The internationalisation of sport brands through digital
July 11, 2017
The age of mass media brought the internationalisation of sport to fans.
For the first time, global fans became aware of what was happening in the top leagues in the sports they love and often split their loyalty, time and money between a local team and an international one. The same happened with athletes.
Rights holders, however, continued to focus on their local fans, often prioritising the ones that attended the games, using CRM and similar tools.
They had little information about these new international fans which often outnumber their national ones. They do not benefit from this internationalisation, except perhaps in the often relatively modest rise of the value of their international rights deals.
Domestic vs International Media Revenues
The ongoing rise in digital consumption and social media is great news for rights holders. For the first time, they can communicate with and understand the preferences of each individual fan, tailor content and sponsorship offers to them and makes them feel part of their team.
The hard part is done – fans are already dying to know more about their teams and athletes, some of which are more popular than the teams they play for. The opportunity is there for whoever has the vision to grab it.
Social Media Following: Players vs Teams
Fans are people with individual preferences. Pivot Sport’s work with big data analytics of fans worldwide has shown that where fans in particular countries don’t get enough out of traditional media, they turn to digital and are willing to pay directly for the right content.
For that to increase content consumption and therefore revenue, you need to first understand what content to produce, which athletes to show and what topics to discuss. The answer is always in the data.
It is no longer good enough to look at aggregate data about how many fans watched a video. We have proven that deep analytics and tracking individual fans over time, which enables tailored digital packages to be developed, is the key to growing engagement and revenues internationally for top-tier rights holders.
Do you want to contribute to iSportconnect? Head over to our Community page to join the discussion!