Growing tension between improvements in viewing sports at home and the live stadium experience "could force brands to double up to own both stadium and league sponsorships in order to leverage their brands across both spaces, marketers have been told," according to Simon Canning of MUMBRELLA. Former creative technology agency DT Managing Dir John Du Vernet said that the "evolution of stadiums into high-tech entertainment hubs which engage fans through emerging technologies was changing the way brands had to approach sport." He added, "The reality is it is going to be a more complex synergy, probably more expensive and the reality is a brand may need to have stadium rights as well as league rights to leverage a benefit. When you think about these fewer, bigger, better stadiums and a multi-use environment, that is going to create a whole lot more commercial complexity to try and navigate through." He said that the new world would also "prove a challenge for brands that did not live in the technology space as tech-led brands dominated the next stage of the evolution of the live sport experience." Du Vernet: "If I were a non-tech brand I would think about where the big investments come from and how do these guys leverage and do things as a non-tech brand in a tech environment? That is a really interesting challenge for those brands" (MUMBRELLA, 6/21).
