👋 Hey, it’s Alex. Welcome back to Sponcon Sports, my weekly newsletter dedicated to sponsored content strategy in the sports industry!

I always love to share resources I use to stay up to date with the latest in sports business. While scrolling TikTok, I stumbled upon Jordan Rogers, a former brand marketer at Nike who now works in the NIL space. Definitely worth the follow for his perspective on big sports marketing moments.

In Today’s Edition:

• Key To Monetizing Podcasts 🎙️

• Fixing Plays of the Month 🧰

• Vikings’ Creator Marketing Win ✈️

🏊 DEEP DIVE
How To Avoid This Podcast Sponsorship Mistake

If you're launching or have recently launched a new podcast, avoid pitching sponsorship opportunities to partners solely as a pure podcast play. There isn't enough substance for partners to invest in an unproven or early-stage project.

Consider these factors:

• You likely have either no audience or a small one.

• Limited data on listener demographics.

• Lack of case studies on sales generated through podcast ads.

• Given a small audience, podcast ads with payment tied to sales may not be lucrative.

You should be positioning podcast sponsorships as a robust social content series.

The Power of Social Clips
While the podcast's foundation is the longform audio and video version, the real value for partners lies in short-form social clips, especially in the early stages.

For every 30 to 60-minute podcast episode, you can easily generate 5 to 10 social clips. There are even AI tools to help with automation.

In terms of channel distribution, there has never been a better time to activate these clips on social media. At minimum, they should live on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels where you can get high distribution regardless of follower count.

On these platforms, oversaturation concerns are minimal, as their primary feed is curated by the platform, not dependent on follower choices. Note: Instagram Reels operates slightly differently, but you can publish most clips directly to the Reels feed rather than the home feed to avoid oversaturation.

Let’s say your podcast has an an eight-episode season like the New York Rangers Club 30 Podcast with Henrik Lundqvist. You can transform those episodes into at least 40 social clips and run them across three social channels, resulting in 120 sponsored posts featuring your partner's logo in the logo lockup.

Why It Works
This approach is crucial because when pitching a podcast sponsorship, you can now provide accurate estimated results, such as "6 million impressions." You can even work with partners to set impression targets, incorporating budget for paid social to boost these clips, which is more efficient than podcast ads or boosting the longform version on YouTube.

Podcasts Overall Value
Additionally, podcasts offer unique value beyond social media:

• They facilitate extended storytelling about the brand through ads, live reads, testimonials, or sponsored segments.

• They allow for logo and product integration into the physical set design, visible in visual versions of the podcast.

• They serve as an effective platform for lower funnel objectives like web traffic and sales through promo codes or links in the podcast description.

The Takeaway
When launching a new podcast, it's advised not to pitch sponsorships solely as a podcast venture due to potential challenges such as a small audience and limited data. Instead, position podcast sponsorships as a comprehensive social content series, emphasizing the value of short-form social clips.

This strategy allows for quantifiable results when pitching sponsorships, offering partners a clear understanding of the potential reach.

🕙 TIMELY TIPS
It’s Time To Rethink Plays of the Month

As November draws to a close, my mind shifts into Plays of the Month mode.

Have we aligned as a team on which plays will be included? Is there a game tonight that could impact the final edits?

From what I’ve observed in the sports industry, in many cases, the stress isn’t worth it.

Series Volatility
Sponsoring Top Play content is nothing new, and it’s a no-brainer. Why wouldn’t you want to connect your partner to the best moments of the season?

While partners love that Plays of the Month often runs in-feed across Facebook, X, and Instagram, the dirty secret is that it tends to underperform. Results can vary drastically based on how your team is playing when the posts go live.

• Timeliness - Plays of the Month has to go live no later than the first day of the next month. Any longer, and it feels strange to be looking back at the previous month. For high-frequency sports, such as baseball, basketball, and hockey, that can mean having to finish the plays of the month edit the morning after a month ends.

• Losses - If your team is playing well, then you’ll likely see strong results. On the flip side, if you had a bad stretch of games (or season), fans are not so excited about seeing the top plays - hurting both the reach and engagement of the posts. There are even times when it’s tough to fill all the spots of a series like Top 5 or Top 10 plays.

The Solution
If Plays of the Month was not sponsored (or could change via renewal) and not performing well, I would adjust the channel strategy to increase performance (in terms of impressions) and decrease potential negative sentiment.

Note - in this example, let’s assume the content series will be Top 5 Plays of the Month.

TikTok and YouTube Shorts

Utilize these two platforms for monthly, multi-part content. For example, Top 5 Plays of the Month - Part One and Part Two. Part One would include plays 3-5, and part two would include plays 1-2.

Why It Works:

• It utilizes a style native to these platforms.

• Your partner gets two posts instead of one.

• Making the series multi-part could increase users clicking to your profile to explore the series.

Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and Snapchat

Take a page out of the New York Yankees playbook (shown above) with their Top 5 Plays of the Week sponsored by FanDuel by running the plays in five consecutive frames. I would extend the reach of this series by adding Facebook Stories and Snapchat into the mix.

Why it works:

• Impressions per frame stay pretty consistent throughout the regular season.

• Replies are private, so if the team is playing poorly, public negative sentiment is limited.

• There’s a built-in impressions floor. If you average at least 20K impressions per frame, that’s 100K impressions per occurrence and 600K impressions per season per platform.

YouTube

Run this on YouTube each month and even consider running a longer version (e.g., Top 10 Plays of the Month or an extended cut with alternate angles of plays) given it rewards you for keeping users on the platform.

Why It Works:

• It’s more forgiving in terms of wins and losses.

• While it may not initially be well-received (due to losing), the platform is very archival in nature, and fans can use it to search for the top plays in the future.

• Longer total running times on this platform provide partners with more value via longer exposure of their logo on screen.

Plus Up
You can add even more value for partners by making Plays of the Month a year-long platform rather than an in-season platform with content such as:

• Top Plays of the Season

• Top [Insert Play Type Here] of the Season - dunks, shots, clutch plays, steals, saves, etc

• Every [Insert Play Type Here] of the Season - this is a YouTube specific example

• Player-Focused Season Mixtapes

💼 CASE STUDY
Sponsored Content of the Week

The Minnesota Vikings absolutely nailed this use of creator marketing in the lead up to their Winter Whiteout game in December.

They partnered with Karlie Place, a travel creator, to promote a sweepstakes giving fans a chance to win a $500 Delta gift card and a Justin Jefferson jersey.

Keys to Success
This sponcon was a win for all parties; the Vikings, Karlie, Delta, and the fans.

Authentic Partnership

• Karlie is a great fit for this campaign. On the surface, she fits the brief as a travel creator given part of the prize includes a $500 Delta gift card.

• The connection runs deeper. Karlie worked for the Vikings as a designer and a content creator from 2019 to 2021. Because of the authentic connection, promoting the Vikings game and a chance to win a star player’s jersey was well received by her audience.

• This may be the most important factor. It’s clear the Vikings trusted Karlie to come up with the creative vision for this post. The fashion-focused lens fits the content she already makes. This not only sets her up for success given it matches what her audience expects to see by following her account, but also, it increases the probability the post will perform well, which is good for the Vikings.

Simple Entry

• Fans win here because it’s easy to enter the sweeps for a chance to win a premium prize. No requirements to follow multiple accounts or tag multiple people in the comments.

• Simply click the link in bio which automatically loads the correct text to the team’s SMS number, send the text, and fill out the form which is texted right back to you.

Builds CRM

• All entries for this sweeps are made via SMS. The prize is big enough to incentivize sign ups, inclusive of contact information.

• Given fans are likely on a mobile device looking at Instagram, it makes sense to have the link redirect to your text messenger.

Reinforces the Delta x Vikings Connection

• Including Delta in this sweeps continues to remind fans that Delta is the official airline partner of the Minnesota Vikings, while also driving affinity for the brand.

• The timing couldn’t be any better with airline travel being top of mind as this post was published three days ahead of Travel Tuesday.

• The team could use the leads generated from this sweeps for future targeting in Delta paid media campaigns as you could assume the motivation to enter is travel. It’s a good base for a CRM audience and or a Lookalike of that audience.

Looking Ahead
The Instagram Reel generated 133K views, Karlie’s most viewed Reel since September 13th. More giveaways will be posted in the next three weeks.

🔍 SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

Sick of the ‘On This Day in History’ content series? Manchester City FC and Etisalat showed how a simple rebrand could generate more opportunities for historical content.

I love everything about this sponcon from the Buffalo Bills and SnapDragon from the stacked layout to the design of the Sound Bite of the Week logo with a bite mark in it.

This collab from the Los Angeles Kings and The Simon Law Group is taking me back to my childhood.

The Atlanta Hawks crushed their jersey patch partner debut with this video showing Trae Young’s connection to the YMCA.

It’s the small details than can take sponcon from good to great. In this case, it’s the Los Angeles Rams putting the mini mic on a fork for their question of the day video with Uber Eats.

🚨 ICYMI
What To Watch For

New UGC Opportunity: TikTok added a feature called 'Fan Spotlight' that allows you to add fan videos to your profile page.

NBA x Nike Alternative Broadcast: The NBA and Nike debuted their Air Time stream for Tuesday’s game between the Bulls and Celtics. Users needed to link their NBA ID and Nike accounts to gain access to the new, live NBA broadcast.

STH Gifting: Avery Dennison worked with Levi’s to produce an NFC-chip enabled patch that was included in the San Francisco 49ers season-ticket-holder gift boxes.

Must Read: Learn how House of Highlights reached 50 Million followers on Instagram and why their focus on protecting follower trust provides great opportunities for partners and advertisers.

Stat of the Week: If you still think TikTok is just dancing videos and posts that are 15 seconds or less, think again. TikTok users now spend 50% of their time watching videos longer than 1 minute.