Balancing Sponsorship Content with Entertainment Value.
Optimize your sponsorship assets and inventory. Review and categorize existing sponsor inventory, open spaces, type and what is sold for in-game assets. We hear a lot that games are overrun by sold sponsor obligations and don’t leave enough time to prioritize the fan entertainment. During this down time, set meetings with sponsorship departments to understand their objectives and share yours. In general, we recommend the guidelines below to allow enough flexibility to call a show that gives your team the home advantage and keep entertainment quality high. Focusing on helping get the team a win can make it a collaborative conversation instead of combative.
Leave the final 1-2 media timeouts free of programming. This gives the game director flexibility throughout the game to respond to game action and not worry about floating and flexing elements.
Mix up the Content. Historically, season-long features were sold and the same content ran each event. Today, fans lose interest and notice the repeats. For games, shuffles, contests, features and cams, mix up the content and limit having any one particular feature to 25-50% of your games (depending on total-if you’re in College Football, 50% is 4 games, that works. Baseball, 40 games is going to burn out your fans).
Avoid playing commercials as they would play on TV. Work with partners to co-brand elements or use game-action pieces as sponsored assets. If fans wanted to see commercials, they would watch from home. Give them an entertainment experience they cannot get anywhere else to keep them coming to your events.
Maximize value of key elements. Review your summary reports from your Evolved Experience Solutions program to identify the top performing elements. These are things your fans love, pay attention to and look forward to, and therefore offer great value to sponsors. Game action moments, talent, interactive elements are often overlooked. Work with sponsorship to create tiered valuation that can enhance revenue and minimize in-game clutter by selling these items as premium in-game features.
Minimize PA reads. Sponsors love having a read, often a long one, with their spot but for fans, less is more. Minimizing the “noise” during timeouts make all content more notable. Reads should be limited to no more than 30 words (~0:10-0:12 seconds).
Optimize your concourse flow and programming-The concourse sets the stage for the quality and attention to detail the many fans will expect in the game presentation. The organization, flow, design elements and interactive features make a huge role. With COVID-19, the need for social distancing, space and organized transit becomes vital. Take this time to review what is in your concourse and minimize elements that congest and do not elevate the experience. This is a great time to minimize oversold sponsor activations and find alternate placements before it is a requirement once events resume.
Avoid over programming a break. Factor in the time it takes for the intro, return to play and transitions. While it may seem like two 0:30 second videos will fit without issue in a 0:90 second break, if the officials delay the start or you need to get energy high at the end, be prepared to float a video or give yourself ample padding to start to avoid it running over into play action.
For Timeouts at least 2- minutes in length:
Limit each timeout to a maximum of three (3) elements with no more than two (2) sponsored elements + one (1) unsponsored elements.
Keep reads under 0:10 seconds & recognitions under 0:30. It may seem like there is so much to say, but the fans will stop listening to even the best scripted reads past this time mark.
For Timeouts between 0:30-under 2-minutes in length:
Limit each timeout to a maximum of two (2) elements.
Limit live reads or hits to one per timeout.
Evolved has templates and formats to help with this. Interested in receiving a copy? Reach out to your experience analyst who can help you tackle this effort or complete the Contact Us link above and we’ll send you a complimentary copy.