The last issue of Sports News focused on event planners. This one will look at event marketing companies: matchmakers who pair events with sponsors. They act as consultants and brokers, collecting fees from either events looking for sponsors, from companies looking for events to sponsor, or both.
Generally event marketers fall into one of three groups: independent companies explicitly established to handle sponsorship opportunities; divisions within advertising agencies wanting to offer more services to their corporate clients; or sports management firms hoping to generate more income for the athletes and organizations they represent.
Often as event marketing companies grow in size, they expand their levels of involvement and want to do it all--create events, find sponsors for them, and represent the athletes participating in them. Not surprisingly, they have been accused of conflicts of interest. Notes Lesa Ukman, executive editor of International Events Group Sponsorship Report, a trade publication for the special events industry, "One agency cannot concurrently represent the best interests of the event, the sponsors, the broadcast rights and the syndicates." (1)
Another trend in event marketing has been greater emphasis on quantitative analysis. A few years ago all it took to do this job was the ability to be a good salesman. You just needed to convince sponsors to part with some cash. But now that there are so many events to choose from, sponsors are becoming much more discriminating and are only interested in those events which fit their marketing goals. Often they want proof that the people attending an event are buying or will buy their products.
Event marketers are expected to be more business-savvy than ever before. They need to know who's likely to attend an event and why a company might want to reach them. They need to show that sponsoring an event is both cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising. And they need to understand that if a sponsor spends all its marketing budget on the event and has nothing left to advertise and promote its sponsorship, then it's not going to satisfied with the results. (The general rule of thumb is that a sponsor should plan on spending two to three times as much on promoting the event as on sponsoring it.) Smart event marketers don't match sponsors with events which are beyond their means.
Some examples of event marketing companies of various sizes:
The Women's Tennis Association contracted with IMG to handle its tour sponsorship, marketing, international television rights, and licensing.
The Executive Women's Golf League gave IMG the responsibility of finding sponsorships, developing global markets, and creating new events.
United Distillers asked IMG to put together a golf event to promote Johnnie Walker scotch. The result was a match in Jamaica featuring top golfers and televised in 80 countries.
The National Federation of Coffee Growers of Columbia was signed by IMG to sponsor a variety of events including the U.S. Open tennis tournament, the Ski World Cup, the Skate the Nation figure skating tour, and the Pro Water Ski Tour.
Said James Heekin, president of McCann-Erickson North America, "What we want to do is help our clients with total brand strategies, providing end-to-end support for all the ideas that go into reaching consumers these days. Advertising is only one part of the marketing mix, and we have to make sure we have all the capabilities to deliver everything in the mix." (2)
One of Momentum's first projects was to find sponsors for SportsLab, a traveling high tech "theme park." (But SportsLab later folded because it was too expensive to operate.) Momentum also created venues at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics for AT&T and GM and helped Coca-Cola run its Olympic Torch Relay.
In 1984 Cline left to start a sports marketing company and Wheeler became the Chiefs' marketing director. Then in 1990 Wheeler left to form Marketing Associates International with Cline and another partner. Wheeler bought out them out in 1992.
"Mitch Wheeler understands what our business is about," said the advertising director of Price Chopper, a grocery store chain and one of Marketing Associates' clients. "A lot of other people wouldn't have dug as deep to educate themselves about what we want to do. He really researches everything because he knows it has to be justified in terms of cost and it has to fit our demographics." (4)
Other clients have included the NFL, Major League Baseball, and Sprint (a sponsor of soccer's 1994 World Cup).
In 1988, Baird formed School Properties and developed a network of sponsorships for high school sports. "There's a tremendous interest in local marketing, and this takes marketing right down to individual communities." (5)
He went on to negotiate deals in 16 states for sponsorship, event merchandising, sales promotion, and broadcast rights. For example, Pizza Hut paid $195,000 to sponsor the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association for three years. Reebok paid the California Interscholastic Federation $2.8 million over six years.
Baird collected 35% of the sponsorship money paid to the school organizations during the first year and 25% a year after that.
- One of his first clients was the Celebrity Sport Classic, held in Colorado every year as an annual fund-raiser for a children's center.