Last Updated: August 16th, 2024
Athlete Partnerships: The Newest Global Powerhouse
We’ve entered a new era of sports marketing. According to Statista, the sports sponsorship market was estimated at $97B in 2023, and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.68% until 2030, reaching a value of almost $190B. What’s more interesting is how that money will be distributed. Research from Nielsen shows that fans prefer connecting with brands through professional athletes over sports teams, communities, and venues.
According to KORE’s annual review of global sports sponsorship trends, 34,000 athletes promoted brands in 2022. In the past, many of these sponsorship opportunities flowed to mega-influencers like Ronaldo and Lebron. But according to Nielsen's Global Sports Marketing Report, this sentiment is changing:
Brands are shifting their strategies away from “bigger is better” and instead focusing on influencers with fewer followers that make more personal connections with followers and thus have a greater impact on driving behaviors such as trying a new product.
Before we go further, let's quickly differentiate athlete partnerships vs athlete sponsorships.
Conceptually, athlete partnerships are a higher level of sponsorship, where the athlete and brand work together to market and offer their unique insights into the audience, brand and product. There's more collaboration than an athlete sponsorship, which is usually more of a pure marketing relationship.
At ProStories, we believe that partnerships are the biggest opportunities for brands and athletes, thanks to the unique insight and experiences that athletes can contribute to a brand's story.
Now, what does all this data mean for our athletes and their marketing opportunities?
In 2024 (and beyond), more partnerships than ever will be going directly to athletes.
NIL has been a catalyst for individual athlete partnerships. That momentum is carrying over, not just to superstar athletes, but also micro-influencers and nano-influencers in leagues and local communities around the world. Now, more than ever, it's essential for teams and agents to understand and leverage the power of athlete marketing.
Teams and agents can (and should) play a major role in the future of athlete partnerships
Modern athletes rise the ranks from high school to pro with marketing opportunities heavy on their mind. And while much of the narrative around these deals focuses on the players, the people who manage and work with these players will play a major role in actually seeing these deals through.
Even for athletes that are “tapped in” to marketing opportunities, between playing and practicing, they simply don’t have the bandwidth to go out and make the connections themselves. And while college athletes in the US have resources like Opendorse and university-led collectives to facilitate NIL deals, most pro athletes and their managers are left to handle this process alone.
Many agencies representing professional athletes have less than 5% of their clients with sponsorships or partnerships. Very few teams (if any) actively help their athletes find individual marketing opportunities.
The agencies and teams that do go out and find these opportunities will benefit as well: more value from partners and solidifying their reputation as a player-focused organization that works hard for their athletes’ success—the type of organization that players are proud and excited to be a part of.
Trends: Unpacking the Athlete Economy
Athletes are natural creators. And while some athletes have put in extra work to create entertaining content and build noteworthy brands, as a baseline, all athletes have a built-in edge that makes them attractive influencers. This is the baseline of what sports tech expert Kirby Porter calls the athlete creator economy.
There are three main trends that are important for teams and agencies to grasp to create the most opportunities for their clients: athlete storytelling, a deepening of the athlete/brand partnership model, and the rise of tech-forward marketing models.
Trend #1: Athlete Storytelling
Since Player’s Tribune started the wave of personal stories from the athlete perspective almost 10 years ago, athlete-led media has avalanched into its own billion dollar industry.
From Lebron’s media company Uninterrupted, to podcasts like JJ Redick’s The Old Man & the Three, The Pat McAffee show and All the Smoke with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, there are an endless number of perspectives sharing their takes in direct, unfiltered ways—stories, memories, and locker room morsels that fans crave. Platforms like Blue Wire Pods and Players TV are helping athletes monetize and scale their shows to an international audience. Teams and agencies have new opportunities to help their athletes tell first-person stories with platforms like Fanword and ProStories.
The numbers support the eye test. According to KORE, athlete content was responsible for over 127B video views and 35B engagements in 2022.
And while athletes are certainly a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to podcasts, as well as vlogs, news and highlights on YouTube, the trend goes a bit deeper. It’s not just because of sports’ ever-increasing popularity—it’s the way athletes are working with brands.
Trend #2: Deepening the Athlete Partnership Model
Marketing campaigns are moving away from the static brand/athlete playbooks of old. Brands are looking to partner with mission-aligned athletes who can represent their products, not just purely off their celebrity, but because of their story, beliefs, and what they want to leave as a lasting legacy.
A great example is Athleta’s ‘The Power of She’ Collective. By partnering with 11 athletes across various sports, Athleta is driving home their core mission while gaining exposure across a range of audiences. But the partnership is much more than just a product promotion.
Aligned with Athleta’s mission to empower women and girls, The Power of She Collective will have a unique seat at the table to influence innovative performance product, access personal and professional mentorship opportunities and participate in the brand’s Power of She impact programs.
Other sports figures are joining companies not just as ambassadors, but as investors. Victor Wembanyama with Barcode (which is co-founded by fellow NBA player Kyle Kuzma), and Maxx Crosby with Slate Milk are a few notable examples. According to Sponsor United, nearly 500 brands now offer their celebrity endorsers (athletes/influencers) equity in operation. Great for the company brands (which according to McKinsey contributes 60-80% to overall sales), and great for the evolving role and idea of what’s possible for athletes.
For collegiate athletes (mostly micro and nano-influencers), there has been a similar effect.
The rise of NIL has also been a clear shift in how brands work with individual athletes, with both local and national businesses working with student athletes, integrating their products into their daily lives on and off campus. A similar opportunity awaits for pro athletes, especially outside of the US where the community connection tends to be more personal between a city and its beloved team.
Trend #3: Tech-forward Marketing Models
Multi-channel approaches have taken over sports marketing, with companies like Fast Twitch Energy and Evolv Technology leading the way with campaigns that extend beyond typical online placements. But when it comes to individual impact, the real impact of sports tech is much simpler—giving fans more ways to connect with their favorite athletes.
A great example is Grandstand, a platform letting fans join an athlete’s inner circle, giving athletes tools to maximize their earning potential. They are making it easy for players to “engage and monetize their true fans as effectively as their favorite creators can.”
The other side, of course, involves athletes connecting with brands. Platforms like JABA and ProStories are focused on making it easier for athletes to find endorsement opportunities and monetize their influence.
What about the brands?
We’re continuing to see a bigger push for data to get more granular with their partnerships. There is a lot of sponsorship and partnership money being distributed, but the “how” is becoming more sophisticated. We’re seeing it from the top down. Larger scale sports sponsorships have had to go through the growing pains of calculating value.
Marco Nazzari, Managing Director International of Nielsen Sports says that even for the brands that are trying to measure ROI, they aren’t necessarily doing it right:
From our conversations with clients, many brands still do not effectively quantify the impact of their sponsorships on brand equity and sales, often neglecting the main component of the bottom line. Brands that do try to measure the impact of sponsorship often use inaccurate data or models resulting in a 68% potential error in ROI. Additionally, many marketing executives are ignoring the long term impact of these investments on sales, which represents 47% of the total sponsorship impact, thereby significantly understating ROI.
And while tracking the value of individual athlete partnerships is theoretically easier, since the majority of social media-based collaborations involve trackable links or discount codes, the focus on data is still very much in transition—similar to the transition that general influencer marketing underwent in the mid-late 2010s.
We’re currently in the early part of that transition with athlete partnerships. That means now is the best time to create a foundation that your organization and your athletes can grow with.
Chapter 2: Setting up your Athletes to Attract Partnerships
So now that we have a better idea of the landscape, what’s the action plan? How do we make sure that our athletes and our organizations are equipped to capture partnership opportunities?
Preparation will greatly improve your chances for securing partnerships for your athletes. In this section we’ll cover some key differentiators to help your athletes stand out from others to not only catch a company’s attention, but also to give your athletes confidence that you are working hard for their success.
Step #1: Identify Core Values and Interests
One of the most important (and somehow overlooked) actions is to simply talk to your athletes. Conducting short 15-30 minute sessions with individual athletes to identify their core values, passions, and how they see themselves as athlete creators can help your organization search out more potential opportunities.
What types of brands do they want to work with? Which products would they be interested in promoting? Which parts of their personal story do they want to amplify?
Naz Bohannon, a professional basketball player in Germany and ProStories athlete, has a side that many would never know unless they dug in a bit deeper:
I’ve always had a passion for fashion, entrepreneurship, and if I wasn’t playing basketball I’d definitely be a writer. I love telling stories that might inspire the next generation.
Almost every athlete has a story that can be highlighted. Emphasize what sets the athlete apart from others in the field. Use these findings to find alignments with your team/agency’s content strategy. Your athlete doesn’t need to have a podcast, brand or trademark style (although we love Drew Timme’s mustache) to get a deal. It just requires some clarity of what he/she offers and believes in.
Try to consolidate your athlete’s main interests into 2-3 main topics so that you can more easily search for opportunities within specific categories.
Step #2: Help Optimize their Social Media Bios
To drive home these core values and interests, your athletes’ social media profiles should clearly represent who they are and how they want to be seen. Regardless of how much they post, your athletes should have an “about” section of their social media that tells their story.
A great example of how a pro can show up as themselves in a simple yet powerful way is Jori Davis on Instagram.
Jori’s profile includes her location, interests and background, she took the time to create story highlights that give a closer look into who she is and how she spends her time. Also, especially attractive for potential partners, she has a call-to-action where fans and brands can learn more, showing she has the makings of a great brand partner.
While you likely won’t be making the profile changes yourself, take the time to let your athletes know the importance of creating a page that shows who they really are. Many athletes default to a minimalist style, using emojis and quotes to share their feelings. And while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does limit a potential sponsor’s understanding of who they are and if there’s potential to work together.
That said, it should always feel genuine. Avoid trying to over-optimize. Unless they’re ready to create their own projects, logos and perfectly designed cover photos aren’t necessary. Fans and brands still appreciate imperfect humanity. An overly manicured profile removes some of that authenticity.
Step #3: Build a Player Hub for each Athlete
While your involvement in your player’s social media profiles is mostly limited to recommendations, you can play a more direct role in an asset that can have a major impact in partnership opportunities: a player hub.
The reality is that most athletes look generally the same on social media. And unless they have really committed to content creation, there isn’t much space for storytelling. With a player hub—a central location where athletes can feature their achievements, links, player details, and personal stories—fans and potential sponsors can dig deeper.
A great example is Travante Adams’ personal website. OpenDorse does a nice job giving their athletes individual pages as well. Another is the previously mentioned Naz Bohannon, who created his hub with a ProStories ProPage.
Ideally your player hubs include a bio, links, media, as well as their player details that fans like to follow. Including details like location and hometown can build a stronger connection with potential sponsors who want to work in specific areas.
Make sure the player hub is something that can be easily integrated into the pro’s existing social media outlets. You want a mix of thoroughness and ease. Whereas a full website built on Squarespace or Wix (like Travante’s) might be a nice-to-have, it can be a lot to manage and create. Plus, a potential partner might not even take the time to look through it all, as they want to get the full story quickly and in one place.
Bonus: Find Ways to Show the Data
As mentioned earlier, marketing managers are using data more than ever to evaluate potential sponsorships. It’s not enough to show followers, reach and engagement.
It’s likely that a company that’s looking at brand partnerships with your athletes has some sort of tool to analyze their influence. But to reduce the friction even further, think about having that information ready to showcase.
Tools like ProStories include all the data you’ll need to show potential partners the value of your athletes and their audiences—beyond the basics of followers, reach and engagement.
Some key data points that could help get sponsors:
- Brand affinities
- Audience demographics (sex, location)
- Media consumption
- Personality insight
Once you have these foundations set, you’ll have what you need to get partners interested in working with your athletes.
Chapter 3: Collaborations and Partnerships
Once you’re clear on your athletes’ messaging and they each have a player hub to help tell their stories, you have to find brands that are interested, communicate the fit, and negotiate a good deal. Simple, yet notoriously difficult for most agents and managers.
Whether you’re talking to brands who have already partnered withyour athletes or you’re exploring a new partnership, here are some ways to set yourself apart.
Step #4: Diversify your Athlete Partnership Offerings
One of the biggest reasons for partnership hesitations from brands is unclear ROI. Stories are nice, but many brands aren’t in a position to pay for awareness alone, which is what most traditional social media partnerships are framed as.
Classic influencer models are still very valuable. Depending on your athlete, you can pitch social media partnerships that include product shots, testimonials, lifestyle shots, and product in action shots. There’s an inherent advantage over generic influencers with products in certain industries like sports-related beverages and health and wellness.
But you can offer more. Having a hub for each of your athletes instantly creates another marketing asset that you can leverage. Not only can this hub feature a partner’s product links which can be tracked, you could also sell the value in sponsoring the hub itself.
Offer more paths to ROI
If you build your player hubs with a platform that allows for individual tracking pixels like Squarespace or ProStories, you can offer first-party audience data from each of your athletes as part of a partnership, something every marketing manager is excited to capture for future marketing campaigns.
So in addition to a traditional social media partnership, you could offer:
- Full player hub sponsorship
- Bio mentions
- Sponsored products
- Sponsored videos/links
- Audience data
Not only does this increase the value of a partnership, it creates a lower lift for a brand. The athlete can create content remotely and organize their hub to showcase the brand partner, which can be way more valuable than a one-off campaign that gets lost in the algorithms.
Step #5: Find Partners for your Athletes
You don’t need a big-named agency or athletes with massive followings to secure an athlete partnership deal. When it comes to outreach, creativity goes a long way. Not just what you say (more on that later), but also who you target.
It’s helpful to look at NIL data for an idea of the industries that are most open to working with athletes according to SponsorUnited.
To keep things actionable, let's categorize these industries into two buckets and go over what you can do to differentiate yourself and build relationships that turn into deals for your athletes.
Digital and e-commerce brands
E-commerce brands are attractive partnership partners because you can be almost anywhere in the world and still promote their products. Finding a brand that has already worked with athletes (either pro athletes or college athletes through NIL) can be the low-hanging fruit that you need to kick things off.
Energy drinks, apparel companies, and wellness brands are all popular categories that have done well for athletes. Here are some differentiators that can show how your athletes are unique and why they could make valuable brand partners:
Region: Brands are often looking for new ways to explore new regions. Working with your athletes can be a perfect way to do that! Explain how your athlete has a close connection with their community and how engaged fans are at the games and events that he/she takes part in.
Including your athlete’s audience data (through your player hub) as part of the package will be hugely valuable here. A brand would be able to create lookalike audiences from your athlete’s local followers—a massive asset for any marketer.
Product affinity: There’s nothing a brand likes hearing more than an athlete being a true fan of their product. During your initial brand workshop with your athletes, list 7-10 brands that he/she uses in their life on a regular basis. Add these to your outreach, and also use them to find similar companies that could also be a fit.
Mission statement: Athletes can and should have mission statements, just like brands. Jori Davis, featured earlier, has “advocate of the lost community of overseas pros” in her bio. As the player’s manager, this is where that creativity comes in. What types of companies could this mission align with?
Could be a travel-related product or service (booking agent or maybe a neck pillow), could be a job placement website, could be a career coaching agency. Maybe a service like BetterHelp, to find therapists who can help with issues related to being so far away from home. Very few brand missions will be exactly the same as your athletes’, but if you can find commonalities and a similar vibe, it’s usually worth exploring.
Local companies and nonprofits
One of the main reasons why NIL has worked so well for NCAA athletes is the proximity and the local influence that the athletes have in their college towns. According to Sports Business Journal, local NIL deals far surpassed deals with national brands in 2022.
For many towns, the university is the hub, and the athletes who play there have a closer relationship to the community than, say, superstar athletes from the closest NBA or NFL team. Local restaurants, car washes, and agencies benefit from these alliances.
Lincoln-based restaurant Muchachos' partnership with athletes from the nearby University of Nebraska is a perfect example. The results speak for themselves (even without a player hub or audience data):
- 600k combined Twitter impressions
- 104% increase of sales week-over-week
- 169,000 views on Google in less than a month
- National press in Business Insider and The Athletic
- Potential investment opportunities
You can find similar opportunities for your athletes.
Go into your local company directory and send out messages to the local companies who have shown to have some interest in marketing. If you are a team with active brand partners/sponsors, reach out to see if they’d like to support further by working with your individual athletes. Teams can get much better engagement for sponsor activities if their players are also incentivized.
Local businesses offer a wide range of opportunities. According to Sponsor United, NIL deals within healthcare, business services, and hotel & restaurant and leisure grew the most within the top ten categories YoY, at 890%, 248%, and 212%, respectively.
If supporting the community (specifically the younger generation) is a priority for your athletes, there’s also a big opportunity for your athletes to get involved with local youth initiatives. According to SponsorUnited, youth initiative causes have become a key option for brands, comprising more than 25% of all community and cause-related partnerships. This also offers another partnership offering, with in-person events.
Step #6: Dedicating Resources to Partnership Outreach
One of the biggest problems teams and agencies have is dedicating resources to the manual process of research, sending messages and relationship-building. Usually this business development role falls to account managers who are already busy enough with other areas within the business. This is where you can leverage the power of AI and technology.
You can set up systems that put your outreach on auto-pilot, without sacrificing on quality of messaging, or putting your URL or email reputation at risk. By combining tools like Instantly (automated cold email campaigns), Expandi (LinkedIn outreach), and Apollo (lead sourcing), you can supercharge the productivity of your team.
All you need to do is make sure you are clear about your target audience, For a sports agency based in the US, it would be something like this:
Company type: Sports apparel, beverage non-alcoholic, leisure and recreation
Company size: 10-100
Location: United States (or wherever your agency is)
Role: CMO, Marketing director, marketing manager
With the previously mentioned tools and some strategic copywriting, you can easily build and automate your lead campaigns.
Outreach Copywriting: The Three C’s
To get the most positive responses for your cold email and LinkedIn campaigns follow the three C’s: compliment, case study, call-to-action.
The compliment shows that you’ve done your research. A case study shows that you have a reason for reaching out and there’s value in it for them to at least have a conversation. Call-to-action ensures that if there is interest, they can act on it.
Here’s an example of the three c’s in action:
Hi John - just came across COMPANY and I love your mission of community involvement. Also a big fan of the new initiative you just started in CITY.
I’m an agent at AGENCY, representing athletes like ATHLETE, ATHLETE and ATHLETE. Reaching out because we’ve partnered with other mission-aligned companies including COMPANY2 TO create a 5x ROI (plus some awesome brand content) with our athlete partnerships.
If you’re interested, I would love to hop on a call to discuss more. Does that sound like something you’d be interested in? Let me know and I can send over a few times.
Thanks,
Tyler
Short, sweet and to the point. You can take it to another level by hiring and training VAs to handle much of this for you, and expanding your outreach to social platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Once you have these systems in place, you can have all these messages forwarded to your team’s inboxes, so all you have to do is get on calls, introduce your athletes and the partnership offerings you have, and lock them in. Meanwhile, your team can focus on creating valuable content on social media, and increasing your brand awareness while the outreach is happening in the background.
Chapter 4: Bring it all in-house
While many of the items covered in this guide might seem like heavy lifts that need to be out-sourced to an expensive marketing agency, the reality is that your team or agency can get most of these things done in-house, better than any third party could do.
It’s not so much about how much you’re willing to invest financially, but rather, how committed you are to helping your athletes become their best selves.
Step #7: Tell the stories of your athletes
Instead of relying on brands and publishers to tell your athletes’ stories, what might happen if you just told them yourselves?
An amazing example of in-house storytelling is the “Stories of Strength” podcast series from the Italian football club Juventus. Not only do these stories offer a look into the players, it also positions the organization as a storytelling partner, which is great in the eyes of brands and potential brand partners.
Most teams and agencies share highlights and signing updates, but very few highlight the players’ stories—and there lies a huge opportunity.
In-house interviews that feature your players can give a huge boost to their profile in the eyes of potential brand partner. Explore their interests and all the things that make them unique. Even a lower-lift setup like an Instagram Live or behind-the-scenes style video can be a big differentiator.
Step #8: Offer an in-house Partnership Solution
Imagine the difference between telling your athletes “we’ll do everything we can to help you find partners” versus being able to show them YOUR team or agency’s app and building out their profile for partnerships on day one.
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ProStories offers teams and agencies a private-label partnership app that’s fully customizable to align with your unique strategies, client workflows, and internal processes. Rather than relying on a third party tool, you have full control—full oversight of features, functionalities, and, most importantly, data security.
This in-house advantage not only provides cost savings over time but serves as a powerful differentiator, showcasing your organization's ability to offer unique solutions in a competitive market. Offer profile sponsorships, product and media placements and even audience data to maximize your package offerings.
Everyone wins: your clients (they see how much value you offer as their representation and feel taken care of), brands (more confidence knowing that the athlete has a marketing-aware agency), and your organization (stays front and center, more value, potential profit from athlete deal commissions).
To learn more about our private-label athlete partnership solution, schedule a demo with our team.
Take the lead in the future of Athlete Partnerships
The athlete mindset has changed. Marketing opportunities aren’t just a “nice to have'' anymore, they are a major priority. Moving forward, athletes will continue to put more value into their worth as creators. The agents and managers who are able to combine storytelling, brand value, and the right tech for their athletes will be ones to succeed and move the industry forward.
At ProStories, we’re excited to help athletes take this leap into the next generation of athlete partnerships. If you’re interested in creating your partnership outreach system and establishing an in-house partnership solution for your athletes, schedule a demo or contact us directly to learn more.