Uzma Rawn was recently promoted to group director and vice president of sponsorship sales at Major League Baseball. She joined the league in April 2015, after five years in sales with Premier Partnerships. Since Rawn came to MLB as a senior director, change has been the watchword and the league’s once disparate and factious digital and traditional sides have been unified. Rawn had been involved in landing a variety of new sponsors, including Coke, Starwood, YouTube TV, New Relic software analytics and Nathan’s Famous hot dogs.
With the new baseball season approaching, Rawn discussed MLB sponsorship ins and outs with staff writer Terry Lefton.
courtesy of uzma rawn
• Where are you as far as bringing on new MLB sponsors?
RAWN: We are looking to bring in a health care partner; spirits is another category we have open; sunflower seeds are endemic to baseball, so we are looking hard at that category also. … When it comes to looking for new partners, of course we like to see what categories we don’t have, but we do like aligning with challenger brands, like YouTube TV and Supercuts. … Certainly, we think our offerings are better when they are combined with team deals, but if you want a national play, that’s what we can give you. And because we control our teams’ digital rights, we offer the ability to do regionalized executions as part of a league partnership.
• I’m sure the No. 1 objection you hear from potential sponsors is that MLB’s audience skews too old. How do you overcome that?
RAWN: We get that a lot and I have learned to love that question. Prior to us becoming “one baseball,” our different business arms spoke in silos about their different audiences. … We definitely skew older when it comes to TV, but when you look at our digital, social and mobile numbers, those skew younger. We can build out a program and a platform that skews either way — it’s a wide-ranging demographic overall.
• What are your learnings after three years?
RAWN: I’d always sold integrated partnerships, so our online and offline sides coming together as I got here was exciting. Our partners have embraced that and it’s allowed us to bring on new partners. I learned that there’s not one way to sell what we have — you just have to be nimble and flexible. And I’ve learned how to sell national deals.
• Are potential sponsors asking for anything different in their packages from when you started your career? Surely, everyone’s asking for content?
RAWN: I don’t know if they are asking for anything specific that’s different from the first property I sold, which was the USS Intrepid. … Our digital offerings are a lot more robust than they ever have been, but we don’t always lead with media, either. They are still asking for a marketing solution and we try to build one that will give them creative separation. There are partners, like YouTube TV, which we just renewed, to which content was vital. Others want to build their brands into household names in the U.S., so signage opportunities and EVI (digital signage) are more important.
