Administrators must turn sport into business
While sport sponsorship and promotion have become a global US$40 billion business, many sports administrators in South Africa - and the rest of Africa - still see their primary role as the management of their sporting code and ethos, leaving little room for leveraging assets in the professional and media mad era of modern day sport. This is according to Thomas Jankovich, chairman of Deloitte Digital.
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Jankovich hosted one of six practical sessions at The 2013 Sport Industry Summit on New Markets, together with Yolanda Arendse, chief marketing officer of leading sport sponsorship firm EXP South Africa.
Jankovich said that if you don't think of your sport as a business you simply won't be in business much longer. "Hundreds of millions of rands are being wasted in missed opportunities arising from the intense global innovation taking place in the digital age, which is bypassing current administrators failing to cover all their bases - which is the business of sport, the sportsmen and -women, as well as the fans."
Pepsi campaign
For example, a Pepsi campaign placed mobile internet-connected vending machines at major sports events where consumers were encouraged to go on Pepsi's Facebook site and click 'like' - which then dispensed to them a free Pepsi. This generated a frenzy of interest among spectators at the event, even though not really associated with the event except by adjacency. "The motivation is that the more people that 'like' a site the more hits it receives and more interest. It's a virtuous cycle - and for the relatively cheap price of a free soda," says Jankovich.
Another innovative campaign which generated a lot of social awareness interest was one by a beer company to reduce drunken driving incidents following a sports event in Europe. Anyone placing a used beer can in a turnstile receiver got a free train ride home. The number of people using that particular turnstile was far higher than other turnstiles and the number of drunk-driving incidents was reduced by 43%.
WiFi at stadiums
Yet another innovation currently gaining ground globally is the provision of WiFi at stadiums, thereby enriching the in-stadium experience and drawing crowds back to live events - as is to be seen by the continually full stadiums in the US and UK. "WiFi leverages the fact that many people prefer to watch an event on television because they have access to a huge amount of statistics, live sound feeds and social media commentary relating to the game. Giving them access to that data in the live experience is therefore the most fulfilling of all, and also presents an opportunity to engage with spectators, and have spectators engage more deeply with brands."
Empty stadiums can be a negative experience even for television audiences, and owners of sports rights, especially cricket, needed to do far more to fill stadiums through better pricing, cricket education and attracting young people to games. "You cannot sacrifice gate revenues for television rights - you have to do them all to optimise these rights. Though gate receipts are not the biggest revenue driver for clubs, a packed stadium is a minimum requirement for the spirit and experience of the stadium," he said.
Monetise digital assets
"Owners of sports rights need to capture the business thinking of how to monetise digital assets, and this can extend not to just getting better value for money but reducing the cost of rights and using the balance to more effectively leverage those rights," said Jankovich.
Sports sponsors should look at an event not just in terms of the on-field exposure or a narrow time frame around it, but a time frame that covers the moment the event is first announced to long after. "Sponsors need to think long and hard about how much they're paying for events and whether they could get them for less. This would release capital for off-the-field leveraging, which is where the real value is to be obtained, as these examples demonstrate," he said.
