At the Toyota Stadium in Texas, home of the Dallas Football Club, the players begin to try out Blackpool rock.
Matt Cairns, founder of Lancashire-based Eleven Sports Media, likes to bring pink and white hard candy when he visits his growing American clientele from the city where he started his marketing business. And it’s not the only sweetener offered.
While sponsorship involving elite sports is typically skewed toward big brands, the Eleven model provides the opportunity for small businesses by incentivizing top teams with six-figure payouts in exchange for offering their stadiums for networking and branding events. next to the field.
“Traditionally, the time and inclination required to acquire a large volume of low-spending organizations does not make commercial sense for elite sports teams,” Cairns says, adding that smaller companies The typically limited marketing function of companies has also worked against them.
“Large teams are used to dealing with global corporations who can easily show investment and don’t need marketing support, so that’s where we add additional value as intermediaries, building audiences on the small business’s social networks to consolidate exposure. . “
What started with a small office in Blackpool in 2009 with static advertising billboards and a team (second-tier Plymouth Argyle) has grown into a business with a £11.1m turnover, fueled by growing traction in the United States which now accounts for 70 percent of Eleven’s growth. and 55 percent of total income.
For Cairns, an approach based on paying a six-figure sum to teams may have meant some initial cash flow challenges, but the “risk” has deterred competitors and left a receptive and far-reaching market to pursue.
Of the 424 UK companies on board, 92 per cent sell to other businesses, ranging from construction to professional services, paying around £10,000 a year and benefiting from networking events held at stadiums and headquarters, as well as advertising. “Usually one or two new business wins cover that year’s sponsorship fee,” he says.
The offering has been further enhanced by a proprietary digital proposition introduced in 2012 aimed at improving the quality and relevance of live match content, including player data and match statistics normally projected in the stadium. .
“It turned out to be a turning point for the business because by offering something that improved the fan experience, we soon acquired more teams, including Newcastle United and Crystal Palace, and built longer-lasting partnerships,” he adds.
“At the time, content providers were very tired and generic, focused on big clubs like Manchester United. “If you were a Blackpool or Rotherham fan watching a game at the stadium, they would be very unhappy with your team, so this was an opportunity to fill this gap and strengthen our local business packages.”
While expansion into the United States was mooted a decade ago, for Cairns, whose focus has always been to visit teams and prospects in person, it seemed like too big an investment in time and resources. It wasn’t until the Covid pandemic and the shift to a more efficient, remote way of working that horizons were broadened and the market pursued more seriously.
Boosted by the company’s first outside investment – a multi-million-dollar sum from private equity investor BGF, an SME financing specialist – Eleven landed its first US deal with the New York City soccer club. More followed, including the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team and the New York Jets football team, and Cairns discovered early on that the world’s largest sports market, valued at $49.76 billion this year, was in some ways quite small. .
“If you do a good job in the US, you will grow quickly because everyone in the industry talks to each other and we were inundated with proposals from teams in different leagues,” he says, adding that it is the variety of mainstream sports that makes the market be so lucrative.
“Whether it’s baseball, football or ice hockey, they all have passionate and engaged fan bases, whereas in the UK you have Premier League football and then there’s a huge gulf between that and the next league.”
In fact, it appears that a multitude of factors have conspired to make the United States the main focus of the business next year with the launch of a new office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Small businesses, Cairns says, were disproportionately affected in the United States during Covid, creating a healthy appetite on the part of teams to play a positive role in the resurgence of local business communities. Meanwhile, demand from companies booking stadium hospitality suites for every game of a season is particularly high, as is “cross-pollination” from companies involved in partnership programs across different sports.
The outreach has led some elite U.S. outfits to suggest charging the businesses involved more than the typical $30,000 fee, but they have so far resisted, preferring to “maintain the integrity of the small business program we have had from the beginning.”
Closer to home, YB Fixings, a Swindon-based tools, accessories and fixings specialist, is a typical small business client whose links with elite sporting teams have proven fruitful.
A year on from its partnership with Eleven and on-field brand exposure with elite football teams including Celtic FC, Birmingham City, Crystal Palace and Leeds, it has replaced its traditional reliance on trade show attendance. .
YB Fixings commercial director Shaun Lee says: “In this industry there was a tendency to go to trade shows just because that’s what their competitors do, even though the return on investment was not that good,” he says, adding that the sports and construction sector has a natural synergy.
“A large proportion of those working in the construction sector consider themselves football fans, so working with these clubs is a way to really reach that demographic. “We recently got new business from a Celtic fan because he saw the Celtic crest on the company email.”
The connection with Celtic is expected to further assist the company’s entry into the Scottish timber frame market. Meanwhile, club networking event deals have revealed new markets and potential customers in previously unexplored areas, including flooring and battery tools.
“Only with a marketing team of myself and one other person, we didn’t have the time or influence to get access to some of these clubs, so having Eleven as an intermediary between us and these organizations has worked well,” Lee said . .