How Smart Brands Win at Sports Marketing Without Blowing the Budget (Exclusive)

iGaming Real Talk is excited to share with you. We are launching a new interview series that we have recorded at AIBC Eurasia in Dubai. In two days, we have had conversations with experts, innovators, and leaders shaping the future within AI, fintech, blockchain, gaming in the region, as well as some of the hot topics like prediction markets. This series is brought to you by EvoVerse. They are experts in building custom crypto iGaming products that actually grow organically.

This series is also brought to you by GBO. Since 2009, they have been helping iGaming businesses with company setup, licenses, banking, and software solutions. So, stay tuned and I will see you within these interviews. Hello and welcome back to iGaming Real Talk. We are here at AIBC Eurasia in Dubai, and I have sports marketing professional Navneet, and we're going to be talking all about sports marketing.

It's a topic that I'm really interested in because I don't know much, and this is why I'm excited to bring you these insights from Navneet. Navneet, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you.

So, you know, there's a lot of noise in the digital space right now. We have four, five devices. Everyone is watching TV also on the phone, also on the iPad. There's a lot of noise. So, how can a sports marketing campaign break through in this noise, especially when we see that the brands are tying themselves to leagues, teams, and players? What used to be a very niche industry now has a lot of clutter.

It's a crowded environment and it's suddenly become probably one of the most expensive real estates to get associated with. Like whether you want to plaster a logo on a front of shirt of an IPL team or a Formula 1 team or whatever, right? And what does one do to get noticed?

Either you got to have deep pockets and big budgets, so you can break that clutter, or you come up with some really unique, authentic campaigns. So, if you don't have the budget to do a front of shirt, then maybe do an official partnership with a team where you still get image rights of the players. You try and do some content creation like how Kingfisher had done in the past.

They were very smart about their campaigns because there was a big, I think, you know, promoting alcohol, right? Divided by teams, united by good times was their slogan.

Yeah. So, basically what they did for majority of the IPL seasons were, instead of plastering themselves on a front of shirt or back of shirt of a team, what they would do is.

They couldn't do it, right?

They could with the surrogate brand which would be water or soda.

Right. Yeah, that's another master class. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, basically what they would do is they would typically do an official partnership with multiple teams. And along with that, they also pay a little premium to get content with your marquee names. So, and what once you do that, then you're able to leverage that association by spending media money, whether it's digital, TV, radio, whatever it may be because the campaign resonates with the audience. That is the first part of what they do.

The second part of what they do is like a money-can't-buy experience.

Yeah.

So, for example, calling the players and having a meet and greet and a Q&A kind of a session, anybody does that.

Many people do that.

Yeah, but what they also try and do is bring both the consumer and the player to like a public place. For example, like say a mall. And in the mall, you have like one little indoor mat or an indoor cricket pitch. And you get the fan or the consumer to bowl to the player. And that's an experience you can't buy.

You can't buy. Exactly.

And similarly, like when you extend this to say EPL, for example, some of the brands.

English Premier League? Okay. I only know IPL, so.

So, when you look at some of the brands which have associated in say with English Premier League, whether it is with Man City or Arsenal or United or whoever it is, some of their partnerships also have those money-can't-buy experiences. For example, instead of doing a typical.

But is it the same though? Because you know, in India, cricket is like a religion and the fandom is really high.

Cricket is religion in India, yes, of course. But then when you, what I'm trying to just draw a parallel comparison in terms of the money-can't-buy experience. So, bowling to a cricketer is a money can't buy experience. Similarly, in football, if I'm going to have a penalty shootout kind of a scenario with the players of an EPL club, that's something money can't buy either.

So, these are, you have to make your campaign authentic, have something like a unique selling communication, and a money can't buy experiences. So, these are combinations which kind of help leverage the association.

And that's a very interesting point. Thank you for sharing. And from your experience with sponsorships like cricket teams and major leagues, what's one real talk lesson on how brands, whether in sports or crossing into online gaming as well, can use partnerships to build long-lasting value rather than just plastering the logo as you say?

Yeah. So, one is of course associating with a team and doing sponsorship, but the other is to have a face to the brand, which is basically like a brand ambassador campaign, right? Usually, how long these brand ambassador deals.

So, typically, it could be 1 year, 2 years, 3 years kind of a partnership.

You want to have like an iconic name or a face which the public who follow the game can resonate with, right? So, when you look at gaming, for example, one of the more iconic partnerships in terms of making the association larger than life is something like what say Drake had done with his gaming partner, which is Stake.

Yeah, that was epic.

And the way that content goes out on his multi-million social media followers is like it's more make-believe kind of a thing, right? Like whether I'm actually placing and trying to play and win kind of a model or if I'm going to try and see how best my consumers going to look at how my campaign is. So, it could be the Drake campaign which I was trying to explain or it could be like even for example of a cricketer who's associated with a gaming brand.

And what your objectives are. Is it visibility, the name, face, content and also sometimes the clicks on the stories are also equally important.

Cool. So, now recently there have been changes in India in terms of gaming regulation. So, how has that affected the possibility for brands to sponsor and associate in the sports marketing space?

So, from an India market perspective, it's quite unfortunate what happened about 6-7 months ago, but it is what it is. You have to respect the law and having said that I believe there's always speculation that there would be some kind of regulation which might happen maybe not in the foreseeable future, but maybe in the long term maybe a few years down the line. Because let's put it this way.

One of the biggest challenges which have been associated with leading up to the ban was also the fact that the exchequer or the government was also like potentially losing out on possible tax revenues and things like that as one part of it. The other part of it was the social stigma associated with the gaming model, right? So, obviously a lot of marketing budgets skewed towards India in the gaming space have vanished overnight. Jobs have been lost of this.

People have worked in the gaming industry.

Wow.

What brands also do is look at properties which still has eyeballs back in India where they can still create content and do a partnership and associate. So, for example, the Caribbean Premier League, SA20, ILT20 in the UAE, Abu Dhabi T10.

So, these are cricket leagues which either allow direct casino gaming brands to associate or it would be a surrogate brand given the law of the land and stuff like that and also the other aspect is looking at overseas IPL players or rather overseas cricketers who play in the IPL. So, who can probably endorse the category or it could be a famous recently retired cricketer who is open to endorsing an iGaming brand.

So, because some of these guys have millions of followers on their social media.

So, do you help brands with these activities?

We do try and see how we can assist them with say getting an Australian cricketer or a Caribbean cricketer or a South African cricketer.

So, you have a network of all these players and.

We've been in this cricketing ecosystem for about 15 years. You better have access to them.

Yeah, yeah. That's nice. That's a pretty good network in that sense. So, Navneet, thank you so much for joining me as well as sharing some really interesting as well as new details as to how brands can leverage sports marketing even in some jurisdictions that are currently going through some turmoil. Right? So, thank you once again and I will look forward to another opportunity where we can deep dive into some of the latest trends going on in the sports marketing industry.

Sounds good.

Thank you so much for watching. This is iGaming Real Talk. Please do like, comment as well as subscribe. I will see you on the next show.