Remember that while fans might become future customers, first-and-foremost they are passionate sports lovers, who are committed to spending their time, money and energy on a particular club.
IBM Consulting, a longstanding partner of Wimbledon, is one example of a B2B brand connecting with fans by bringing them closer to the sport they love. Using AI to analyse match action, crowd and player reaction, and match statistics, IBM produces highlight-reels in minutes, which fans can then access on the official Wimbledon website.
This sports-first approach is also successfully followed by Oracle, which, as part of its partnership with Red Bull, has created a loyalty programme to give fans access to behind-the-scenes stories, video interviews and quizzes. After a year in operation, fans from 189 countries were engaged with the programme, and thousands of users had put forward questions to the Red Bull team via the platform.
Balancing risk with reward
Partnering with a sports organisation isn’t always an upside-only investment. B2B brands need to do their due diligence – digging deep into issues such as club ownership, organisational finances, and player and fanbase reputations – to weigh up the potential reputational risks against the rewards. As a partnership develops over time, the reputations of the B2B brand and the sporting organisation will become increasingly intertwined, to the extent that the actions of the club or players could materially affect the brand’s perception.
Finally, one of 2022’s buzzwords was authenticity, and it certainly rings true here. Audiences see right through insincere collaborations, so making sure the two organisations have clear shared values is key to reaping the short and long-term benefits of embarking on a sporting partnership. Sports continues to be one of the few ways that brands can catch engaged viewers in real-time. Done right, it’s been proven many times over that sports sponsorship is a worthwhile brand-building tool.
About the Author
Ashton Chalmers is a Sports Partnership Manager for global fulfilment provider, Huboo, with over 10 years’ worth of industry experience. Before joining Huboo, Ashton held a variety of roles including as a Senior Partnerships Manager for Gloucester Rugby and as a Commercial Partnerships Consultant for Queensland Rugby Union, in Australia. Ashton also has a strong background in sponsorship management and sports PR.
