Sports teams are generating most of the social media value for sponsors from accounts they don’t own.
Social media now rivals TV in its power to generate sponsor media value from game signage. But a substantial slice of that value is going unmeasured—even though it’s hidden in plain sight.
Team-owned accounts aren’t responsible for the bulk of sponsor value. Instead, it’s coming from fan feeds, news accounts, and other sources that post photos and highlight videos. Depending on the sport, those unofficial channels can account for a whopping 90% of sponsor value on social media.
As sponsorship portfolios expand, it’s more important than ever for teams, leagues, and sponsors to understand how investments are performing across platforms. GumGum Sports recently used its computer vision technology to look across the biggest professional sports leagues and measure the impact that third-party social media accounts have on sponsor value. The results were startling:
Our analysis also revealed that certain signage assets are “social first”—most of the value comes from social media, not TV. For example, the new NBA jersey patch sponsorship was just introduced this season, but is already the the top-performing team signage asset on social media. A whopping 81% of its sponsor media value is driven by social, compared to just 19% from TV game broadcasts. And 87% of that value on social is coming from unofficial accounts.
How can leagues, teams, and brands scan through millions of photo and video posts to find just those brand exposures that relate to a specific rights holder? GumGum Sports uses its patent-pending advanced computer vision capability, Sport Detection, to determine whether a given social media post relates to a specific sports rights holder. We’re not just detecting logos—a post might be about anything, and that would surface too many false positives. With our technology, customers can identify posts that relate to a specific sport, team, and venue, for the most comprehensive understanding of media value.
To learn more about GumGum, and how we leverage computer vision to help rights holders, sponsors, and agencies measure the media value of their sponsorships across TV and social media, download this guide.
