Brief
NO. 58
By Mark Lehew and Rob O’Regan
The Future of
Sports Marketing:
Play Locally, Think
Globally, Drive
Loyalty
SAP Center for Business Insight
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1
The Internet has turned every business into a global business, and
professional sports teams and leagues are no exception. British
soccer powerhouse Manchester United claims more than 650
million fans globally.1
Yet very few of these fans ever attend a game.
Not every franchise has the extensive reach of Man U, but sports organizations are waking up to the
fact that engagement with their fans extends well beyond live events.2 As a result, they are exploring
new ways to tap into the passion of their customer base to create deeper loyalty that drives growth
on a global scale. Extending and enhancing fan engagement globally requires a deep understanding
of fans. But sports teams and leagues have typically collected very little information about their
fans beyond transactional data from ticket and merchandise sales. This lack of information has
made it difficult to deliver targeted communications to fans outside of a team’s home base. That’s
beginning to change as leagues and teams invest more resources in mining customer insights
through four key channels.
MORE THAN 36 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA SPENT AN
AVERAGE OF 8.7 HOURS A WEEK PLAYING
FANTASY SPORTS IN 2013
2
Brief: The Future of Sports Marketing: Play Locally, Think Globally, Drive Loyalty
©2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
NO. 58
• Fantasy sports. There’s real money in fantasy sports, which has grown
into a billion-dollar industry.3 More than 36 million people in the United
States and Canada spent an average of 8.7 hours a week playing fantasy
sports in 2013, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.4 The
time fantasy players spend managing their National Football League (NFL)
teams throughout the week – when they make roster changes, propose
trades, and research players – leads to a halo effect. It drives engagement
with other NFL properties, such as the league’s Web site, club sites, TV
programs, and game broadcasts. Fantasy league members generally view
about seven times more content, including text, video, and data, on NFL
.com than nonmembers.
NO. 58
©2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
• Web and mobile content. Fan bases aren’t just becoming more global,
they’re also becoming more mobile. Approximately 70% of the traffic
to NFL.com comes from mobile devices, up from 10% just a few years
ago, according to NFL Media. The NBA’s stats.NBA.com Web site, which
houses player and team statistics from the league’s 67-year history, has
helped double time spent on NBA.com while generating more than 9.5
billion page views last season – an all-time record for the site.5 The site has
also emerged as part of what NBA officials see as a burgeoning secondscreen experience for fans watching NBA games on TV.
Brief: The Future of Sports Marketing: Play Locally, Think Globally, Drive Loyalty
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• Social media. Fans love to talk about sports, which is why social media is
fertile ground for franchises that want to increase engagement with their
global fan bases. As part of its sponsorship of UK soccer team Tottenham
Hotspur, Under Armour Inc. ran a social media contest that attracted
entries from fans in more than 50 countries.6 Liverpool FC, another club in
the English Premier League, maintains 17 local-language Twitter accounts.
More than 475 million fans follow the NBA through social media, including
70 million in China alone.7 By analyzing what fans are saying in real time,
sports organizations are also getting better at reacting quickly to emerging
trends. Some teams have set up war rooms to monitor fan sentiment and
weigh in when appropriate.
7,500
2012
500
2009
• Loyalty programs. Fan loyalty is a trait that many sports teams take for
granted. But as ticket prices rise and more options vie for fans’ attention,
teams are investing in more-formal loyalty programs to deliver targeted
offers, access to unique fan experiences, and other rewards to passionate
fans. Trying to address the implications of an intimidating atmosphere
during its home soccer matches, one club in England’s Football League
created an engagement program as part of a broader initiative to bring
back lapsed fans and new generations of supporters to its matches.
Swiping a season ticket card when entering the stadium would tip off fan
experience personnel to acknowledge fan milestones, such as a child’s
birthday. “A family receptionist would greet them and offer a surprise like a
seat upgrade, a free gift, or a chance to meet a player,” says Mark Bradley,
founder of The Fan Experience Company, a consultancy that worked with
the club. Sales of family season ticket plans increased from fewer than
500 in 2009 to more than 7,500 in 2012.
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Brief: The Future of Sports Marketing: Play Locally, Think Globally, Drive Loyalty
Thanks to its loyalty program, one English football
team’s sales of family season ticket plans
increased from fewer than 500 in 2009
to more than 7,500 in 2012
©2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
NO. 58
As franchises such as Man U and others have shown, sports teams can no longer rely
on steadily rising ticket prices and broadcasting rights alone to thrive. They must begin
reaching out to a growing global sports fan base.
Mark Lehew is global head of SAP’s
Sports & Entertainment industry.
Rob O’Regan is founder and principal
of 822 Media, an editorial and content
marketing consultancy.
There’s More.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT NEW WAYS THAT ORGANIZATIONS MUST REACH OUT
TO CUSTOMERS, VISIT OUR WEB SITE, THE SAP CENTER FOR BUSINESS INSIGHT.
The SAP Center for Business Insight is a program that supports the discovery and development of
new research-based thinking to address the challenges of business and technology executives
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Brief: The Future of Sports Marketing: Play Locally, Think Globally, Drive Loyalty
©2014 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
NO. 58
1 Owen Gibson, “Manchester United ‘Most Popular Team in World’ with 659
Million Fans,” The Guardian, May 29, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/
football/2012/may/29/manchester-united-premierleague.
2 Christopher Koch, “How to Push Customer Loyalty to a Fever Pitch,”
Forbes BrandVoice, February 24, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/
sap/2014/02/24/how-to-push-customer-loyalty-to-a-fever-pitch/.
3 Jordan Weissmann, “The Insane Growth of Fantasy Sports – in 1 Graph,”
The Atlantic, September 10, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/
archive/2013/09/the-insane-growth-of-fantasy-sports-in-1-graph/279532/.
4 “Industry Demographics at a Glance,” Fantasy Sports Trade Association,
accessed April 3, 2014, http://www.fsta.org/?page=Demographics.
5 Eileen Feretic, “NBA Site Is a Winner With the Fans,” Baseline, August 13, 2013,
http://www.baselinemag.com/it-management/nba-site-is-a-winner-withthe-fans.
6 Stuart Feil, “The Passion of the Fan,” Adweek, January 28, 2013, http://www.
adweek.com/sa-article/passion-fan-146722.
7 National Basketball Association (company page), LinkedIn, accessed April 4,
2014, https://www.linkedin.com/company/national-basketball-association.
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