Who Do You Cheer For?
Posted on April 24, 2008 - Filed Under ideaDRUNK's ideas
When you’re watching a sporting event, who do you cheer for?
- Your favourite team
- The athletes
- The sports league
My guess is that you cheer for your team or your favourite players. Who cheers for the league? No one. That’s because it’s difficult to be passionate about a league. Teams have rivalries, history and story lines. They have legions of loyal fans whose happiness revolves around the success and failures of the team. Athletes have personalities, and the ability to excite the crowd with skills that 99% of the population doesn’t possess.
Leagues are just the forum to showcase greatness. People aren’t loyal to the MLB – they’re loyal to the Boston Red Sox.
So why do all of these brands spend hundreds of millions of dollars purchasing league sponsorships, and billions telling people about the partnership? I mean, do you really care if Speed Stick is the official deodorant of the NBA? No!
To create a truly emotional connection to your brand, you need to align yourself with properties that people are passionate about. Like Team Canada at the Olympics or Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl.
- Christian
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3 Responses to “Who Do You Cheer For?”
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C -
It’s not that simple. For one if you wanted to run a national campaign you would require league rights. Each team has a marketing radius of 50 - 75 km depending on the league; thus even if you had deals with all the teams you wouldn’t be able to run something national or even province/state wide.
In your example of PM if you tried to sponsor him you would also need a deal with his team along with the league in order to be able to use “Super Bowl” as that’s a league run event.
Nobody cheers for a league I agree, they do however cheer for the sport. They are passionate about the sport and that’s where the league comes into play. The league represents the sport.
The deals that you’re seeing with SS is likely also part of a broadcast deal that they have which is a whole other ballgame.
Nish,
I guess my argument is somewhat the same as the one that Seth makes. Are we looking for a large number of interactions, or a smaller number of engaged and passionate conversations with fans?
Granted, you may not be able to communicate outside the 50km radius if you have a team deal, but that’s probably where the majority of passionate team fans live.
On a side note, I think the sports league that is doing it right (and has a passionate fans for the brand) is the UFC.
Nish,
Someone also wrote a decent article on Mass (league sponsorship) vs. Niche (team/player sponorship) advertising that could relate to this.
You should check out this website:
http://inspiredideas.org/archives/mass-vs-niche/