Sports Marketing: Why Esports Is the New College Football

One of the most awaited sports events – the National Football League (NFL), is finally here. Both sports fans and marketers look forward to this event alike. While it is all about cheering for your favorite team, for marketers, it is about putting the brands right in front of millions of eyeballs. However, this season is filled with uncertainties owing to the coronavirus pandemic. With millions of dollars in ad revenues at stake, how can brands plan their sports marketing strategies and budgets?

This year witnessed several major sporting events such as the NBA matches and Tokyo Olympics either get canceled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The NFL itself had to cancel its slate of pre-season games due to the pandemic. Fortunately, the season has started on schedule, much to the delight of fans and marketers. However, stadiums will be mostly empty due to self-isolation and the social distancing restrictions imposed across many states. The threat of the pandemic canceling future matches in the season is still present. Other major events, such as the U.S. presidential elections, may occupy the front-page headlines in the coming months.

With all these uncertainties looming around the sports event, which generated close to $1.5 billionOpens a new window in ad revenues last year, brands are desperately looking for alternative plans to reach more fans. In this wake, we asked two experts how brands should plan their sports marketing strategies and budgets during this NFL season. Here are their opinions.

Learn more: How to Leverage Social Media Influencers in a Time of Minimal Physical Influence

What Should Be the Top Priority for Marketers To Reach Out To More Fans?

With very few eyeballs expected to fall on their ads inside the stadium, many marketers are trying to combine online and physical experiences and bring it to fans to their homes. For example, PepsiCo created sweepstakes offering ‘Tailgate in a Box’ kits to fans who want to watch live football. The kit will have an outdoor projector, a variety of Pepsi products, and custom cornhole sets.

Pepsi Tailgate in a Box
Source: PepsiCo 

Some companies are expected to continue to be NFL’s on-field and off-field brand partners, albeit in innovative ways. For example, a few players, coaches, and referees may be seen wearing Oakley’s face shields.

Oakley’s new face shield
Source: NBC 5

Other brands have moved their advertising to digital streaming and social media platforms such as Twitter to engage sports fans, while others are creating digital ads that focus on ecommerce sales.

Tal ChalozinOpens a new window , co-founder and CTO at InnovidOpens a new window , says, “Marketers should focus on creating unique and personalized experiences to stand out from the crowd. CBS Interactive and Innovid launched an ad for Pringles chips that aired during the 2019 Super Bowl which contained addressable creative, shoppable engagement and creative versioning at scale in real-time. This ad generated over 6.4% engagement; four times higher than Innovid’s benchmark. This kind of interactive advertising strategy can increase engagement by significant margins if they target NFL fans and their interests.”

 

 

Boris PfeifferOpens a new window , CEO, and founder of Riddle.comOpens a new window says, “Authentic engagement will be key. Most live events are not being played in front of fans, so there is a disconnect between fans and their teams. Marketers should get creative and come up with persistent, long-lasting campaigns that get the fans directly involved with players or teams. They should go beyond the boring; forget the standard brand plays like TV spots, big billboards, or other ‘shouting to the rooftops’ tactics. Instead, they should go directly to their audience with sports-related campaigns that bring the sports-starved fans into the conversation. For example, you could leverage fan-generated content, get fans to tell their favorite sports stories about their team or get the athletes and fans together virtually.”

How Can Marketers Use New Tools To Boost Audience Engagement?

During this NFL season, most sports fans will be glued to social media, digital, and content streaming platforms to catch the sports action. Hence, brands should create digital content to attract and engage them on these platforms. Social media specifically is a powerful tool that marketers should include in their marketing plan.

Sports fans tend to go to social networks such as Twitter to share their joy and frustrations during sporting events. For example, a studyOpens a new window  was conducted about fan motives for engaging on social media taking the International Table Tennis Federation’s Facebook page as an example. The study was done one week before, during, and after the table tennis competitions during the Rio de Janeiro Olympics as this was a period of high social interaction. The study found that more than 15% of the comments made by sports fans were related to passion – to express excitement, joy, frustration, and admiration. Many fans like to capture key moments and highlights and share them on social media with the sports communities. Brands can create online communities and forums where fans can share their experiences and generate engagement. They can then repurpose this user-generated content to create new campaigns.

Esports and fantasy leagues are also platforms sports fans flock to, especially when football is in season. They want to win money and showcase their prowess in predicting who wins the match and the championship. These apps allow them to build communities by interacting with other players. These apps also allow them to start sports conversations with their friends. Marketers can smartly leverage these platforms to promote their brands.

Chalozin says, “Advertisers should invest in interactive ad formats that command a greater engagement lift than standard pre-roll and offer the potential for real earned time and attention. One way this is done is by utilizing composer tools, which provide advertisers looking to complement their desktop and mobile campaigns with high-impact, interactive CTV ads. With a breadth of capabilities like galleries, QR codes, store locators and dynamic personalization, marketers can deliver a highly differentiated CTV experience for users on virtually every connected device available, creating high engagement.”

Pfeiffer believes that quizzes and interactive content are another sweet spot for marketers. He says, “Sports fans love showing off how much they know about their teams. And quizzes are tailormade for such social sharing activities. Pro sports organizations know this, we have seen teams use Riddle’s quiz maker to create their own trivia gateways (like these by NFL’s San Francisco 49ersOpens a new window and the New York GiantsOpens a new window ). Create an engaging quiz competition, complete with timers, leaderboards, and lead generation for contest entries and you have got a positive feedback loop. Happy fans enter their details to compete, then share their results on social media, which gets their friends involved. Engagement, lead collection, and social virality in one easy package. Best of all? Today’s quiz makers make creating polished content super easy, no expensive or time-consuming agencies required.”

How Can Marketers Leverage OTT and Other Content Platforms?

Connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu have gained popularity for quite some time before the pandemic. However, they saw a surge in their viewership during the coronavirus-related lockdowns.

“According to ComScore’s ‘State of OTT’ reportOpens a new window , about 69.8 million families used OTT by April 2020, a growth of 5.2 million from April last year. According to another reportOpens a new window by Statista and colorwhistle, about 30% of content viewed on OTT was sports.”

Chalozin adds, “As CTV and OTT streaming continues to grow, a July study by Roku found that one in three U.S. households no longer pay for cable TV, and only 17% said they would return to cable TV once live sports are back. So, with so many cord cutters, it is not out of the question to plan for NFL viewers watching games on streaming channels. This season, games are live on CBS, Fox, NBC and NFL Network streaming services. Marketers looking to reach NFL fans should consider OTT a primary channel to reach fans during the game.”

Learn more: What Brands Can Learn From Citibank’s Content Strategy

“Today, TV has lost its place as the dominant way to reach an audience. Now it is all about multiple screens, delivering content, however, and wherever fans want. All this new tech has spawned a jaw-dropping range of tools and platforms that make it easy for fans to create and publish their own content. It is community-led vs. top-down distribution – and savvy marketers will keep things fluid and flexible.

“For example, millions of people flock to Twitch.tvOpens a new window (especially during the pandemic) to watch other people play and talk about their favorite games. Sponsor a contest around players facing off with real-life fans – who compete for bragging rights and some serious swag. You could even get more mileage out of this – by running leagues or taking entries from people who screenshot their high score on social media,” Pfeiffer notes.

How Should Marketers Plan Their Budgets To Reap the Best Returns?

With very few fans occupying the stadiums, brands who have entered multi-year contracts are still trying to figure out how to replace their usual advertising methods inside the stadium. However, with social media and digital platforms being a popular mode of fan engagement, it makes sense to move a lion’s share of marketing and advertising budgets to these platforms.

CTVs, content streaming platforms, and interactive platforms should be an important consideration for marketers. They are hugely popular among sports fans, require smaller budgets, and are targetable as well as trackable. Marketers should also leverage user-generated and dynamic content as they help bring down marketing and advertising costs. They also offer better engagement and conversions.

Pfeiffer believes that putting the fans in charge of content helps brands in two ways:

1. Complying with regulations as users will be willing to provide their data voluntarily.
2. It helps bring down advertising costs.

He says, “Put the user in control, let them choose to engage, choose to give their data, and choose to share. Quizzes and other content types are good options for reaching sports fans because they are user-driven marketing. Instead of traditional marketing that shouts at, or tries to trick people into engaging, quizzes, polls, and other formats flip the process around. You create and publish interesting content; only interested fans decide to click and then share their personal information with marketers.

“This fan-first model brings down the cost of each lead – fun content gets more fan engagement. And since we have seen quizzes get up to 50-60% opt-in rates, your cost per conversion will be massively reduced – driving an effective ROI for your marketing efforts.”

Chalozin adds, “Brands can tap into dynamic content to drive geo-relevant messaging based on a viewer’s location. By tapping into location data, brands can advertise based on what the local team is playing or winning. Think about the engagement that national brands get when they offer free menu items when regional teams win. This form of ad, especially in the age of COVID, can connect with viewers more personally and increase bottom lines.”

Learn more: 8 Experts on How Marketing Strategies and Budget Should Evolve During COVID-19

To Conclude

With the pandemic and social distancing restrictions, most sports fans are looking for alternative options to have the same sports and community experience. Social media, digital devices, and content streaming platforms offer sports marketers opportunities to create this experience. By using these platforms, digital devices, and user-generated content in smart and innovative ways, brands can create more engagement and improve their bottom line.

How do you think brands should plan their sports marketing strategies and budgets this sporting season? We would love to hear from you on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .