Advocacy is one of the key reasons why live sport is a big draw for advertisers and sponsors, according to the former head of innovation at the BBC. Former BBC exec Matt Locke, the founder of marketing start-up Storythings, said one big advantage for sports rights holders was that sports fans felt compelled to talk to others about it after witnessing a live sporting event. He said this advocacy was not the case when watching live music and other entertainment. Locke said that he had “been in the audience for lots of things” but never felt moved to talk about them with his friends, like he did after watching sport. He said, "I have a friend in the States who put it really well, 'Fandom is not about thousands of people all looking at the same thing, it's about thousands of people talking to each other near the thing they love.'" Locke was speaking on a panel at the Leaders Sport Business Summit with David Wheldon, the former Vodafone and Barclays marketing exec who is now CMO of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Wheldon spoke across a number of issues, including praising the FIFA sponsors calling for Sepp Blatter to resign -- saying that it indicated marketing was in rude health -- and also the need for mutual respect between rights holders and sponsors. Weldon: "I think all sponsors should respect rights holders, rights holders should respect sponsors and actually the judge of all this rather fantastically is always the punter. And they will decide whether things are relevant or not." One of the most high-profile marketers in the U.K., Wheldon was head of brand reputation and citizenship at Barclays between '12 and '15, a role in which he oversaw the bank's sponsorship of the Premier League. Arriving at Barclays, Wheldon said its activation around the Premier League sponsorship was not fit for purpose. He said, “We were doing all the things that lazy sponsorship people do,” pointing to irrelevant Facebook activity. Wheldon said that the activation of the sponsorship had now become much more relevant, driven by its campaign to give away free Premier League tickets to young kids. He added, “The last thing left in the world that people watch live is definitely sport. That is still an audience that advertisers can reach and actually they extend content around that."
John Reynolds is a writer in London.
