Is Game Day Sponcon Overrated?

👋 Welcome back to Sponcon Sports, a weekly newsletter dedicated to sponsored content strategy in the sports industry!

I've been dying to pitch this LADBible concept to a brand as a custom content series for nearly a year now.

From a brand's perspective, the Agree to Disagree framework is perfect for product placement. Simply replace the glass of water with your partner’s product. Drink brands (cans, bottles, etc) and spicy food brands (e.g. hot takes) can easily work.

From a fan's perspective, it offers entertaining content that showcases players’ personalities, allowing fans to get to know them better.

From a team's perspective, these long-form videos can be repurposed into shorter clips for social media, highlighting the best moments.

If you're planning your team’s media day, add this concept to the list!

In Today’s Edition:

• Should Brands Sponsor Game Day or Off Day Content 🥊 

• A Ridiculous Man City x Wix Collab 🎈 

• Champions League Delivers A+ Sponcon 🏆️ 

🏊️ DEEP DIVE
Is Game Day Sponcon Overrated?

Last week, we featured seven best practices for sponsorship and the future of social media that David Brickley, CEO/Owner of STN Digital, shared with 25 NFL teams. One insight stood out immediately:

“Sponsored content on game day tends to underperform by 40% compared to sponsored content on non-game days. Sundays are a firehose of content and more difficult to break through.”

It’s true. Teams post significantly more content on game days, making it harder to stand out. But is it really that simple? Should brands focus on off-day sponsored content instead of game day content?

[Lee Corso voice] Not so fast!

While competition for attention is higher on game days, especially when nearly every team in your league plays, there are several benefits to activating sponsored content on these days.

Game Day Sponcon – Pros

1. Audience Attention: On game days, fans are highly attentive. They follow social media to get the latest updates about the team. Game day content taps into this attention and often offers stronger associations with content fans desire.

2. In-Venue Extension: Game day content can extend your brand’s in-venue presence to a global audience via digital channels. For example, the Chicago White Sox’s cRUSHed Home Run series was pitched, in part, to Rush University Medical Hospital because they owned the team’s Home Run takeover feature at Guaranteed Rate Field. With the added content series, they can build that connection with fans inside and outside the stadium.

3. Road Game Access: With only half of the games played at home, sponsoring game day content ensures a consistent presence with the team and its fans throughout the season.

4. High Frequency: Game day sponsorships (especially a 1x per game cadence) offer more frequent content opportunities compared to off day series. This could mean 17 games in the NFL or up to 162 in MLB.

5. Game Day Bump: The unscripted nature of sports creates unexpected, thrilling moments that can boost content performance, especially when the team is winning (e.g. Final Score Graphics, Game Highlight Reels).

Game Day Sponcon – Cons

1. Small Fish, Big Pond: On game days, your sponsored content competes with numerous posts from your team and others in the league, leading to a lower floor for performance. A miss can be swept away in the flood of content.

2. Reduced Channel Mix: With increased game day content, there are fewer opportunities to spread your content across multiple channels. We need to be purposeful with channel selection. Guaranteeing more channels for every piece of game day sponcon limits your ability to sell more game day opportunities in the future.

3. Difficult to Stand Out: Game day sponsored content can feel repetitive. Teams post similar content in the same style, and high-frequency posts (e.g., once per game) can become stale and routine. This can lead to fans swiping past without noticing the posts or your brand partners.

4. Per Post Performance: Higher frequencies and routine content can lead to lower performance per post, although this can be mitigated over time in the aggregate.

Off-Day Sponcon Content – Pros

1. Big Fish, Small Pond: With fewer posts on off days, your sponsored content has a higher chance of capturing attention.

2. Timing Flexibility: Without the game day constraint, you can post content at optimal times, avoiding negative moments like tough losses, losing streaks, or negative world events outside sports.

3. Increased Channel Mix: With less competition, there's more opportunity to spread sponsored content across multiple channels.

4. More Custom Content: Off days are ideal for integrated and co-created content, allowing for larger campaigns and extending to more channels.

5. Easier to Stand Out: Less competition and custom content increase the chances of your sponsored content being noticed.

Off-Day Sponsored Content – Cons

1. Less Audience Attention: Without a game, fans are less engaged, requiring more effort to capture their attention.

2. Smaller Frequencies: Off-day content typically runs at a lower cadence, so creativity is crucial to staying top of mind with fans.

3. Performance Ceiling: While off-day content generally performs better on a per-post basis (higher performance floor), it lacks the game day bump from live action, often resulting in a lower overall performance ceiling.

The Decision

In an ideal scenario, diversification is key. Combine game day and off-day sponsorships if the budget allows.

Looking at Starry’s partnership with the New York Knicks, the brand utilizes both game days and off days at the team level to extend its association with three-pointers as the presenting sponsor of the NBA All-Star Game’s three-point contest.

On game days, Starry appears via the Splash Cam, highlighting in-game three-point highlights on X, Facebook, and Instagram Stories. On off days, they were featured in a custom, Money Ball series (see Sponsored Content of the Week), reinforcing their three-point contest sponsorship.

But if you can only pick one, game days or off days? How do you choose?

As you’ve seen there are pros and cons to game day and off day sponsored content. None of which prevents you from driving success on either occasion.

We should not prioritize game days or off days when it comes to selecting a sponsored content series. Those conversations should always start with answers to these eight questions (i.e. goals, budget, target audience, etc).

For example, game days are preferable for driving consistent awareness (e.g., MLB Starting Lineups). Meanwhile, for deeper brand messaging and product placement, off days are likely better.

From the team side, you need to deliver thorough activation details to partners and prospects in pitches. If brands can compare series’ channel mix, post cadence, and estimated results, it will be easier for them to make the right decision based on their goals and KPIs

TL;DR, the game day vs. off day conversation should be a tiebreaker, with the final decision guided by specific goals and circumstances.

💼 CASE STUDY
Sponsored Content of the Week

What do you get when you combine the world's best football players with the top balloon poppers? A best-in-class sponcon campaign!

Last week, Wix launched a massive activation with some of their most high-profile digital partners. The website builder brand collaborated with Australian YouTube creators How Ridiculous for one of their famous balloon popping races.

The twist? Brett Stanford, Derek Herron, and Scott Gaunson competed against Manchester City stars Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, and Rico Lewis.

Note - Both How Ridiculous and Man City (website presenting sponsor) use the Wix platform for their websites.

Five key assets were developed for this campaign:

• Balloon Race Preview

• Balloon Race Hero Video

• Balloon Race Vlog

• How Ridiculous Creator Feature

• Balloon Race Blooper Reel

Hero Video and Race Preview

I love how Wix strategically leveraged the combined 200M+ audience of their partners across social media.

Using Instagram's collab tool, the race preview and hero video had a potential reach of over 57M users. The hero video garnered 23.2M views, and the race preview attracted 1.6M views.

The hero video not only stood out as a top performer but was also edited into a snackable size for social media. It was posted on X, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, and included a call to action encouraging viewers to check out Wix's social channels for more behind-the-scenes content.

Balloon Race Vlog

On YouTube, Wix let How Ridiculous shine.

Their YouTube channel is one of two channels (along with Snapchat) that has a larger audience than Man City's. How Ridiculous produced a nearly 15-minute vlog, capturing the entire experience from setup to the end of the race. This long-form content allowed viewers to see the anticipation, the players' late arrival, a second unseen challenge, and how the players genuinely had fun with the experience.

The vlog generated 710K views, ranking fifth in the campaign. Despite this, the views likely had a longer average duration, making them potentially more valuable compared to other channels, where views are counted in seconds.

Creator Feature Video

Wix created a feature video introducing their audience to How Ridiculous, exclusively on their channels. The video told the story of how the creators went from backyard trick shots to collaborations with Man City, highlighting how Wix helped them create a professional website to attract bigger opportunities.

I appreciate the restraint Wix showed in the campaign's overall asset mix.

The creator video strongly conveyed the brand message in a way that made sense for their audience, producing nearly 1.5M views across channels.

This approach builds trust with creators like How Ridiculous.

Wix let their partners shine in most assets while ensuring they got valuable content for their own channels. Wix branding was still significant throughout the campaign, seen in the balloon race course, social post captions, and a thank you in the vlog.

The Results

Wix’s campaign with How Ridiculous and Man City demonstrates the power of strategic collaborations through:

1. Leveraging Partnerships: Use high-profile partners to extend your reach.

2. Content Variety: Mix content formats to engage diverse audiences.

3. Platform Optimization: Tailor content for each social media platform.

4. Trust and Authenticity: Give partners creative freedom to build trust.

5. Consistent Branding: Ensure your brand is visible but not overpowering.

Using this approach the Wix Balloon Pop Championship garnered nearly 35 million views and 1.2 million engagements.

🔍 SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

A whopping 36M+ views for the Champions League’s FedEx trophy delivery to Festival Day and Match Day.

If you work for a soccer team, you must pitch this Arsenal content series to a brand in the financial category.

Real Madrid has been pumping out sponsored fan features via their @madridistas account with great brand-content alignment for Sanitas (3.7M views) and Adobe (3.2M views).

The Seattle Seahawks showed some love to Gatorade in their No Spill Challenge.

Speaking of great product placement, FIGC - Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio featured a Fonzies bag in the Straw Challenge.

🚨 ICYMI
What To Watch For

Juventus’ Digital Growth: Check out this interview between Mike Armstrong, Juventus Football Club’s CMO, and Kasper Kronenberg, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Off The Pitch. Learn how Juventus Football Club delivered a 40% increase in media value for sponsors due to improved digital performance.

Financial Category Concept: SQWAD CEO, Nick Lawson, shared an outstanding email drip campaign idea for Banking sponsors that can drive educational awareness and generate qualified leads.

Must Follow: This is your sign to follow @creators on Instagram. In the last week the account shared insightful updates to Broadcast Channels, the platform’s new inspiration tool, how to post Reels longer than 90 seconds, and the latest episode of Creator POV featuring MKBHD.

More IG Updates: Lindsey Gamble shared that you can share carousels featuring photos of different sizes without altering their dimensions and a “Post quietly to profile” option - which would come in handy for 3×3 grid stunts instead of flooding followers’ feeds. Meanwhile, in this week’s ICYMI newsletter [h/t Lia Haberman], I learned that Instagram is testing the ability to get early access to features.

Partnership BTS: NYCFC used a native LinkedIn article to share a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their partnership with health technology company, Capital Rx [h/t Ara Sarajian].

The Power of Partnership: Find out why OKX chose its McLaren F1 sponsorship over a traditional media mix.