(This is a guest post by Allie Savarino Kline)

PGA Tour Travelers Cup champion, Bubba Watson, topped a debut list of Rising Sports Stars to watch in July.  Watson survived a six shot deficit and a nail biting three-way playoff to emerge the victor of the June 27 tournament and recorded his first ever win in a PGA Tour event.

Other notable athletes who made July’s Rising Sports Stars list include USA Soccer Team midfielders Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey; John Isner, who won the longest match in tennis history; and NHL’s #1 overall draft-pick Taylor Hall.

Rising Sports Stars is a new monthly list distributed by Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT) and ranks the top ten U.S. professional athletes from all major sports who experienced the greatest relative growth in popularity during the prior thirty days.

While most lists only track a single data source once or twice a year, Rising Sports Stars takes a unique approach in gauging a particular athlete’s popularity, measuring multiple data points for more than 27,000 athletes that are tracked on a daily basis.

The complete Rising Sports Stars list can be found here and people can learn when new lists go live at the start of each month by subscribing to BAT’s Twitter feed at @BATimpact.

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Image by @Bubbawatson

Allie Savarino Kline is Vice President of Marketing for Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT), the company reinventing the business of endorsement marketing. Allie leads BAT’s market strategy and brand development and directs public relations and partner relations.  She began her career with the Washington Bullets (now Washington Wizards) in sponsorship, sales and community development.

About Lewis Howes

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Recently Digital Royalty brought clients Discount Tire and PGA Tour player Bubba Watson together to create a social media endorsement built on natural integration. The results?  Positive sentiment, engagement and conversion. Still intrigued? Case studies like the one in the video below will be presented by co-host Digital Royalty at the 2009 Sports Networker Summit in NYC.

About Amy Martin

Amy Martin spent eight years living the agency life working with clients such as the Arizona Cardinals, Phoenix Coyotes and the the Super Bowl XLIII Host Committee. She recently spent three seasons with the Phoenix Suns developing and monetizing their digital media platform. During her time with the Suns, she was responsible for concepting, pitching, executing and measuring digital marketing partnerships (sponsorships). Digital Royalty, Amy’s Digital Integration and Social Marketing agency, focuses on developing strategies to help corporate brands, professional sports leagues, teams and athletes build, measure and monetize their digital universe. She has developed a proprietary Return on Influence (ROI) measurement formula to demonstrate the value of social marketing. Her most recent example of social media success is the growth of Shaquille O’Neal’s digital brand via social media and implementing measurable strategies which have resulted in securing major endorsement deals.

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