Part 1 of UK Sponsorship Discussions on sports sponsorship branding begins with Activate’s Jeremy Edwards, who shares some of the details on how effective branding works for the sports team’s sponsor. Edwards discusses ROI and a good brand message which creates conversation for the team and sponsor. Typically, the focus on branding is what the team can achieve to the fan, but rarely does it go indepth into the customer’s reaction to a businesses’ sponsorship of their team. The conversation also touches on how a team’s roster has now become their own media channels through social media. Twitter: @Activative
A former Arena League2 General Manager, Butch Bellah now spends his days developing and training sports sales staffs across the country. Bellah talks in terms of the sports sales person being a craftsman, ensuring that each understands that they should take pride in what they do. Bellah shares his philosophy on starting the work week off right while the competition is struggling, especially on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, and how make sure that each sales call ends with progress toward a sale, not toward a no. Twitter: @SalesPowerTips
FC Dallas is one of the examples of why Major League Soccer is starting to take hold in the USA. VP of Ticket Sales Kris Katseanes talks about how forward-thinking the FC Dallas ownership group was in placing the team in the city of Frisco, led by the late-Lamar Hunt. Katseanes talks about what he looks for in staff and the target market for the FC Dallas franchise.
Peak Sports Management is one of the newest corporate sponsorship third party groups servicing collegiate properties. Peak President Ryan Holloway discusses the tricky world of deliverables in a college sports world conditioned to believe in signage, magic wand RFPs and philanthropy masking as sponsorship. Holloway talks about Central Arkansas, Peak’s Sports Management’s flagship property, which has garnered a lot of attention nationally from a striped field concept. Twitter: @PeakSportsMGMT
Compliance is tricky when it comes to being one of the top schools in the nation, in the Southeastern Conference. Brad Barnes talks about compliance in terms of rules education, how examine both a rule and judgment call, and some of the best practices to working with coaches and administrators in order to ensure that violations are not a norm for a department. Barnes talks about why the NCAA has made some of the rules regarding electronic communication, especially the ban against hashtags on the football field. Twitter: @TAMUCompliance
When it comes to organizational systems and people management, Sean O’Neil wrote the book on the subject. O’Neil talks about some of the misconceptions about why people do the things they do, whether a management style should favor process over people, and how to engage each type of person working within a management structure. Twitter: @BareKnuckleMgmt
North of the American Border is one of the top minds in sports revenue generation in Paul Fruitman, who has sold for the Toronto Blue Jays, Halifax Rainmen, Toronto Argonauts, and Edmonton Eskimos. Fruitman understands not only the ticket selling aspects, but also the social media ones, speaking on both in a combination style that separates him from most sports marketers. Fruitman discusses premium seating, sports marketing, and customer service, along with how each person should look at their own career aspirations in the field, especially on whether to move to a new franchise after a certain point in time. Twitter: @Dngitasawngrp
Brett Sanders has an interesting dilemma, some of his top games are sold out, while others in men’s basketball are a few seats short, leaving a perception that there are no tickets available even when there are. Sanders discusses some of the ways in which Xaiver protects its price point, even when providing discounts, and some of the issues surrounding venues being sold out, yet tickets not redeemed for the game.
Just because a team wins back-to-back FCS national championships doesn’t mean that the job ever ends of the marketing department. NDSU Director of Marketing Justin Swanson discusses some of the issues with being sold out, and maintaining the atmosphere if and when the NDSU football team doesn’t return as national champions of the FCS. Swanson discusses his career choices, how jobs at other schools prepared him along the way, and what he took from each stop along the road. Twitter: @SwanyND
The Danbury Whalers are minor league hockey at its core. CEO Herm Sorcher comes on the podcast to discuss how the Whalers have survived in a league that has seen several members fold and is down to four total for the 2012-13 season. Sorcher talks about the applied sciences of ticket selling and sports marketing, getting into the world of corporate sponsorship as well as community relations, especially when dealing with family fun entertainment.