After Deshaun Watson's move, the biggest free-agent surprises of the NFL offseason were the league broadcasters' new salaries. I understand that when the cost of raw materials, labor and shipping increase, so does the price of nearly everything. Now someone needs to explain talent inflation to me.
“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself" -- Charlie Chaplin.
As Fast.co extends its sponsorship portfolio across pro sports, the first thing you need to know is that it isn't Fast.com, the Netflix-owned site that offers users an instantaneous readout of their internet speed. “Maybe we’ll have to buy them someday," laughed John Torris, the former Chargers and Suns marketer, who is now Fast.co’s executive director of sports partnerships.
Fast.co, aka Fast, is a 2019 startup that has raised more than $124 million over the past 30 months. It has grown its employee head count from 10 to 400+ over about the same time period, fueling its mission to provide one-click checkout to as many e-commerce sites as possible.
Looking to raise consumer awareness and with the e-commerce sites that are its B-to-B customer target, Fast has since late last year cemented exclusive sponsorships within the “accelerated checkout/accelerated payment” categories with the likes of the Cavaliers, Lightning (which nearly doubled e-commerce sales since last June), Predators, Tottenham and Australian Football League’s Brisbane Lions. Torris says around 10 more sponsorships are in the pipeline. “We’re looking to get exposure across every sport and add some women’s sports to the portfolio next."
Fast is primarily addressing the most nagging problem in e-commerce: an epidemic of “abandoned” shopping carts cluttering up digital retail; industry estimates have it at close to 70%. Fast claims its abandoned cart rate for registered users is around 20%. “We’re trying to build a new category of sponsorship in a way that’s sustainable," said Torris. “Everything we do in sponsorship is aimed at consumer awareness and adoption and building use cases so that we can showcase what this can do at scale."
Fast’s biggest e-commerce customers include Saks OFF 5th and Backcountry.com.
Fast.co has sponsored the Predators, among other pro clubs, to grow awareness of the brand
Mike Trout has the biggest salary and the largest social media following among active MLB players -- a combined 4.9 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Accordingly, there’s enough interest in that Angels advertising patch that there's now a shootout among third-party sales agencies looking to take that patch to market, even though it won’t be seen on MLB fields until next season.
Trout’s teammate, Shohei Ohtani, is also one of the league’s top attractions, and since he would presumably attract huge marketing dollars from a large Japanese brand, “he changes the dynamic radically," said one involved party.
Sources tell SBJ that the team is hoping to complete the agency review within a month or so. Whatever price that asset sells for will be an interesting test of whether the team is more closely identified with Anaheim, where it plays, or L.A. around 26 miles away, where the namesake Angels played before moving to Anaheim in 1966 (and then dropped Anaheim from its name six years ago).
As we reported last week, teams and agencies are already active in the market for the 4 ½ x 4 ½ inch ad patches, even though MLB HQ has yet to finalize the program, part of the recently competed CBA that ended the 99-day lockout . Many teams are seeking far more for the forthcoming ad patches than they got for their ballpark naming rights.
The delta between what big and small-market teams realize will also be telling.
The popularity of Trout and Ohtani make an Angels' patch deal a popular proposition
Barclays' NFL credit-card rights are set to expire on March 31, as Alliance Data’s Comenity Bank will then be the issuer of the league's extensive Extra Points credit card portfolio, taking over from Barclays after 12 years.
However, in a nice continuity play -- and what’s surely a testimony to more than a decade of work on the account -- MKTG will continue to service and activate the NFL’s credit-card program, including winding up the NFL card for Barclays and launching it for Alliance Data.
New cards will be mailed to Barclays accountholders starting April 15. Card benefits include 20% discounts on NFLShop.com purchases, and no interest charges for six months on NFL ticket purchases of $250 or more.
MKTG will continue to service the NFL's official credit card program
The Colonial Athletic Association has found what can only be called impressive conversion rates in a pilot program with free NFTs, distributed at its recent men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
Free is perhaps the most powerful word in marketing, but nonetheless, the conversion rates of those downloading the CAA NFTs (created by Fanaply) were startling: The women's tournament saw a conversion rate of 77%, while the men’s tourney conversion rate was 36%.
The CAA would not reveal the total amount of NFTs downloaded, but Commissioner Joe D'Antonio said that a conversion rate of 10% would have been considered a success. D'Antonio. “We didn't know what to expect, because we’re at the beginning but response shows demand is there and we’ll continue to experiment, and someday get to a path where perhaps we can use them for our other championships and get to a place where it’s something we sell, but not there yet."
CSMG is the CAA’s media rights and marketing agency.
Rob Stecklow has joined the Paramount+ streaming service as Senior VP/marketing for sports and news. Paramount+, which carries most of CBS’ sports portfolio, including the NFL, college basketball, various top PGA Tour events, UEFA Champions League and other European soccer, claimed to have 32.8 million subscribers as of the end of 2021.
Stecklow most recently was a marketing VP with DAZN Group and had also held marketing and sponsorship titles at Verizon, the NFL and ABC Sports.
- Karin Timpone, Exec VP and CMO at MLB, is entering her first full season leading the marketing department and is someone to watch this baseball season. A substantial portion of her early season marketing efforts will center around the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier on April 15.
- The Guardians now have over 1,000 products and styles of apparel available for purchase in their team store and online. Global supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic meant it took several months for suppliers to ramp up and produce merch, but Jason Wiedemann, the Guardians’ director of brand management, said those issues did not significantly alter their rollout plans.
SBJ Marketing: Fast.co taps into sports to drive e-commerce awareness - Sports Business Journal
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