So I am regularly asked about online sports marketing platforms. These platforms (I am CEO of one) each are providing value in different ways and each are just getting started. In the history of sports marketing, there’s never been a better time to be involved in the marketing of sports.
As former Baltimore Ravens Safety and now CEO of Fluencr.com Gerome Sapp told me, “The online & mobile sports marketing platforms allow millions of sports enthusiast similar types of exposure and access to sponsorships as the NFL provided me.”
Sapp’s figured it out – you no longer need to be LeBron James to field sponsorship opportunities. You can be a local athlete with a large social following or a sports blogger with an engaged following. Each have the ability to help brands and causes build awareness.
And Blake Lawrence, CEO of Opendorse sees an opportunity for brands to reach their prospective customer base through professional athletes through social channels. He explains, “As the focus on engaging sports fans online grows, leagues, teams, and venues have done a great job of selling their digital assets to marketers. However, the professional athlete market remains largely untapped, providing an opportunity for one platform, or many, to provide better access to the digital influence of athletes.”
Lawrence is right, the market is untapped and just emerging. Given that, I decided to get their input (along with the CEO’s of the other companies on the list below) to create a guide for decision makers.
Given his analytical prowess, I asked Mark Piening, President of Circle Media about the future of social media and brands – this is what he told me, “We aren’t far from the day when Brands sponsor Fans to attend experiences. On Facebook streams, Nike was “rumored” to have given away free gear to the American Outlaws supporters who attended the FIFA World Cup, so the kits could get promoted through fan shots during the game. In-venue, second screen, gaming and other affinity marketing strategies make branding “stick”.
CNN World Cup writer, Ben Wyatt concurs in his How America Won the 2014 World Cup article, stating some interesting findings about social media and sports venues, “This World Cup has also seen a new high of 389,000 messages-per-minute recorded on
With that kind of activity, it won’t take long before brands are finding ways to sponsor it and getting involved. Anthony Puntoriero, CEO of Instant Sponsor, agrees telling me, “It won’t be long until brands gravitate towards sporting events where emotions run high both on location and those following online. Participating in these types of situations will serve the brand well.”
For me, it’s going to get interesting fast. The industry is still dominated by traditional methods of sponsorships, endorsements and events, so the big question is, how will these new solutions impact the situation?
