Londoners will soon be (literally) swimming in legacy. Alternatively, they will be able to run, cycle, row, reside, stroll, marvel and bask in the reflected glory of all the impressive infrastructure built for the Olympic Games and given over to public use once the circus leaves town. Much focus has be directed by LOCOG at making the London 2012 legacy something that will endure and deliver real value to the people who ultimately funded it through their taxes.

This is not always the case with major sporting events. The magnificent though largely empty World Cup venues in South Africa provide an expensive reminder of how the legacy concept can fail to deliver on its promise. And goodness knows what innovative uses the 120,000 male Qatari citizens eligible to attend public events will find for the 12 new stadia to be bequeathed to them after the World Cup in 2022.

Of course not every sports event has a legacy fixation. As English Premier League football teams prepare to embark on their traditional pre-season tours, this is one area where the idea of legacy is relegated to the economy seats the back of the plane. This month, EPL clubs will collectively travel 200,000 miles and play over 120 matches on four continents in pursuit of brand exposure and incremental revenue. The biggest clubs will rake in up to £2m in tour fees but how much of this will be invested to benefit local fans economies eager to host their footballing idols?

The answer is not much. With some creditable exceptions such as Chelsea FC’s Blue Pitch initiative, most touring clubs take the money and run. So the question is this. Why when major events direct so much focus onto the issue of legacy do most of the world’s leading football clubs pay it only lip service?

The simple answer is that legacy in the form of local infrastructure does not pay. It’s expensive to deliver and even more costly to maintain and run on an on-going basis.

There is another way though. Touring clubs and the EPL could invest in a programme of sports education. They could provide the means for local people to learn how to run effective coaching programmes and to improve local standards. Delegates nominated by the host FAs could learn best practise in sports administration, coaching, nutrition and sports science.  They could engage in an organised and accredited process of knowledge transfer by which leading clubs and their National Associations could pass on the methods, techniques and administrative processes that have contributed to their success.

The cost of this approach is relatively low. Local people would benefit. And the reputation of touring clubs and the EPL would be enhanced.

Now that is a worthwhile legacy.

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About Steven Falk:

A graduate in Psychology from Manchester University, Steven started his career in the motor industry before taking an MBA at Warwick University Business School. There followed commercial roles at Astra Zeneca, United Utilities, Great Universal Stores and MBNA Bank where he worked on a range of assignments in the UK, Eastern & Western Europe, North America and Asia.

 

Sponsorship Rationale

Effective sponsorship activation is more of an art than a science. Some relationships are crafted as great masterpieces, others appear as a primitive daub. We all know why sports organisations solicit new sponsors – they seek the revenue that profitable relationships can bring. But why do brand owners look to associate themselves with the sports sector? The answer can be found in the 6Es. Sports sponsorship can:-

Expose a sponsor’s brand image to a wider audience or a demographic different to that available from current marketing channels.

Express sponsors’ brand values to this wider audience by capitalising on the increase in reach and scale.

Enhance the relationship between the sponsors and their customers through the association with a credible and popular sports brand.

Energise a sponsor’s promotional campaigns by including offers and benefits to excite existing and prospective new customers alike.

Encourage profitable behaviour in customers through calibrating incentives to reward engagement in ways that meet business goals.

Enrich brand communications by adding an element of glamour and excitement to what may otherwise be perceived by customers as prosaic.

 

Activation Strategy

As with any commercial relationship, value can be delivered through sponsorship activation only by thoroughly researching, analysing, understanding, planning and implementing campaigns designed to meet customer needs. Here are some broad guidelines to help with developing such a strategy:-

Establish and communicate the relationship between the two brands so that both sets of customers understand and can identify the advantages to them personally of the brands coming together.

Develop a compelling and sustainable rewards/benefits hierarchy to be used in promotional campaigns. This may involve money-can’t-buy offers and should be accessible to all customer segments.

Integrate these promotional offers consistently into all marketing campaigns using a creative platform that captures and brings together the values and essence of both brands.

Reserve some of the promotional inventory to incentivise the sponsors’ sales staff. This can be especially effective where it involves rewards with a high perceived value/low cost such as ‘watch the team train’ events.

Consider developing the relationship into non-commercial areas by devising and implementing suitable CSR initiatives consistent with the parties’ brand values.

 

The 4Ds

Having identified some best practice above, here is some well-intended advice of what not to do when implementing a sponsorship programme:-

Don’t use a sponsor’s brand or crest as some sort of official stamp to endorse an existing generic promotional campaign or proposition unless it has some genuine relevance to the offer.

Don’t apply or use a partner’s brand inappropriately or in a manner which devalues its integrity in any way for example by changing its colour, style or presentation without permission.

Don’t forget that sponsorship activation needs investment of finance, time and people like any other effective marketing campaign. Allow at least 50% of the sponsorship fee as a working budget.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the work is done once the contract is signed. Effective and successful sponsorship activation is like a good marriage. It needs commitment, hard work and lots of tender care to thrive.

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Star Sports Marketing can help you to devise and implement an effective and robust sponsorship relationship management strategy. Visit www.starsportsmarketing.com or email steven.falk@starsportsmarketing.co.uk for an informal discussion on the possibilities for your business

From 2001 to 2009, Steven was Marketing Director at Manchester United Football Club. Steven served as a member of the Executive Committee of Manchester United and a board director of Manchester United Foundation, the club’s charitable trading arm. In January 2010, he launched Star Sports Marketing, a specialist sports marketing consultancy. For more information, please visit www.starsportsmarketing.com

Steven Falk’s 

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By Ben Wells

Last week, I attended a conference organised by the University of Coventry, hosted by Clive Tyldesley and featuring a strong panel of Patrick Barclay of the Times, The Telegraph’s Jim White, Dave Boyle of Supporters Direct and Dan Johnson of FA Premier League fame.

Once we’d got over the shock of Tyldesley’s dress sense in 1992 the panel spent the next two hours debating the subsequent 20 years of the Premier League’s development, exploring the good, the bad and the ugly sides of what has been rightly hailed as major commercial and marketing success, not to mention a much improved spectator experience, whether in the stands or watching at home on TV.

I remember well the start of the FA Premier League. I was at Bramall Lane on August 15th 1992 to see Brian Deane score the first goal of the FAPL era and the eventual champions Manchester United lose 2-1. The game itself didn’t feel any different to previous seasons but the following day we were to get a taste of Sky Sports’ unrivalled ability to hype its product and we all saw Teddy Sheringham score the first live top-flight goal on what was to become Super Sunday.

Last week’s panel discussion (which was far more balanced than you might think) covered most of the topics possible within the alloted time period but sadly didn’t have much time to look into the future. That is what I’d like to do here.

Much has been made of the incredible increases in revenues into top flight football in the intervening period. Most of this has come from TV, but also from sponsorship, merchandising & licensing, improved yield from matchdays and increasingly from leveraged investment and loans from sugar daddy owners. The upshot has left football stuck on a breathless treadmill, anxiously trying to keep up with the Joneses, working from season to season and within that, week to week.

 It’s true that there has been a massive investment into capital projects in England in the past twenty years and as Financial Fair Play (FFP) looms, we can expect continuing investment into the exempt areas of stadium and training ground infrastructure. But, as I have referenced in previous posts, the vast majority of football’s inflationary pressures can be linked to players’ wages. Barclay last week suggested that as much as £5 per FAPL match ticket is spent on agent fees. Even if it is half that sum, it is an outrageous statistic.

FFP is, in my view, an excellent concept, which will live or die by how seriously clubs in their entirety take it, and how strong UEFA is in enforcing it. There has been no recent deflationary pressure on football and so it continues the only path it knows: to keep pushing prices up, to enable it to attract better/more expensive football players. Football as an industry is not mature enough, not joined-up enough nor sufficiently long-termist to recognise its own structural problems, much less address them. When governments the world over is implementing mass austerity drives to address structural debt issues, football seems to believe it is exempt from the laws of economics.

You might point to the crowds that have remained high during the economic downturn (average attendances are higher, as is the percentage of seats sold) but clubs cannot expect this to remain so forever. Manchester United no longer sell out every game. Each week there are swathes of empty seats at the DW stadium, Ewood Park and elsewhere. The topline statistics fail to mask some worrying underlying issues. Whilst Liverpool, Chelsea and the two Manchester clubs boast huge shirt deals, Blackburn have offered theirs to a charity because they couldn’t find a bid over £400,000 per year. Carlos Tevez could earn that sum in 11 days if the figures are to be believed and if he ever tired of playing golf in Argentina.

Johnson rightly pointed to the FAPL’s revenue distribution model being far more equitable than any equivalent football league but it is the UCL which is skewing the gap between the haves (in the UCL) and have nots (everyone else). Broadly speaking it is those same (UCL) clubs leading the FAPL’s international expansion. Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea are all bigger brands than the FAPL itself and no matter how much we like to talk about the strength of the league, there is little appetite in the Far East and beyond for the rest. If the bigger clubs do actually break with their previously timid approach and establish actual businesses in key growth markets, then the gap will grow even further. As Boyle rightly pointed out, it was the tiny glimmer of hope for smaller clubs back in 1992 that they could actually win something that made up for the following season of disappointment. In 2012, how many clubs can actually claim to have genuine title hopes?

1992 witnessed the start of a beautiful friendship. The symbiosis between Premier League football and BSkyB has been widely commented upon. However, in 2012 Sky has diversified its business model yet football is as reliant as ever on Sky. Despite the best efforts of government both in London and Brussels there has not yet emerged a credible rival to Sky and I wonder what happens when the satellite broadcaster starts to offer lower bids for its packages. We won’t be seeing player agents calling the club CEOs, offering immediately to take a commensurate cut in his client’s wages, that is for certain.

This time last year, the once-mighty Liverpool were saved from possible administration only by the skin of their teeth and some courageous leadership by their interim Chairman Martin Broughton. Portsmouth have been through the mill in the past few years with repeated failed ownerships. The plight of Darlington has been much publicised of late but how long before we lose a top flight club for ever? Too big to fail? Don’t you believe it.

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Ben has fifteen years’ experience in the commercial side of sport. Having spent six years at Chelsea FC, where he was Head of Marketing, Ben launched Ishtar Consulting in 2011 with a view to providing specialist sponsorship and marketing support to brands, rightsholders and agencies. Prior to his time at Chelsea Ben spent nearly four years at Redmandarin, the strategic sponsorship consultancy. Follow Ben on Twitter @ben_wells1 or get in touch via  ben.wells@ishtarconsulting.com. This Blog appears regularly at http://benwells1.blogspot.com

Ben Well’s 

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