Sponsorship is dead, long live sponsorship

Those of you who are regular readers of Synopsis may have spotted a pattern. The lead articles are not Synergy’s random musings but rather the building blocks of a bigger story about the new rules of sponsorship.

But before we get to the rules, a little bit of context. Like all marketing disciplines, sponsorship has evolved over time…but every now and then, there is a paradigm shift which generates an explosion of innovation and introduces a completely new way of acting. Excitingly, we have entered one of these new eras – the 4th Era of Sponsorship.

Below is a rough timeline of how the Sponsorship Industry has evolved. There is never a clear line in the sand to separate the various eras (and of course there are always sponsorship programmes that are ahead of their time), but to keep things simple, they can be broadly separated into decades.

1970s: The Dark Art

The very beginnings of the sponsorship industry were characterised by informal deals done on a handshake in smoke-filled rooms — often literally smoke-filled, as much of the early days of sponsorship were driven by cigarette brands putting their brand on the side of fast cars to circumvent advertising restrictions.

1980s – 1990s: Off-the-Peg

Patrick Nally is credited as being the founding father of modern sponsorship. His ground-breaking partnership deal with Coca-Cola for the 1978 FIFA World Cup effectively ‘invented’ the concept of a rights package. This has set the template for how sponsorships have been packaged and sold by rightsholders ever since.

2000s: Tailored

Brands started to become much more sophisticated and proactive in terms of how they approached sponsorship. No longer was it thought of as a collection of off-the-shelf rights or as a separate marketing channel, but rather as an asset that could be integrated into the overall marketing mix and used to increase the effectiveness of the brand’s marketing activity.

2010: Social

The 4th Era is the “Social Era” for two reasons. Firstly, it has been enabled by social media which has allowed people (and brands) with shared interests to engage with each other at a scale and depth that has never before been possible. Social also refers to a sense of ‘Higher Purpose’ – the ability of a sponsorship programme to connect with its audience by delivering something that really matters.

The Rules of the Social Era

Moving to the Social Era has changed the game of sponsorship and everyone can benefit from knowing the new rules. We have analysed hundreds of best practice case studies from the world of sponsorship and beyond to identify and codify the keys to success in the Social Era.

We have been examining these new rules one by one over the past 5 months but now it is time to bring them all together.

It’s as easy as ABCDE…

Rule 1: Authenticity

Endorses for Courses by Jon Izzard

The best sponsorship programmes, the ones that really resonate with the audience, feel completely natural. The brand simply feels at home in the space. Think of Red Bull and extreme sports, Cartier and Polo, Robinsons and Wimbledon, Unicef and FC Barcelona, Coca-Cola and the Olympic Games, Moët & Chandon and F1. There are loads of sources of authenticity: products, geography, heritage, brand message and simple longevity.

Some brands have to work hard to establish authenticity in a given space, but it is imperative that they do because the very audience that a sponsor is trying to connect with can see through an imposter straight away. Skoda’s sponsorship of the Tour de France provides a great example of a brand working hard to establish credibility in a space where its source of credibility may not be immediately obvious.  Brilliant:

Rule 2: Beyond your Brand

What Can Sponsorship Learn from Farmville by Liz Brown

Sponsorship is about a brand becoming a natural part of their customers’ lives — but the audience needs a reason to invite a brand into their lives.  Brands that view the relationship with their audience as a one-way value exchange and think only in terms of “what will we get out of it”, have no chance of forming the kind of relationship they want. Again, there are a number of ways that brands can demonstrate “Beyond your Brand” thinking, focusing on delivering benefits to their customers (O2 Priority), the property (Converse and London’s 100 Club) and society as a whole (RBS RugbyForce).

Rule 3: Content

Is Content Really King by Ben Wilkinson

Consumers want to learn, laugh, discover, share, be entertained and be inspired.  And they want to do all these things around topics that are of specific interest to them.  That is what sponsorship allows you to do: create relevant content around your audience’s passion points.  But brands have to be creative to capture attention — posting a video of “talking heads” on YouTube and hoping for the best is not enough.  Great content is about innovation.  It’s about finding something that connects and resonates with your audience and providing it how they want it, when they want it and where they want it.

Our favourite example of this is Converse Domaination — a campaign that not only puts great content at its heart but also shows a perfect understanding of its audience.  Enjoy.

Rule 4: Dialogue

D is for Dialogue by Carsten Thode

Talking to each other, sharing ideas, working together, creating things, discovering  new stuff,  having fun, laughing, crying, flirting, arguing – everything that makes life worth living is built on our ability to actively engage with each other. Why should that be different from the relationships we build with the brands in our lives?

Yet for most of its history, marketing has been pretty much a one-way conversation where brands tell you what they want you to know and the customer has no way of talking back.  However, the digital age, and particularly the social media age, has smashed through the barrier separating brands from their consumers.

Now it is possible to source brilliant ideas from your customers such as Pepsi Refresh and GE Ecomagination, or to tailor your marketing in real-time to reflect input from your customers. The Old Spice Man is a classic case in point of how much more engaging the conversation becomes if you give your customers a voice.

Rule 5: Entertainment

Passion Pointers by Tom Gladstone

Sport has a particular ability to evoke strong emotions through its personal stories of courage, inspiration and determination; through its inherent unpredictability, excitement and drama. Those emotions are an essential component of successful sponsorship – and are as relevant across other sponsorship platforms (music, film, fashion, art) as they are in sport. Harness the emotions correctly, and your consumers will add the catalyst of conversation.

But while simply being visible within a passion point might increase the chances of getting noticed, it doesn’t win a place in consumers’ hearts. There has to be active emotional involvement, not just proximity or presence — engagement not impressions. Whether brands capitalise on moments of high emotion or they tap into the core emotional sensibility of the passion point, anchored in anticipation, pride, patriotism, celebration, or even pain, they all need to exhibit genuine empathy and understanding.

This rule is articulated nicely by Mark Harrison, Chair of the Canadian Sponsorship Forum: ‘You can’t manufacture emotion. It’s already there. When you find it – just find a way to trigger it; tap into it; fuel it; and watch it grow into something remarkable.’

Using ABCDE

ABCDE is not a menu, where you can choose one or two elements to focus on. Rather, a great sponsorship programme will deliver against all the rules of the 4th Era.

Obviously, this framework isn’t rocket science, but at Synergy, we have found it to be incredibly useful as we advise our clients at every point of the sponsorship process.  We use it not only as a kind of checklist to diagnose where we are strong and where we need to work harder but also to ensure that all elements of the sponsorship programme - from creating the strategy and identifying the right assets right through to the activation – deliver the ABCDE.  So, before signing off, here are a few ways that it can be used to make your sponsorship programmes even more powerful:

1. Articulate specifically how you are using sponsorship to deliver all elements of ABCDE. Sponsorship strategies should use deep audience insight and a clear understanding of the business and brand to ensure that you are using sponsorship as effectively as possible in the 4th Era

2. When making the decision to acquire a new sponsorship asset, make sure that there is a concrete plan in place to deliver the ABCDE. Use it as part of the screening process and answer questions like: “What gives my brand authenticity in this space? How can I build or acquire authenticity?”  “What is the higher purpose of the sponsorship?  How are we adding value?”

3. When creating activation plans, be specific about which elements of ABCDE you need to focus on and how you will be able to deliver them.  For example: “How can we stimulate dialogue amongst our audience?  What role should our brand play in that conversation”

4. Factor ABCDE into your measurement. Create specific targets around each element and evaluate your success at achieving them.  Where do you have to work harder?

© Synergy Sponsorship a trading division of Engine Partners UK LLP 2011.  All rights reserved

By Carsten Thode on September 1st, 2011

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Branded content, Communications, community, Consultancy, Content, Default, Design, Digital marketing, Event management consultants, Event management service, Experiential marketing, Food & Drink, Football Sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Sales promotion, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants, Sport, Synergy, Synergy Loves, Synopsis, Twitter, Viral Marketing

No comments

What happened?

At the end of the 2010/11 season Sheffield United were relegated to the third tier of English football, joining their local rivals Sheffield Wednesday in League One.  Both clubs found themselves without shirt sponsors, with local companies airing concerns over sponsoring just one team for fear of being accused of favouring one over the other.

With no deal on the table, Wednesday went ahead and printed its 2011/12 season shirts, sponsor free, holding on to the hope that a company would come on board late in the day. Fans were even told they could bring their shirts back to the club shop to have the sponsor logo added once a deal had been agreed.

However, with no deal on the table,  the two clubs joined forces and took the unusual approach of looking to recruit a joint sponsor. Two local companies stepped up to the mark, a local car dealership and a health insurance firm, who combined to offer a reported six figure sum for the 2011/12 season.

The agreement sees Volkswagon dealership Gilders appearing on the front of Wednesday’s shirt when they are at home and United’s when they are away. Westfield Health will appear on United’s home shirts and Wednesday’s away shirts.

Why we like it

Other than Rangers and Celtic who both carry Tennent’s sponsorship on their shirts in Scotland, this deal is the first of its kind between rival teams in an English league.

Of course, some fans will always be against the move.  Who wants to have anything in common with their local rival?  However, the overall response has been positive.  Before the deal was announced, both clubs had uncertain futures, with rumours of a merger and even closure abounding.  When those are the alternatives, a joint sponsorship deal becomes much easier to stomach, even for the most diehard of fans.

While both clubs deserve credit for coming up with a savvy financial solution (Sheffield is a city used to having to pick itself up and this deal demonstrates the determination not to lose any more of the city’s icons), the sponsors also come out of the deal rather well.

Local derbies always create hightened emotions for football fans, so bringing together two teams through the sponsorship could have resulted in backlash from the fans. However, Gilders and Westfield Heath are two local companies who know the city and its people and they were confident that the fans would back the partnership for the sake of their team. The announcement was made in a considered manner and the quotes focused on preserving two iconic Sheffield brands and football culture in the city.

This approach resulted in blanket coverage across the sports pages of the UK press, propelling two local brands into the national arena. Coverage was positive and gave both companies a voice with the MD of Gilders quick to note that the deal had “brought together four such quality and iconic Sheffield brands”.

As an ex-Sheffield resident, I’ll be following the future of both clubs closely. It will be interesting to see whether the deal will still remain in place even if the Blades win promotion.  In the current financial climate, it feels a fitting approach to a sport that is often (rightly) accused of being frivolous with money. And if it saves two teams steeped in football history and with a huge following, surely it’s a no-brainer.

By Jennifer Mitton on September 1st, 2011

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Communications, community, Default, FA Cup, Football Sponsorship, Sponsorship, Sport, Synergy, Synergy Loves, Synopsis

No comments

It’s 20 years since the Premier League was launched and to mark the occasion, we’ve put together an infographic suitably laced with factoids illustrating the League’s journey from domestic breakaway to global superpower.

Having worked on sponsorships in and around the League since its inception, it’s been an extraordinary journey both to have witnessed and to have been part of. The incredible transformation on and, above all, off the field is what I hope we’ve captured.

Off the field, my personal favourite factoids are the League having no title sponsor in its first season (owing to disagreements between the clubs) and the staggering 9900% rise in Manchester United’s annual shirt sponsorship income, from Sharp’s £200k endorsement in 1992 to today’s £20m Aon deal.

On the field, it has to be United’s dominance of the title (which of course has driven their off-field success), the proliferation of overseas players, from a mere 11 in 1992 to 337 last season, and the perfect symmetry of the 11 current and 11 former clubs who featured in the inaugural 22-club Premier League (great quiz question by the way).

Click to enlarge…and enjoy.

Crafted and made beautiful by Jon Izzard.

By Tim Crow on August 10th, 2011

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, New Product Development, Sponsorship, Synergy

No comments

(This article first appeared in the Synergy newsletter in October 2004. On the day that Manchester City announces the biggest UK football stadium naming rights deal since Arsenal/Emirates - also with a Middle Eastern airline - we thought it was an appropriate time to dust it off.)     

Fifteen-year, £90 million sponsorship deals being more than a little rare, it was no surprise that the unveiling of Arsenal’s stadium naming rights deal with the Emirates airline last month generated significant media coverage – which was however very short on genuine analysis of a landmark deal and its implications for the sponsorship landscape. 

 Show Me The Money Driven by Arsenal’s need to service the £260m they loaned to build their new stadium – not to mention the £142m of debt on their balance sheet to the end of May – a key feature of the Emirates deal is that it’s massively front-loaded, with Arsenal scheduled to receive £72m (average £9m per year) 2004-2012 and £18m (average £2.25m per year) 2012-2020. 

 From 2006-2014 this includes £5m per year (£40m) for Arsenal’s shirt sponsorship, to start – naturally – when the new stadium is scheduled to open in August 2006. 

 All of which reveals the following: 

 What’s In It For Emirates? Emirates executives are on the record in trade press interviews that the airline sees sponsorship solely as a means of driving accelerated international brand awareness and stature. They’ve also been quoted that their benchmark is Coca-Cola. Quite simply, their vision is to make ‘Emirates’ the generic term for ‘airline’. 

 It’s therefore unsurprising that Emirates are spending heavily in sports sponsorship generally – they have around 30 major deals worldwide – and football in particular. Last year, for example, they joined Coke (among others) as one of the FIFA World Cup Partners for Germany 2006. This year Emirates also became the first-ever sponsor of football referees in England, in a deal which gives them branding on the refs’ kit in all major competitions – one of which is of course the Coca-Cola League. 

So where does the Arsenal deal fit in – particularly given the less-than-perfect scenario of Emirates announcing the deal in the final season of a shirt sponsorship deal with Chelsea? 

The answer would seem to be brand awareness. What naming rights deals deliver, if you get them right (of which more later) is multiple media impressions. Naming Arsenal’s new stadium will generate literally billions of media impressions for Emirates worldwide over the course of the deal, and they’ve presumably calculated that this is worth at the very least £50m over 15 years: a reasonable assumption given the huge coverage of Premiership and Champions League football worldwide, the only caveat being that it relies on Arsenal staying at the top of the game – again a reasonable assumption, provided that a Leeds-style meltdown is covered in the contract. 

Another consideration will no doubt have been that the deal kicks off at the start of the season following the 2006 World Cup, thus maintaining Emirates’ football presence beyond their first foray into FIFA land, as well as the fact that the brands share the colour red – visual empathy being a key, but rarely-considered, element of sponsorship synergy. 

But in the most crucial respect the deal doesn’t stack up. Emirates won’t gain the respect of the fans – particularly the Arsenal fans – by writing a big cheque and letting the branding do the work. Quite the reverse. They’ll need to work very hard – and much harder than they did with Chelsea – to establish their credibility, especially to turn around the fans’ scepticism (which was very much in evidence on football websites after the Arsenal deal was announced) about a brand so readily prepared to jump from one team to another. 

And if Emirates need any convincing that sponsorship – especially in football – is all about affinity rather than awareness, they need look no further than their own benchmark: Coca-Cola. 

There’s nothing new about naming rights. Ever heard of Times Square? Named for the New York Times when it relocated to Long Acre Square, as it was previously known, in 1903. Rather less successfully, if you walk over the Golden Gate Bridge you’ll find that its official name is ‘The Pacific Gas & Electric Bridge’. Catchy. 

Naming sports stadia is a well-established American phenomenon. Since the first deal of its type in 1973, it’s become a major feature of American sport, with around 40% of NFL, NBA and MLB stadia carrying a brand or corporate name (including, as Emirates will no doubt have noted, with several US airlines). The deals vary widely in value: most are around $5m per year, but a few are absolutely huge, led by the $30m per year, 30-year deal between Reliant Energy and the Houston Texans. 

What the deals have in common are two things: they’re long-term (typically for a minimum of ten years) and they’re almost always – as with the Emirates Stadium – driven by the need to finance construction of a new stadium. As such, naming rights is still a fledgling industry in Europe, where the construction of new stadia is a very rare event, particularly for (with the greatest respect to Bolton fans) a top team such as Arsenal. 

Accordingly, naming rights deals in Europe are still viewed with suspicion by both consumers and the media – and therefore with some unease by brands, the more so because there is a shortage of expertise in the ‘Old World’ about this ‘New World’ phenomenon. 

All of which brings me, by way of summary, to the Five Golden Rules Of Naming Rights For Brands: 

1. The stadium must have only one short name. If there are two names, one of which is the sponsor’s, guess which one the media, and the fans, will edit out? ‘The Reebok Stadium’ works: so does ‘The JJB Stadium’; so will ‘The Emirates Stadium’. The ‘Friends Provident St Mary’s Stadium’ and (our favourite in the USA) ‘Invesco Field at Mile High’ don’t, and never will. 

2. You can only credibly and effectively name a new stadium. Try to name an old stadium only if you want to be ignored (answers on a postcard please if you can tell us who sponsors The Oval Cricket Ground) or the object of acrimony (the people of San Francisco have just voted against Candlestick Park becoming known as Monster Park). See also 1 above. 

3. You must pay enough. There was an outcry in Leicester against Walker’s – previously a relatively popular local employer – when it was announced that the company had paid only £150,000 per year for 10 years to sponsor the new Leicester City Stadium. This was unfavourably compared with the millions the company had spent using Gary Lineker in its TV advertising. 

4. You must be in it for the long term, for two reasons: to demonstrate your commitment (see also 3 above) and also because if you do it for long enough, the return on investment in terms of media impressions alone will be enormous – as long as you’ve followed rules 1, 2 and 3. 

5. Once you’ve followed rules 1, 2, 3 and 4, the work really starts: gaining the respect and admiration of the fans.

By Tim Crow on July 8th, 2011

Tags: Football Sponsorship, Naming Rights, Sponsorship

No comments

Recently I’ve spent a lot of time recalling the history of sports marketing and sponsorship. To start 2011, we ran our poll on the greatest sports marketing innovation of modern times. A few weeks ago the Sport Industry Group asked Dom Curran and I to contribute our memories of the last ten years of sport to help celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Sport Industry Awards, which took place last Wednesday night. And also last Wednesday, I attended Sportcal’s 20 Years of Sport conference, the highlight of which was a tour de force presentation by my old friend Patrick Nally on the origins of the modern sponsorship template which he created, and his view of the future.

Listening to Patrick talk of those early days and his work with Horst Dassler reminded me of one of the most remarkable incidents in the history of sports marketing to date, which took place in those early days, and which I only came across for the first time recently.

Back in 1974, adidas was the kit sponsor of the legendary Dutch national football team led by maestro Johann Cruyff.  Leading into the 1974 World Cup, which was marked by financial disputes between players and their federations, Cruyff, who had a personal sponsorship with adidas’ bitter rivals Puma, refused to wear a Dutch shirt with the now-legendary adidas three stripes. Incredibly, the Dutch FA backed down and alowed Cruyff to play in a specially-made kit with only two stripes. Here’s the proof, from Holland’s 1974 World Cup match versus Argentina:

Now that’s what I call player power!

By Tim Crow on May 17th, 2011

Tags: Ambush campaign, Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, Sponsorship, What's the Greatest Sports Marketing Innovation?, World Cup

No comments

Heineken Star PlayerI’ve often wondered why it is that, in contrast to other major events, the sponsors of the UEFA Champions League (UCL) have mostly struggled to create great campaigns (litmus test: how many can you actually remember?). The exception to this has generally been Heineken, which has consistently created entertaining and memorable UCL work. Last week it launched its latest UCL move, Star Player, to coincide with this year’s UCL semi-finals. Star Player is really interesting football first: a free iPhone app with Facebook integration, which leverages the intersection between football fandom, event TV, social media and gaming. I downloaded it and played it during last week’s now-infamous UCL semi final first leg between Real Madrid and Barcelona. Here’s my review.

The Game

Getting started is easy. You download the app and create a simple profile for yourself. Ten minutes before kick-off the app goes live: when the whistle blows the action begins. Throughout the game, you’re given various opportunities to score points, either by predicting the outcome of free kicks and corners, whether there will be a goal in the next 30 seconds, or answering multiple choice quiz questions during breaks in play. You can also use one of three ‘Power Ups’ throughout the game to give yourself an additional goal prediction, a chance to score more quiz points, or a 50:50 style clue to answering questions.

So far so basic – it’s the additional features that socialise the game and make it interesting. After each corner, free kick or quiz question, you can see how everyone else playing the game voted as a percentage. Correct answers win you badges, visible through your profile. You can enter yourself into a league with friends, and play against them in real time. And finally Facebook Connect functionality enables you to publish your results, and those of your league, to your Facebook wall.

The Experience

Playing the game was fun, and it nicely complemented watching the game on TV. If, like me, you enjoy the real-time, predictive environment of live in-play betting, you’ll like this game too, because it’s about trusting your instincts to make the right call in an instant. Like winning an in-game bet, there’s a real thrill both in correctly predicting (as I managed to) that Ronaldo would waste a string of free-kicks or that Messi’s run would end in a goal and then being rewarded for it (although only with badges and points rather than cash). I also liked the way after questions you could see how everyone else playing the game voted, and although I wasn’t playing with a group of friends, I could imagine it being a great brilliant ‘game within a game’ if I had been.

But there were also things that weren’t so good. On the night the app wouldn’t let me use the Power Ups, or post my score to Facebook at the end of the game – both very annoying (especially as I posted a score that put me in the top echelons of the global league!). The multiple choice questions were average: the football questions mostly seemed random and had no relevance to the game I was watching (for example “When was Rangers founded?”), and there were too many questions about Heineken (for example “How many countries is Heineken served in?”) when one would have been fine. I also felt there could have been more variety in the gaming. Goal and free kick prediction became a little dull after a while, and I found myself wanting the opportunity to be able to predict the half-time and full-time score, or the next scorer or next team to score, as you can in in-play betting. This is such an obvious missed opportunity that I can only assume there’s something in Heineken’s UCL sponsorship contract that prevents them from using scoring data.

The Verdict

Seven out of ten. This is a great move by Heineken that has the potential to create real social currency among football fans, become an essential part of the UCL experience, and an engagement platform in its own right. But there are missed opportunities too that need to be addressed if, as an experience, the app is to achieve its full potential.

By Tim Crow on May 4th, 2011

Tags: Branded content, Default, Digital marketing, Facebook, Football Sponsorship, New Product Development, Sponsorship, UEFA Champions League

No comments

The Twittersphere was buzzing yesterday, and the question everyone was asking was: how can Andy Carroll be worth £35m? The general consensus was that he wasn’t worth that amount of money and that the footballing world had gone crazy.

Maybe the conventional wisdom is correct. But one thing “Moneyball” (in my opinion the best Sports Business book ever written) taught us is to ignore conventional wisdom. Moneyball is about the Oakland A’s baseball team and their General Manager Billy Beane and is currently being turned into a Brad Pitt/Philip Seymour Hoffman movie, due for release later this year:

The basic premise is this: In 2002, the Oakland A’s had the second smallest budget in baseball (around $40m) – less than a quarter of the New York Yankees ($126m). But for the previous 3 years, they had consistently been one of the top four teams (though they hadn’t won a World Series). That is the equivalent of Wolves qualifying for the Champions League for 3 years in a row on their current budget (the A’s didn’t increase their relative budget as a result of their success in the first two years).

The secret to the A’s success was to completely re-think the way they evaluated players. Using a new set of statistical analyses (called Sabermetrics) and throwing out all conventional wisdom, they were able to see that the market for players was hugely inefficient. Some player attributes were highly overrated in terms of their correlation with success, while others were highly undervalued. So the key to running a successful team on a budget was simple:

sell those players who have overrated attributes (for lots of money) and buy players who have the underrated attributes (for much less)

So why is this all relevant for Liverpool and Andy Carroll?

Well first and foremost, John W Henry, the new owner of Liverpool is a convert to Sabermetrics. Many of the techniques used in Sabermetrics came from the financial markets, which is Henry’s background. And when Henry bought the Boston Red Sox in 2003, his first move was to offer Billy Beane a job for a guaranteed $12.5m over 5 years (which he turned down). Nevertheless, he installed Sabermetrics at the Red Sox, who then went on to win multiple World Series.

So Liverpool is now a Sabermetric club with the best brains in the business analysing players’ value. Would they really pay £35m for a player if they didn’t see the value?

And what did that analysis look like?

Success in football is defined by winning points. Given the financial rewards at stake (eg. qualifying for the Champions League), it is relatively easy to calculate the value of each Premier League point. And if points are the asset, then goals are the currency. To quote from Moneyball:

“Before the 2002 season, Paul DePodesta (the A’s sabermatrician) had reduced the coming six months to a maths problem. He judged how many wins it would take to get into the play-offs: 95. He then calculated how many more runs the Oakland A’s would need to score than they allowed to win 95 games: 135. (the idea that there was a stable relationship between season run totals and season wins was another Jamesean (the father of Sabermetrics) discovery)”

It is possible to determine how many goals you need to score in order to acquire your targeted number of points. And therefore, each goal has a value. Before we have any Ossie Ardiles and Kevin Keegan arguments about teams who score lots of goals but don’t necessarily win points, here are the facts:

1) Currently, the top 4 teams in the table are the four teams who have scored the most goals

2) In the seasons 2006/2007, 2007/2008 and 2008/2009 the top four teams in the table were also the teams who scored the most goals

3) The only exception to this rule in the recent past is last season, where Manchester City, who finished 5th, scored more goals than Tottenham, who finished 4th

So, each goal that Carroll contributes can be valued in terms of ‘acquiring’ points.

But how do we determine how many goals he is likely to contribute?

One of the cleverest bits of analysis discussed in Moneyball is the disentangling of the link between what actually happens on the pitch and what is expected to happen. To quote again:

“Any ball hit any place on a baseball field had been hit just that way thousands of times before: the average of all those hits was the Platonic Idea (of an average run value). Call it a line drive that is hit at x trajectory and y speed to point #968. From 10 years worth of data, you can see that there have been 8,642 practically identical hits. You can see that 92% of the time the hit went for a double, 4% for a single and 4% it was caught. Suppose the average value of that event is .50 of a run scored. No matter what actually happened, the system credits the hitter with having generated .50 of a run…”

So let’s apply that to football and Andy Carroll.

The first thing we do is to forget the number of goals he scores and the number of assists he makes (what actually happened) and concentrate on the expected value of his actions on the pitch.

Here are a few examples (by the way, these are all completely made up assumptions but it wouldn’t be too difficult to calculate them):

1) A penalty is scored 79% of the time. Every penalty he wins is worth .79 of a goal (regardless of whether he takes it or even whether it is scored)

2) A goal results from a corner kick 4% of the time. Every corner kick he wins is worth .04 of a goal

3) Divide the pitch up into sectors and calculate the percentage of time a goal is scored from a free kick taken from that sector. If a goal is scored 7% of the time a free kick is taken from sector 4, then every free kick Carroll wins in sector 4 is worth .07 of a goal (and the same for all the other sectors on the pitch)

4) Divide up the goal into 6 sectors (top left, top middle, top right, bottom left, bottom middle and bottom right) and calculate the expected goal value of a shot on target in each of those sectors. If 46% of shots into the top left sector are goals, then award him .46 of a goal for every shot he hits into that sector

5) A successful pass within the opponent’s penalty area results in a goal 8% of the time. Every successful pass he makes in the penalty area gets .08 of a goal

6) Winning a header in the opponents penalty area results in a goal 5% of the time. He is awarded .05 of a goal whenever he wins a header in the opponents area

…and so on

From this type of analysis, we can calculate the expected number of goals Carroll will contribute to Liverpool and we will also know the value of each goal.  If that is more than £35m over the course of his contract, then it could represent great value.

Of course, this has been simplified a little bit. The real analysis is the ‘marginal’ impact of Carroll compared to another striker. In other words, how many more goals would he be responsible for than another striker?

And this is where the idea of undervalued attributes comes into play. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that “winning headers in the opponent’s penalty area” is worth more in terms of expected goals than people give it credit for. If Carroll is the “Greek God” of winning headers in the opponent’s penalty area, then he is worth much more than people think he is.

Would we really be surprised if John W Henry’s Sabermatricians have been doing this type of analysis since they bought Liverpool? Maybe they have just sold a player for £50m who has ‘overrated attributes’ and bought one who, even at £35m, is undervalued.

By Carsten Thode on February 1st, 2011

Tags: Barclays Premier League, Brand marketing, Consultancy, Default, Football, Football Sponsorship, Newcastle United, Public relations

3 comments

This season Synergy was tasked to create a half time activity campaign using Betfair’s two football assets Manchester United and FC Barcelona.  With two of the world’s most famous clubs it surely wasn’t going to be hard to create an ultimate sporting experience…

In September every £10 football bet placed on Betfair offered their customers the chance to be entered into the Betfair Penalty Champions competition. Through Betfair’s sponsorship of Manchester United and FC Barcelona, customers who were entered would have the chance to walk onto the pitch at half time at both Old Trafford and the Camp Nou and take a penalty representing their team.

October saw ten Manchester United fans and ten FC Barcelona fans headed to their clubs’ training grounds for a training day with club coaches and ex-players, followed by the filming of their very own penalty. For MU fans it was Carrington with Dennis Irwin and Andrew Cole and for Barca fans it was at Joan Gamper with Roberto Bonano.

With all twenty penalties posted online for the public vote, it was not long before two teams would be announced and preparing  for the first leg at Old Trafford, before heading to the Camp Nou for the second leg. The winners – with over 87,755 votes between them – were Darrin Crawford, Brendan Doherty and David Snell (representing MU) and Israel Sanchez, Eduardo Rubio and Jordi Vila representing Barca.

December bought both snow and Manchester United v Arsenal at Old Trafford. With all winners finally making it to Old Trafford despite some snow-diverted flights at half time our six winners and their glamorous escorts (Caroline me in beautiful yellow Betfair Jackets, below) stepped out onto the hallowed turf at Old Trafford. As if stepping out in front of approximately 80,000 fans wasn’t daunting enough, the Chilean Miners and the one and only David Beckham had also decided to make an appearance at the match!



The crowd immediately got behind their Red Devils, encouraging the MU boys to an early 3-1 lead over the Barca team, leaving MU with what should have been an easy win at the Camp Nou…or maybe not…

After the Christmas break it was time for Betfair’s six winners (oh, and me again) to start the New Year in style by flying to Barcelona and following in the footsteps of some of today’s greatest players, Messi, Iniesta and Villa, by walking onto the pitch at the Camp Nou at half time of Barcelona v Malaga. With a change in the MU team with Brendan Doherty having to pull out of the competition to attend the birth of his first child…it was up to fourth place Steve Wright to take his place!

With a 3-1 lead it should have been an easy victory for the MU team, however, now it was the turn of a 100,000 Barca fans to get behind their team and it would seem the pressure proved too much for some of the MU team with replacement Steve Wright blazing it over the top of the goal post and goal keeper Roberto Bonano easily saving David Snell’s penalty. However, with the Barca fans behind them the Barca team struck some great penalties and bough the score back to 3-3, leaving Darrin Crawford to secure MU’s victory! Unfortunately for Barca and their fans the MU win was never in doubt as Darrin struck his penalty with total confidence bang into the bottom left hand corner of the goal as he had at Old Trafford securing a 4-3 victory for Manchester United at the Camp Nou!!

So there you have it a 4-3 victory for Manchester United over FC Barcelona! I wonder would Manchester United be victorious against FC Barcelona should fate draw them together in this year’s Champions League…?

By Georgina Taylor on January 28th, 2011

Tags: Betfair, Brand marketing, David Beckham, Event management service, Experiential marketing, Facebook, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sport, Synergy, UEFA Champions League

1 comment

Who better than Patrick Nally, for many the originator of modern sports sponsorship, to offer the latest contribution to our ‘What’s the Greatest Sports Marketing Innovation?’ debate? Earlier this week Patrick threw his hat into the ring, not only offering us insight into his role in the inception of the industry, but also to give us his own nominations for the top spot.

In a wide-ranging interview, Patrick talked about his formative years working with Horst Dassler to create the first FIFA World Cup global sponsorship packages which became the template for the IOC, IAAF, F1 and most sports marketing deals today.

You can watch the full interview on our YouTube channel here, or below. 

So where do you stand? What do you think is the greatest sports marketing innovation of the modern era? Let us know your thought in the comments box below, or in the original blog, before the big vote starts later this month.

By Lucie Bartlett on December 2nd, 2010

Tags: Football Sponsorship, Formula 1, London 2012 sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship, Olympics, Ryder Cup, Sponsorship, Synergy, Television, What's the Greatest Sports Marketing Innovation?, World Cup

No comments

Flicking through the channels yesterday afternoon I landed on the live FA Cup third-round draw taking place at Wembley. Having been talking about FC United of Manchester only the day before, I thought I’d watch and see if they were going to get drawn against one of the big guns.

Then something else caught my eye. Was that Noel Gallagher pulling the teams out of the hat? So it was – conducting the draw alongside Serge Pizzorno of Kasabian. It was like watching Christmas come early for two excited children! Both enormous football fans, the two internationally-known artists were obviously having the time of their lives.

A highlight was when just after Pizzorno had pulled his own team, Leicester City, out of the hat, Noel followed suit and set up a January tie against his beloved Manchester City. The fun didn’t stop there, and what had turned into highly-entertaining viewing continued when Noel, a life-long City fan, stepped forwards to draw a team to face Manchester United – and out came Liverpool to take on their bitterest rivals what is the only all Premier League tie in the third round.

They always say there is a certain magic around the FA Cup and there certainly seemed to be some flying around the studio yesterday, with the ‘you-couldn’t-have-scripted-it-any-better’ draws.  However, the other thing that really stood out for me is that via successfully engaging with people’s passion points, you really can create ‘money-can’t buy’ experiences, whoever the recipient may be.

Noel Gallagher is arguably one of the most successful singer-songwriters of all time, but he admitted he was more nervous doing the draw than when playing live with Oasis at Wembley, and will no doubt be telling the story of the draw for a long time to come.

Click here to view the draw.

By Sara Wilson on November 29th, 2010

Tags: Barclays Premier League, FA Cup, Football, Football Sponsorship, Manchester United

1 comment