I can't tell you which brand it was, but I heard a story recently of a major sponsor in a sport that is close to my heart, that is realigning it's sponsorship portfolio into properties and programmes where (detailed) data is available from the rightsholder for the sponsor to use as part of it's CRM and digital marketing plans.
I'm hearing terms in my job at the moment like 'programmatic', and 'behavioral' targeting' - these are phrases I'm used to hearing when talking about online advertising - not necessarily when it comes to (sports) sponsorship.
It just shows to me how much sponsorship is now seen by brands as an effective and important marketing channel, and hence forward thinking marketeers want to integrate sponsorships into their entire marketing programme, rather than have it sitting as a 'nice to have' at the bottom of the plan.
So what does this new data-driven world mean for rightsholders? Well, that's clear - you need to have a relationship with your fans, spectators, visitors - and within this relationship you need to either own data that allows your sponsors to speak to these people, or have the ability for your sponsors to engage with them. And in an ideal world, this data can be integrated into the sponsors existing CRM strategy.
Thinking about where this can lead - will sponsors start to value a potential sponsorship, not on media value, but on the value of the data that the rightsholder owns? My guess is that this is already happening.
And what does this mean for cycling? In the absence of paying spectators, this becomes a challenge for the event organisers. Not so much for the teams though - and in this new world where data is so important, the creation of Velon, the body that now represents 11 of the World Tour Teams, could be a stroke of absolute genius. Not only are they producing and owning content, but they can also start to aggregate their fanbases into one, big, cycling mad, audience segment - a valuable group of people to advertisers.
