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| Harry Iwuala, Lead Consultant at Youdees |
The discipline of
sports marketing
To understand sports marketing, we
look at three core elements- the first is the Sport such as football, Tennis
etc. The second is the Sport Personality or asset such as the Club (e.g Enyimba International
Football Club), an Association such as Nigeria Football Federation, or an Athlete
like Usain Bolt. We then have the Sports Event such as the Glo Premier League or
the French Tennis Open. These are the essential elements of sport marketing as
they make up the ‘product’ or asset which could be marketed to individuals, corporates and or rights buyers.
In sports marketing, advisory services are provided by way of strategies to
optimise the value of an asset, attract interest in the asset leading to
consumption of the asset. I love a certain definition promoted by a school of
thought which defined Sports Marketing as building highly and easily recognised
solid fan base which compels the public, corporate/individual sponsors, media
and even government to subscribe to the sport, personality or event for the
advantages of social exchange and personal, group and community identity within
a competitive environment. While we have
the four ‘P’s of general marketing as Product, Price, Promotion and Place,
there is a further four ‘P’s of sport marketing which are Planning, Packaging,
Positioning and Perception. These make up the sport marketing mix. The
objective of sport marketing is to provide a client with strategies to promote
the sport or use a sport platform to promote a brand or cause.
The skill set required to be a successful sports marketing consultant
The essential skill set required for sports marketing practice starts
with having formal education up to University or
Polytechnic level. A background in the Marketing Communication discipline will be an
added advantage. A secondary skill set is a general and extensive knowledge of
sports, sports personalities and sporting trends. You can’t successfully secure
sponsorship for a football league if you don’t know the attributes of the
league such as how many teams play in the league, venues, fan base, exciting
star players and dates for matches etc. Those are what you will be selling to
sponsors and it is also not possible to generate huge traffic to a club if the
marketer lacks deep insight into the working and make-up of the Club. As the
Marketing Consultant to Nigeria’s most successful club, Enyimba International, the
Youdees team in pitching to potential
sponsors and other prospects usually start by telling the story of Enyimba. We
cannot do this successfully without knowing the players, the rich history of
the club, the fan base etc. Successful sports marketing is basically dependent on
providing insights for the client that will help the fans identify with the
sponsor. When the fans can identify with a sponsored clubside by wearing
branded shirts etc, this ultimately extends to goodwill, and the consumption of
the products and services of the sponsor. Identification therefore can be
premised to be a deeper degree of affinity and as a Sports Marketing Consultant;
you must be adept at relationship management. It is also essential to have
analytical skills which will aid in the evaluation of properties and pricing of
offerings. This comes handy in negotiating acquisition or selling of sports
assets and properties. This means that you need to be up to date with trends,
be it marketing or sporting. For instance, the value of Enyimba International
in the coming season will definitely rise as a result of their success in the 2013
Nigerian Federation Cup which gives them a ticket for continental football. Any
sponsor riding on Enyimba now will have the added exposure benefit of being seen
around the continent and being exposed to a larger television audience. This is
the trend that has provided insight for the evaluation of the Club and which
will be presented during any negotiation. Finally, communication skill is
absolutely relevant to the practice. Oh yes, you must be good at speaking,
writing, preparing and presenting sales pitches.
Present level of
sports marketing and sports branding in Nigeria
Sports Marketing in Nigeria is yet to really pick up. Most
practitioners are merely engaged in media content sales. Remember, there is a
whole world of difference between selling and marketing. What we have currently
for example is a situation where a couple of chaps put together stories downloaded
from the internet and go on air to run through the scripts and then emerge later
to claim they are into Sports Marketing. What they are engaged in is simply
plagiarising stories to sell radio and television air time or put nicely, media
selling. Again, the bigger problem that has resulted in low level of sports
marketing in Nigeria is the absence of data. It is difficult to obtain accurate
numbers at match attendance even from the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
You need data to translate opportunities and using estimates leads to error in
outcome. This has most times made sports events marketing not to attract right
pricing and what we end up having is using relationship to secure under-priced
deals.
What we have tried to do at Youdees with properties under our management is to develop them
into proper brands, create platforms that sponsorships can anchor on and then
pitch their attributes to corporate organisations. We are also working on
ticketing to provide hospitality suites that individuals and organisations can
use to reward loyalty either to friends or customers. We are doing pilot
schemes with Enyimba International and Lobi Stars FC and in one instance; we
just invited a couple of friends to see a match in Aba, gave them a good
reception and entertained them with food and drinks. The message we passed on
to them is that the stadium is safe and you can have fun while watching a
football match.
We can only begin to
celebrate sports marketing in Nigeria when Adidas, Nike and other international
sports brands open shops here, take up events and also sign kits sponsorship deals
with Nigerian clubs, stars and acquire naming rights to events. But there is a
huge market here for sports which needs to be professionally harnessed. For
instance, there is just one company, Arena
Signages that is into match day branding and even at that, we are yet to
appropriately price and sell perimeter advertising boards. There are so many
other areas including the organisation of top grade tournaments that will
attract international ratification, athletes’ endorsements and replica shirt
sales.
Why the Glo
Premiership League is not yet as attractive as the Barclays Premiership
Remember, I spoke of the additional four ‘P’s of sport
marketing and the relevant one here is packaging. It is a term you can
construct to include club organisation, stadium facility, league administration
and of course media led by television. We have not treated football as
entertainment which is why its perception index is so low. There is
unbelievable quality in Nigerian football, skilful players but they are not
reaching their full potentials due to poor administrative and management
structures at the clubs. You hardly can see a club with a decent club house and
welfare package. The entertainment treatment must be applied to the Glo Premier
League to make it attractive for empowered youths and adult youths to show
interest. It is no longer hip to identify with the Glo Premier League as a
result of the comparative exposure to the English Premier League and the role
of the media here is very germane. SuperSport is doing a relatively good job
but a whole lot of miles still need to be covered in live television
presentation of match days. You will start by improving the camera numbers at
the stadium, improving in the directing of broadcasts and in the commentaries
which adds to the excitement of watching the EPL. Pre-match analysis helps to
hype and heighten expectations and these are not done here and I am not sure we
have the right kind of personnel to handle that. Our facilities are not built
for entertaining experience as they are just concrete slabs with no rooms for
tea, beer and food shops. You get to a match and find it very irritating to
leave your seat because you may return and find someone else on it. They lack
decent conveniences and these are the total package of match day experience. We
also have to employ competent persons to manage the administration of the
league and these must be people with private sector competence and track
performance at very high management positions. You cannot employ someone who
earns less than N20M annually to manage a league with an estimated worth of
N10B.
What clubs competing
in the Nigerian Glo Premiership league should do to attract sponsors
Clubs in the Glo Premier League must be properly structured
and we are getting there because the Confederation of African Football (CAF)
seems to have woken up to its responsibilities. In 2006, FIFA initiated and
approved a global regime for Club Licensing which CAF adopted in 2009 but
surprisingly didn’t implement. It was only at their Exco meeting of September
21st and 22nd 2013 that Federations were handed an ultimatum to implement Club
Licensing Regulation before the start of the next season. This regulation is a
basic working document that serves as guidelines for clubs to be in existence
and they will not be granted license to operate football business without
fulfilling the guidelines. I can assure you that this will be the catalyst for
Clubs to operate professionally and when they do, there will be the right kind
of personnel, facilities, players’ welfare and general packaging of their
business to attract corporate interests and confidence. It will bring to an end
government ownership of clubs and with this will come a forced deregulation of
football club business.
Is any Nigerian Glo
Premiership Club side worth up to a billion naira (about $7M) in brand
valuation terms?
The answer is yes and no. We cannot answer in absolute terms
since it has been pointed out that the full potentials of football are not
being exploited in the country. A case study is Kano Pillars FC with a regular
attendance of over 25, 000 every match day. Is the ticketing appropriately
priced? The answer is no and are there leakages? The answer is yes because the
numbers you have on the stands don’t correspond with the revenue declared from
the gates. Pillars are a club with so much fanatical following that club
merchandising sells with the speed of typhoon wind. Again, there is evidence to
show that those items are not issued by the club and neither do the producers
and merchants pay royalty to the club.
Another Club close to Kano Pillars is Enyimba International which
records attendance of upwards of 15,000 and given its success on the
continent in 2003 and 2004, Enyimba commands an international fan base that has
been estimated to close to over 3 million. I will stop at the two and then
point out that if they have had the right kind of management over the years, we
will be discussing a net brand value of over $15m (N2.1b) for each of the club
sides.
What brands should look
out for when evaluating a sports asset to sponsor
There are two key criteria that must be met in any sports
sponsorship and these are brand fit and also how the asset meets the overall
business objectives of the potential sponsor. When we talk about brand fit, it
pre-supposes an asset that enhances the potential sponsor’s brand values and
attributes. We are looking at what adds stature to the brand as a result of
sponsoring an event or endorsing an athlete. There is very little by way of
bottom line that Venus and Serena Williams delivered when they were brought to
Lagos in 2012 but brands benefitted in terms of perception of quality by
associating with the event they featured in. When you bring Usain Bolt to
Nigeria, it is not likely he will drive numbers but the market will begin to
view the brand as being up there. We have seen some Nigerian brands
increasingly adopting this approach, for example Etisalat sponsored the Chris
Brown concert in Nigeria in 2012 and are also sponsoring Mary J Blige’s concert
in 2013.
Secondly, you also evaluate the rights owners to ascertain if
they have the capacity and track record to deliver on their promises and also
on the potentials of the asset itself. It is a common problem in this
environment where most of the organisations discuss sponsorship in terms of
mileage and by this they are referring to publicity to be generated. I call it
noise value when it does not impact on the brand on a mass scale especially
when the asset is such that is targeted at the mass market. At Youdees, we take pains to evaluate
assets being proposed to us, this is to ensure that our clients derive value
for their spend rather than just jump into the fray to add to our list of
projects.
On what informed the
recent seminar on sports marketing in Nigeria organised by the Lagos State
chapter of Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN)
We as consultants to the Lagos State chapter of Sports
Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) are worried about the declining interest
in Nigeria’s domestic football which is the focal point of our industry. It is
not just a case of disappearing fan base but a case of domination of the media
space by foreign football, specifically, European football. We are equally
troubled by the quality of reporting, the language being used to communicate
the little that appears in the media, especially the print and radio. There is
an increasing lack of creativity in the media contents and the seminar which
held in Lagos on the 12th and 13th of September 2013 was
initiated to build capacity to breach this gap.
It was also targeted at the Club administrators and rights’
owners whom we sought to take through product management and branding. We chose
resource persons that are well grounded in integrated marketing and social
media utilisation. The first speaker, Dr. Ken Onyeali Ikpe of Allseasons
Mediacom dwelt extensively on brand architecture and brand building which is
the basis for Club business development. And we had Mr. Colin Udoh, a FIFA
Media Officer examine strategies for the optimisation of social media in club
communication for the benefit of Sports Journalists. Mr. Jenkins Alumona took the Journalists
through exercises in features writing and appropriate reporting of sports events.
Key revelations from
the seminar and next action points
One key revelation was the low turn-out of the Club
administrators as only one of them, Alloy Chukwuemeka of ABS Football Club who
incidentally is a former Sports Journalist participated. It explains the chaos we have in
football club management in Nigeria and their aversion for professional
structuring of their operations. On the positive side, Dr. Ikpe drove home the
point that we must first create a Brand Nigeria football before we will start
engaging in marketing it. He aligned with the observation that the potential
for sport in Nigeria is huge and vast but requires product development approach
to thrive.
Why African
footballers based in Europe have not been able to attract the kind of
endorsement deals their colleagues attract
Here again, we must make reference to the management and
structure of football business in Africa having used Nigeria as a case study
all along. What obtains in Nigeria is pervasive of the African environment
except perhaps for South Africa which is some notches ahead. You also cannot
discount the fact that product owners are targeting audiences outside of Africa
and therefore will seek brand fit with faces that appeal to their target
market. You don’t expect for instance MacDonalds to endorse an African athlete
when they don’t have outlets on the continent.
We also have situations where African players do not get
premium agencies to manage their affairs and this brings about their low endorsement
deals. While working at the Sponsored Assets Unit in Globacom Nigeria years ago,
I was a member of the team that negotiated a number of endorsements for the
company with Nigerian and Ghanaian footballers but what you find is that when
they don’t negotiate directly, they come with relatives to act as Managers and
these chaps know next to nothing about endorsement deals. Small figure as $100,
000 gets them excited and they don’t push hard to earn more for their supposed ‘clients’.
In the circumstance, you can see that their lack of exposure and absence of
professionalism are perhaps some of the reasons we don’t see such mega
endorsement deals happening in Nigeria and in Africa.
There is a point of
view that some multinationals operating in Nigeria do not show the same level
of support to sports sponsorship in Nigeria as they do in their home and other
countries where they operate, for example, in South Africa, many of these companies
sponsor football clubs, build sports parks and stadia etc. How can we change
this trend, what can the Nigerian government do?
It is the responsibility of government to make policies that
will either stimulate or compel the activation of corporate social
responsibility projects. Such policies must confer tangible benefits to
compliant organisations and has the potential to create opportunities for jobs
outside their core businesses. It is a fact that Shell sponsors a football club
in Gabon but they can only do that in Nigeria if Government directs them to.
This is because Shell in Nigeria operates a joint partnership and government can
through this partnership prevail on Shell to say we have a need to empower
youths through football club sponsorship. But overall, corruption has been a
key driver of corporate disinterest in sports sponsorship. We have had a Mobil
FC that was disbanded when natives of its operational base engaged in a violent
fight that led to loss of lives. Most of the multinationals are securing
contracts from both state and federal governments but are not made to plough
back their profits into public interest projects.
What Youdees Offers
Youdees unique
proposition in sports marketing is our application of out of the box solutions
to the needs of our clients. Within a year of working with Enyimba, we secured
shirt endorsement for the club which last enjoyed shirt branding in 2006. We
had open discussions with Adidas towards securing a more lucrative kitting deal
and this is on-going. Our launch of the Nigeria National League (NNL) logo and
brand was the first of its kind in the country. We have raised the profile of
the Nigeria Bankers Game, the foremost corporate games in Nigeria. Youdees
took the defunct Nigeria Premier League to the first ever Soccerex in
Lagos and we are currently working with the Leadership of the League Management
Company (LMC) to transform the Premier League in Nigeria so the league can
realise its full commercial potentials.
Harry Iwuala is Lead Consultant at Youdees Limited, a sports marketing agency and can be
contacted via youdees@gmail.com
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