by Jack Cashill
As Tom Rieger of the Kansas City Explorers says in something of an understatement, "Corporate sponsorships are very important in any sport."
How important? As the Explorers enter their 9th season, an eternity by the standards of these kinds of leagues, many Kansas Citians, perhaps most, do not even know what sport the team plays, let alone where they play it. Yet the Explorers prosper nonetheless. The team has been able to bring to town the likes of Venus Williams, Monica Seles, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Bjorg, and this year the wish-dream of all corporate marketers, Anna Kowrnikova.
Yes, the Explorers play tennis in the World Team Tennis league. They play it well and enthusiastically, now at Kemper Arena. And though they average only 2500 people for each of their seven home matches in an abbreviated summer season suspended between Wimbledon and the US Open, they reach the right people.
Corporate sponsors like the demographics of the tennis crowd. Each year, the Explorers have been adding more and more such sponsors and sponsorship opportunities. Now, in fact, these sponsorships make up some 50 to 60% of the team's revenue stream.
Rieger cites three reasons for the team's ability to draw sponsors, reasons repeated by all sports marketers. One is the exposure to an appropriate audience for their product. A second is the "feel-good" factor, the ability to play some positive role in the health of the community. The third, in some cases, is that "the decision makers love tennis" (or baseball or football or soccer...)
In any professional sport, sponsorships buy access to the team and the players, the less complex and established the sport, the more the access. In the case of the Explorers, sponsors—like the Greater Kansas City Ford Dealers, Sprint and Marriott—do get court side seats, lavish food and drinks, and, perhaps most importantly, "close contact with the players."
The Kansas City Chiefs, at the opposite end of the complexity/ established scale, offer less in the way of perks and access but considerably more in the way of exposure. There is something to be said for creating a bond with an entity to which at least 77,000 middle class adults are religiously, sometimes fanatically attached, and for which another 2 million people feel affection. It did not hurt that the Chiefs had one of the three best records in the NFL over the last decade and the best attendance.
Anita Bailey has been Director of Corporate Sponsorship Sales for the Chiefs longer than the Explorers have been in existence. And though Bailey has been with the Chiefs for thirteen years, some of the team's sponsors, Price Chopper comes to mind, have been with the Chiefs continuously longer than Bailey. "The renewal rate is phenomenal," says Bailey.
Like virtually all people in her position, Bailey speaks of the sponsors as "partners." It is a term she takes seriously. There is reciprocity involved in sports sponsorships that one finds in few other business relationships, and there is a reason for it. Each year, half of all teams have losing seasons. A successful team, like the Chiefs of the 90s, cannot afford to squeeze their sponsors because they know that there will be years like last year when the Chiefs went 7-9. But despite the season, as Bailey observes, "The sponsors still came back. There is a really strong commitment."
The Kansas City Royals' ability to cultivate partnerships over the years has paid off during these last several lean seasons. This is the one rare sector of corporate America—especially in a small market like Kansas City—where loyalty is more than just a slogan. "Our success story," says Mike Levy, the Royals' Marketing Director, "is that we turn corporate sponsors into corporate partners." The line-up of Royals' partners—Farmland, KMBZ, Conoco, McDonald's, Pepsi, and more—speaks to the strength of that concept. And of the Royals' relationship of longest standing, like those with Budweiser and Southwestern Bell, Levy says, "You can not put a price on these."
Despite the Royals' record over the last several years, sponsorship revenues have quadrupled since 1995. Levy attributes this to a "more aggressive plan' from the Royals and "more opportunities" for the clients. One need only look at the signs on the fences to see where some of those opportunities lie.
As to what makes up a sponsorship 'package," this depends, says Levy, "on what the needs of the client are." Some sponsors want national exposure, others local. Some prefer signage at the ballpark, others distribution of their name through the media. Levy cites Hardees Family Days as a case in point where the name of Hardees is mentioned throughout the media every time the Royals promote Family Day. In every case, the Royals attempt to "customize" the package to fit client needs.
These kind of promotional packages, says Bailey, "used to be more fluff. Now, the clients want to drive traffic."
Both Levy and Bailey of the Chiefs speak of the need for the corporate sponsor, as Bailey puts it, "to take what they purchase from us and activate it in the community." In other words, it is not sufficient for a company to ask for an exclusivity arrangement in its particular field—banking, say—and then do no more than buy the occasional sign.
As sponsors understand, affiliation with the Chiefs and the Royals offers value. The sponsor's obligation is to promote that affiliation throughout a wide range of advertising and marketing venues. Anyone who has visited a Price Chopper has a clear picture of how this arrangement can work. The Chiefs' complex partnership with Fox 4 and KCFX, as another example, frees the Chiefs from having to promote the pre-season as these media will do it for them.
Of course, the more successful and the more established the team, the more value that an affiliation offers. The Kansas City Wizards are feeling the effects of victory as they were the champions last year of Major League Soccer.
Says Anita Bailey of the Wizards, "They have had a lot more success this year on the sponsorship side." Now in their sixth year, the Wizards joined forces with the Chiefs three years ago, and Bailey monitors their fortunes as well.
Still, championship or not, the Wizards draw only about 10,000 fans to a stadium in which the Chiefs routinely put 77,000. But as Bailey notes, "These are two different markets." Although less of a niche market than the Explorers, the Wizards in particular, and soccer in general, still lack the broad cultural appeal of professional football and baseball. But unlike in tennis, soccer promoters see themselves as cultivating a mass audience as the game's popularity spreads, and thus the Wizards market to young people and families more aggressively than any of the other sports.
Still, it will take a generation for soccer to achieve major sports status if it ever does. To understand the difference between the Wizards and Chiefs, one need only note that the Bank of Blue Valley sponsors the Wizards and the Bank of America sponsors the Chiefs.
Regardless of the size of the client or the stature, regardless of the ROI of a given sponsorship investment, Bailey believes that unless a sponsor "believes in a team, they won't spend money." As both Levy and Bailey observe, and Rieger as well, no sponsor gets involved in sports just to make money.