This year’s roster of industry-leading experts presenting keynote addresses and leading roundtable discussions includes: Karim Salabi, Executive Vice President, Marketing, Rona Inc.; Justine Fedak, Senior Vice President, Brand, Advertising, and Sponsorships, BMO Financial Group; Michael Prosserman, Executive Director and Founder, UNITY Charity; Trevor Turnbull, Chief Operating Officer, Sports Networker and the Sports Executive Association; Greg Hounslow, Emerging Media Advisor, WestJet; Michael Scissons, Director of Sales, Saskatoon Blades Hockey Club; Kathleen Bell, Director of National Marketing, Subway Canada; and Milos Vranesevic, Business Leader, Sponsorships and Merchant Marketing, MasterCard. The full speaker roster can be found here.

Each year, CSF travels to a new location and partners with one of Canada’s premier sponsorable properties. This year it’s being held in conjunction with the MasterCard Memorial Cup and delegates will get to take in the action for the semi-final and championship games of the tournament.

But watching the MasterCard Memorial Cup will be only part of the hockey fun as delegates will also take over the streets of downtown Saskatoon Saturday afternoon May 25th for the inaugural CSF ball hockey tournament!

The closing keynote address will feature Peter Montopoli, General Secretary of the Canadian Soccer Association, retracing the amazing 10-year journey of the Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team program, an “overnight sensation” that was actually 10 years in the making.

The full conference agenda can be downloaded here.

Don’t miss what is sure to be the industry’s event of the year! Register today!

The post CSF Gathers the Sponsorship Community in Saskatoon appeared first on Sports Networker.

The Wings of FC Barcelona campaign aims to unite FC Barcelona fans from all over the world and invite them to take their seat in a giant digital stadium known as Camp Nou.

Turkish Airlines – which has been selected as Europe’s best airlines two years in a row – has a dedicated Facebook page for the campaign, which has already received close to 2 million likes.

Fans have the chance to win one of eight trips to Barcelona and FC Barcelona merchandise, some of which will be signed by players.

The entire digitial arena application is run through Facebook and is pretty neat.

After liking the page, you are then asked where you would like to sit in the digital arena.

You select your seat based on preference and availability and then move forward from there.

You can invite your friends to sit with you in the digital arena, which increases your chances at one of the prizes.

You are asked who your favourite player is and who you’d like to sign your jersey before finally “securing your seat” in the digital arena.

The campaign is a simple and creative way of getting FC Barcelona fans to sign up and win prizes, simply for liking a page associated with their favourite team.

You can also share the campaign with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Turkish Airlines is premium sponsorship partner of FC Barcelona and with continued campaigns such as this, surely their presence will be felt and used by FC Barcelona fans everywhere.

Photo courtesy of: Turkish Airlines

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Tim Hortons Timbit Sports Program

Tim Hortons, for example, has a long standing program known as the Timbits Sports Program, which is a community-oriented sponsorship program for children four to eight years old who participate in local house league sports teams. The program’s philosophy is not based on winning or losing – but on learning a new sport, making new friends, and just taking time out to be a kid. Tim Hortons sponsors over 200,000 children annually through the program in sports such as hockey, soccer, lacrosse, t-ball, baseball and ringette across Canada and in the United States.

Bank Of Montreal – Ultimate Fan Appreciation Nights

In February, BMO – as the official bank of the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) and its member leagues and teams – held a series of Ultimate Fan Appreciation Nights in 40 CHL hometowns during the 2012/2013 season. Each team encouraged fans to attend a BMO Ultimate Fan Appreciation Night during their local hockey game and show their fan spirit by dressing up in their team’s colours, jerseys and costumes. One fan was recognized at each event as their local team’s BMO Ultimate Fan and entered for a chance to win the grand prize. Three winners were announced in February and each of them won a trip for two to the 2013 MasterCard Memorial Cup in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. This is an outstanding way of not only giving back to the community, but developing community interaction in order to win a spectacular prize.

Old Dutch – Junior Blade Program

Finally, the Saskatoon Blades of the CHL are currently running an amazing community program called the Junior Blade, sponsored by Old Dutch potato chips. The program is catered to kids who play hockey. They can earn the chance to feel like a Saskatoon Blade for a night and experience what the players feel when they hit the ice before each game. If selected, kids will receive:

• 4 tickets to the game where you will be the Old Dutch Junior Blade
• A chance to lace up their skates with the entire team and enter the ice surface with the starting line-up
• An opportunity to stand on the blue line before the start of the game during the singing of the National Anthem
• Their name announced and picture displayed on the Blades Jumbotron for all of their friends and family to see

Contestants can stop by their nearest Mac’s store location to enter their names. The program is a great example of a small-market sports franchise catering to local fans and their children to keep them involved with the team for the foreseeable future. The program also breathes community. The Blades know that the majority of the contestants entering this contest will be fans of their team and this contest is a way to give back to their community as a thank you of sorts to their adoring fan base.

Canadian Sponsorship Forum Showcases Community Sponsorship

Saskatoon will also be the host of this year’s Canadian Sponsorship Forum (CSF) and Memorial Cup. This year’s forum will feature the theme of building community, looking at events and ideas similar to that of the Junior Blade program. The event will take place from May 24-26 at the Radisson Hotel Saskatoon and will feature an abundance of guest speakers, networking possibilities, workshops, roundtable discussions and more. For more details about the CSF, you can visit their website at http://www.canadiansponsorshipforum.com or check out the video below:

The post National Brands Investing In Local Sponsorship in Canada appeared first on Sports Networker.

Meet Adam Grossman, the President of Block Six Analytics, a consulting firm focused on revenue growth in sports organizations. Grossman graduated from New York University’s Stern School of Business with an MBA in May 2010. Grossman got the idea for Block Six in the summer of 2009 while working as a marketing intern for the Washington Capitals. The company was founded in February 2010 and featured a Web-based application called Partnership Scoreboard.

The Partnership Scoreboard allows any sports organization to analyze the value of sponsorships and demonstrate new engagement opporutnities for those partners. The application displays the results from the company’s Corporate Asset Valuation Model to show how corporate partners can generate new revenue and meet sponsorship goals. The application allows for organizations to showcase past partnership successes, demographics, inventory and activations elements and staff highlights.

“Sports organizations use the Partnership Scoreboard to both sell new partnerships and increase revenue from existing partnerships by showcasing different inventory items and clearly articulating the value corporate partners’ sponsorship,” Grossman said. “In addition, our clients recognize they were spending hours creating sales documents, in-season reports, and end-of-year recaps. The Partnership Scoreboard shows how targeted impressions allowed partners in different industries to generate new revenue and meet these company’s marketing goals on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.”

With the Partnership Scoreboard, Grossman believes that the quality of sponsorships is more important than quantity.

“Our model focuses not on the number of impressions but the quality of each impression,” Grossman said. “More specifically, we put a dollar amount on how sponsorship inventory items drive new sponsor revenue and help sponsors meet their organizational goals.”

Through the Partnership Scoreboard, clients have access to the corporate asset valuation model created as part of the application. How exactly does the model work? A professional sports stadium has endless opportunities to make money because of all the people watching games at the stadium in the stands and on television as well. For example, a company might have the opportunity to purchase advertising space on the walls of the stadium. Why would that be valuable? Any time a player hit a ball in the direction of the ad, viewers watching at home would see the name of the company. The trick is to make impressions on those viewing at home. Grossman’s model analyzes the value of those investments.

Grossman is also the co-author of The Sports Strategist, which identifies, examines, and advocates eight critical priorities that the sports strategist must understand to be successful in the modern sports organization. Also contributing to the nook is Block Six Board Member Irv Rein and ESPN Director of Marketing and Social Media Ben Shields. The book is expected to be published in early 2014.

You can learn more about Block Six Analytics on their website here. You can also learn more about the Partnership Scoreboard here.

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In the beginning of the year, us sports fans chuckled at Visa’s commercials as the chatty, five-year-old girl bombarded Ray Lewis with questions such as “What’s your favorite color?” and as unbeknownst to Coach Harbaugh an epic speech is given to the 49ers in their locker room by a random fan.  As the official sponsor of the National Football League, Visa began airing these commercials at the end of the summer to kick-off the football season.

Fast forward four or five months, and the sports world was buzzing endlessly about the 49ers facing the Baltimore Ravens in Ray Lewis’ “last ride” in a Superbowl game.  The folks at Visa may be psychic, genius, sports savvy or maybe all three.  Whichever is, the value of their NFL sponsorship likely took several twist and turns throughout the NFL season and likely hit one of its highest points during Superbowl XLVII.

While the consuming public enjoyed the creativity of the NFL-Visa partnership, sponsorship executives from the two camps were likely tracking the outcome and effectiveness of the campaign.  With the value and effectiveness of sponsorship partnerships rising and falling continuously throughout a campaign, it is important to receive timely and accurate information pertaining to partnerships such as these.  Though not every agency, property or brand launches a campaign on as large of a scale as the NFL and Visa, Chicago-based Navigate Research, a sponsorship valuation firm, recently launched Sponsorship Snapshot so that entities of any size may track the performance of their sponsorship activities.

Sponsorship Snapshot

Just a few short months after launching new sponsorship valuation software, Navigate continues to make waves in the sports and entertainment sponsorship industry by introducing its newest product, the Sponsorship Snapshot.  With Sponsorship Snapshot, Navigate provides its clients with timely information about the performance of the client’s sponsorship activities in comparison to the industry norms.

The report includes efficient and cost-effective information that includes pertinent data regarding the client’s sponsorship initiatives.  Produced in a fairly short timeframe (three weeks from the campaign’s kick-off), the final report highlights key insights and overall sponsorship performance.  The report also includes actionable recommendations from Navigate professionals.

In efforts to make Sponsorship Snapshot accessible to sports agencies, brands and properties of all sizes, Navigate executives designed its service to be cost effective and flexible to various budgets.

“The Sponsorship Snapshot delivers executive level insights to analyze a sponsorship’s performance—a great solution when working with confined budgets”, says AJ Maestas, President and Founder of Navigate Research.

Sponsorship Navigator

Additionally, Navigate offers its clients the option to utilize a complimentary, light version of Sponsorship Navigator, sponsorship valuation software launched by the company last fall.  The Sponsorship Navigator software provides sponsorship professionals with a cost-effective, online portal to accurately measure the media value, quantitative benefits and qualitative benefits of a sponsorship investment.  Utilizing statistical information from Nielsen Company and Scarborough Sports Marketing, it enables users to assess the fair market value and demographic reach of various corporate sponsorships.

Originally, Navigate’s sponsorship valuation service did not include data from Nielsen and Scarborough.  With Nielsen adding information about the ratings and pricing data of different events and Scarborough providing users with local demographic data based on sports fans’ insights, the Navigator software adds greater depth and detail to sponsorship valuation.

So What’s the Appeal?

Traditionally, seeking services to evaluate and analyze sponsorship agreements only made financial sense for companies with large budgets, say of $250,000 or more.  However, in the ever-changing sports and entertainment sponsorship industry, every sponsorship deal regardless of the monetary value is important.  With Navigate’s products and services, brands, agencies and properties of all sizes have the opportunity to take advantage of customized and high-quality sponsorship valuation services.

Overall, whether there’s a local sports agency, a major league sports team or an international sports property that needs to track the performance of its sponsorship, Navigate Research offers products and services that can fit your needs.

Navigate Research

Navigate Research is an industry leader in sports and entertainment sponsorship measurement and analysis.  The research firm focuses on providing its clients with custom market research, sponsorship valuation and sponsorship ROI information.  Since its inception, Navigate professionals have measured and provided analysis for sponsorship transactions valued at over $2 billion for both brands and properties.  Notable clients include the National Football League, Major League Soccer, ESPN, Sony, Red Bull, The Marketing Arm, AAA and more.

Comment below on your view of the Sponsorship Snapshot. Keep the conversation going on our Facebook page and send us a tweet @SportsNetworker

The post What is the “Sponsorship Snapshot?” appeared first on Sports Networker.

The study looks to both academic and industry resources to provide information that is relevant and ethical and provides outstanding sponsorship expertise for sponsors, sponsees and agencies.

Here are a few notable statistics from the study:

• Sponsorship marketing budgets increased to 29.6% in 2011 from 22.3% in 2010
• Sponsorship industry size increased to 1.59B in 2011 from 1.55B in 2010
• Sponsorship activation increases purchase intent by 475%* however activation spending continues to fall below the minimum recommended 1:1 activation ratio**
• Festivals, Fairs and Annual Events are seeing the largest growth in sponsorship spending

The next edition of the CSLS will be the seventh version of its kind and the study has been in place since 2007.

Initial data for the CSLS is collected, analyzed and presented at the Sponsorship Marketing Council of Canada (SMCC) Conference in Toronto on April 25, 2013. The survey will remain live and additional findings will be presented at the 2013 Canadian Sponsorship Forum from May 24-26, 2013, held in conjunction with the MasterCard Memorial Cup in Saskatoon.

For more information about the CSLS, you can read the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape study.

Canadian Sponsorship Forum

As mentioned above, this information will be presented at the 2013 Canadian Sponsorship Forum this May. The ninth annual Forum is presented by TrojanOne and hosted by the 2013 Mastercard Saskatoon Memorial Cup. It brings together top marketing professionals, who will be responsible for sharing ideas and creating the future of sponsorship.

At the forum attendees will explore the latest research, analysis, trends and more, while connecting with the brightest minds in the sponsorship marketing community.

It is a networking, marketing and sponsorship event like no other and includes workshops, roundtable discussions, hot topic discussions, hands on training sessions, special interest panels and keynote presentations. The information is next to endless.

For more information about the Canadian Sponsorship Forum you can watch the video below:

Photo Credit: www.acaweb.ca

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Until today, nothing to my knowledge. However, that changed when Belvedere Vodka signed a sports sponsorship deal to become the official vodka of the PGA of America and the PGA Championship, the golf season’s final Major.

“The PGA of America is delighted that Belvedere Vodka will serve as the official vodka of the PGA of America and the PGA Championship,” said PGA of America chief business officer Kevin Carter.

Now before everyone freaks out and thinks that golf may turn into what occurred in the film Happy Gilmore, Belvedere Vodka thinks of itself as the gold standard in vodka and that golf represents the kind of clientele they would best be marketed to.

“The PGA of America and its professionals represent the gold standard in the game and business of golf. Through world-class events, such as the PGA Championship, and innovative programmes, they are true innovators in how they engage with their consumers,” said Belvedere Vodka president Charles Gibb.

“Whether it’s at the 19th hole of the golf club or the hospitality areas of the PGA Championship, Belvedere will now be enjoyed by all those who appreciate the finest vodka in the world.”

Belvedere will support the national body and the event until 2015 with a wide-ranging marketing campaign, featuring advertising, social and digital media activation, and point-of-sale promotions, set to run for the duration of the partnership.

The financial terms of the agreement were not released.

Photo Credit: Twitter

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When the “Powers That Be” in college sports first created athletic conferences at the tail end of the 1800s, they developed the conferences with the intent of assembling institutions from various geographical areas to compete with each other.  For instance, in 1894, the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference became one of the first college athletic conferences and consisted of a conglomerate of twenty-seven colleges in the south that provided the teams and fans with highly competitive football contests in that region.  However, in the late 1990s, conferences started to stray away from their geographical models and the next several years saw collegiate athletic programs play an all out, nationwide game of institutional musical chairs.

How Conference Realignment is Changing College Athletics

Identity Crises

In the latest wave of conference realignments, the various conferences appear unfamiliar in the college sports arena leaving conferences to find themselves in the midst of mid-life crises.  For instance, looking at the condition of the Big East conference today, one might find it hard to believe that less than ten years ago sports fans considered the Big East one of the best conferences in college basketball.  The conference once included basketball powerhouses UConn, Georgetown, Syracuse, Marquette, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame and Louisville.  At one point the Big East even flirted with strengthening their football programs by adding schools such as Miami, Rutgers and West Virginia that also ran strong basketball programs.

However, in recent years competing conferences have picked the Big East apart with Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Louisville and Notre Dame leaving the Big East to join the ACC, while Rutgers heads to the Big Ten.  Unrecognizable, the Big East is becoming a shell of its former self with its remaining elite basketball programs—DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall and Villanova—leaving to start the basketball-focused Catholic 7 conference.  Similar to the Big East, the ACC also struggles to hold onto its identity as the football-heavy conference recently failed to put together the exciting and competitive schedule of past years.

Rivalries Ruined

One of the best things about college sports is the inter-conference rivalries that date back as far as the 1800s.  In 2011, college football fans across the country witnessed the end of an era when the WVU-Pittsburgh “Backyard Brawl” rivalry ended, a game that the two football teams played every year since 1942.  Known for being one of the most intense rivalries in college sports, mainly because of the close proximities of the universities to each other, the contest ended with WVU’s choice to move to the Big East in 2012.

With the recent conference realignments looming, other long-lasting college rivalries undoubtedly face the same fate as WVU and Pittsburg.  For instance, one of the biggest college basketball rivalries in the history of college basketball, Georgetown-Syracuse, will end with Syracuse heading to the ACC and Georgetown heading to the Little Big East (a.k.a. the Catholic 7) in upcoming years.  Maryland will halt its rivalry with Duke by joining the teams in the heartland-located Big Ten.  The Missouri-Kansas Border War that started because of an actual war between the two states in the 1890s ended in 2012 when Missouri left the unstable Big 12 for the ever-expanding SEC. Unless Aggie Alum Ryan Guillen gets House Bill 778 pushed through, the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry will also remain shelved because of A&M joining the SEC.  Lastly, the selfish ways of the Fighting Irish will end the Michigan-Notre Dame matchup because the independent Notre Dame football team must play at least five ACC games per its contract with the conference, and it chose not to schedule a matchup with Michigan on any of its other remaining dates.

Financial Impact

While conferences such as the Big East and the Mountain West watch nervously as other conferences win the bidding for various powerhouse athletic programs, other conferences such as the Big 10 and SEC continue to add revenue to their growing leagues. Basically, the Big East continues to lose institutions to other conferences which diminishes its television market reach.  Meanwhile, the Big Ten continues to acquire more viewers for the Big Ten Network by expanding from the Midwest to the East Coast with its addition of Maryland and Rutgers (the Washington D.C./Baltimore and New York/New Jersey television markets) to its portfolio.

Nobody knows how the realignments of today may affect college sports ten years from now.  The commissioners and other shakers-and-movers of this phenomenon might actually pull off some genius plan that none of us lay people could have ever predicted.  College basketball fans might hold the Catholic 7 in the same esteem as the Big East.  Texas A&M and Texas might just stop caring about their long-standing rivalry.  Maybe the new realignments will bring in additional billions of dollars into college sports.  The only thing to be certain about at this point is that a new era of college sports has been ushered in and fans can only hope for the best.

Comment below on your view of conference realignment. Do you feel it is good or bad for college athletics? Make sure to comment below and continue the conversation on our Facebook page and on Twitter @SportsNetworker

The post Significance and Ramifications of Conference Realignment in College Athletics appeared first on Sports Networker.

Also seeking sports sponsorship deals is three-time Cup champ Tony Stewart. Stewart-Haas Racing — owned and operated by Stewart — has around 20 races spread out over three cars that need a top sponsor. The lack of sports sponsorship deals for two prominent NASCAR names could potentially mean that big name corporations are not interested in sponsoring NASCAR or this could solely be linked to the team’s stubborn nature, as they seek the perfect deal before signing on the dotted line.

“We’re just looking for the right corporations that are a good fit for us, that are long-term, that want to be in the sport for a while,” said Earnhardt Jr. “You don’t just take the first guy that comes along.” “You have to think about what’s good for his image,” said Hendrick. “Some of that has stopped us. There’s been a lot of interest.”

Drivers could be hampered by NASCAR policy which states communications companies like AT&T are not eligible for sponsorship deals because of Sprint’s exclusive naming rights arrangement for the Cup series. Also, big tobacco sponsorship money is no longer welcome in NASCAR. It is rare for a driver to find a full sponsorship deal with a company, but it is possible. Danica Patrick potentially has Go Daddy aboard for the entire season as her primary sponsor, so it can be done.

NASCAR is still among the best ‘bang-for-your-buck’ value in sports, which is why it makes little to no sense that star names like Earnhardt Jr. and Stewart cannot find the sponsors they need. Maybe it’s time to take a step back for these owners and go with what is available instead of what is preferred. They could be digging their own financial graves by leaving these races unattended from a sports sponsorship point of view. A big financial mistake in my opinion.

Photo Credit: www.allleftturns.com

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Pistorious was charged with the murder of his girlfriend, who was shot in his home on Thursday after Pistorious mistook her as a burglar.

The 26-year old South African sprinter had deals with Nike, Oakley ,perfume maker Thierry Mugler and running blade manufacturer Ossur. His deals were worth an estimated $4.7 million.

While most of his sponsors declined to comment, the South African satelite TV channel M-Net announced that they would be pulling their campaign featuring Pistorious immediately out of respect for him and his family.

The potential loss of his sponsorships comes as no surprise. Often, when athletes find themselves in any sort of legal trouble, sponsors who are worried about portraying a negative image will cut ties with those athletes. In recent cases, Nike ended its’ sponsorship with cyclist Lance Armstrong after it was revealed he was doping during his run of seven straight Tour de France titles. Gatorade cut ties with Tiger Woods when news broke that he had cheated on his wife.

Sports marketing firm Brand Rapport’s Nigel Currie compared this case to the 1994 murder trial of football star O.J. Simpson, and said that this is new territory.

“With all the others, there was always the chance [the sports figure] could come back in some other guise or reinvent himself or do something,” Currie said. This time, “if [Pistorius] is responsible, it is life and death as opposed to a personal scandal or a cheating drugs scandal.”

Photo credit: Anja Niedringhaus/AP

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