Golden opportunities and the shared passion of sport

As the UK wins more gold medals in Rio, Sky Media’s Duncan Wynn makes his pitch for getting brands involved with sport

The beautiful thing with sport is that it brings communities of people together. This not only presents exciting opportunities for advertisers to engage with people on a global level, but also creates conversations on a personal level too.

This year’s Super Bowl 50 for instance attracted 111.9 million TV viewers, and this doesn’t even count those that watched the game on their tablets, computers or streaming boxes.

With the Rio Olympics in full swing, and the Premier League having just kicked-off, our nation of sport fanatics will be looking for ways to get closer than ever to the sports they love. In turn, such fixtures present rich and lucrative engagement opportunities for brands and advertisers to reach out to their target audience.

Today, fans are spoilt for choice in terms of how they watch and interact with their favourite sport. Whether it’s on a TV in the home or in the pub, via a live-streaming service like Facebook or Twitter or mobile devices, viewers’ habits are diverse, meaning advertisers need to be agile.

While these multiple platforms offer brands new and exciting opportunities to engage their audience in different ways, it also presents multiple challenges.

Those that succeed will be those that understand personal viewer habits and how each individual wants to consume sport and then adapt their strategies accordingly. Yet for campaigns to be effective, it’s not just about running them on as many screens as possible, but using and having data to be on the right screen at the right time.

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Time shifting of TV is often lazily grouped into ‘loads’ but the UK average of live viewing is actually 87%. Furthermore, sports is a must watch live genre – in fact 91% of all sport is watched live and this has increased over the last few seasons.

Sport is only surpassed by News (98%). Interestingly, fans want to capitalise on the moment to avoid missing out on all the action. In this sense, linear TV is the big business channel for advertisers to maximise brand exposure and engage in real-time.

While TV is considered a ‘traditional’ channel, it still remains the king of media in terms of ad spend and for a reason. Advertisers cannot ignore the fact that TV leads the market with the highest return on investment, with an average of £1.79 profit for every £1 invested, according to the latest Thinkbox study.

Furthermore, this year marks the sixth consecutive year that TV advertising revenue has grown in the UK.

One reason for this being the significant amount of time people spend in front of the screen making them a prime target for brands. To put things into perspective, the average UK viewer watches around three hours and 37 minutes of TV a day; two thirds of which is commercial TV and 87% live (Barb).

When you look at ‘video’ advertising time in all its forms (cinema, You Tube etc) for the average UK adult, TV accounts for a massive 94% – and with TV you know it’s being seen by a real person, in great quality and in an engaging and safe environment.

When it comes to sport, even those who have limited viewing time will prioritise the big derby game or Olympic 100m sprint final to enjoy with friends and family. It is therefore unsurprising that the social element of sport TV is big.

Every evening in the UK there are 17 million conversations about TV advertising. Fans can share their opinions on sporting events as they happen, often extending conversations to Twitter and Facebook. Such social platforms offer brands further engagement opportunities, allowing them to be part of the conversation and interacting with fans on a personal level.

Surprisingly, viewing in pubs – the original ‘social’ sports viewing – is too often over looked. Viewing via pubs and clubs which is robustly measured separately to Barb adds about another 30% of viewing to a Premier League game – an often overlooked partnership opportunity.

The great thing about sport is that events occur throughout the year. For advertisers this presents continuous opportunities to engage with audiences and build quality brand awareness.

However, it’s not just during the event that matters, it’s about creating a buzz in the lead up and afterwards.

Take for example the Premier League. This month’s lucrative world record transfer of Paul Pogba’s switch from Juventus to Manchester United for £92.3 million, has undoubtedly been a huge talking point ahead of the new season, catching the attention of fans across the world. For Pogba’s sponsor Adidas, it couldn’t get any better.

Playfully teasing fans last month, the sportswear giant released a short trailer on Twitter with unsubtle references to the Manchester club featuring the hooded Frenchman. Combining Pogbas’s growing popularity coupled with United, it just shows how sports sponsorship can play a powerful role in building brand exposure.

It is therefore important that brands and advertisers are constantly thinking about new ways to elevate audience engagement to the next level and how deeper partnerships with media owners can open new and untapped comms opportunities.

Behind the scenes, the success or failure of a campaign comes down to providing high quality content and effectively honing it to meet consumers’ needs across every channel. It is here that applying a data-led approach is crucial.

By harnessing customer, viewer and device insights advertisers can deliver truly connected campaigns that tell a story across multiple platforms. The challenge for the industry is bringing together data, technology and creativity to ensure brands don’t lose sight of delivering compelling and effective advertising for brands and viewers.

Brands that can tap into the unrivalled passion that sport embodies and align themselves with true brand values, open themselves up to a unique global audience, inevitably increasing ROI.

Duncan Wynn is director of sales at Sky Media