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Athletes, Brands, and the Power of Influence: A Deep Dive with Ishveen Jolly
126 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of Marketing Spark, Mark Evans sits down with Ishveen Jolly, founder and CEO of OpenSponsorship, to explore how athlete sponsorship has been transformed by social media and digital platforms.
OpenSponsorship, a marketplace that connects brands with athletes, has helped democratize sponsorship deals, enabling even small brands to work with sports stars across various niches.
Ishveen shares her journey from sports agent to tech entrepreneur, detailing how her platform has evolved from a simple idea to a tech-enabled agency working with global icons like LeBron James and Tiger Woods.
She provides insights into the shifting dynamics of the sports sponsorship industry, emphasizing how athletes are no longer just the faces of brands but partners in building powerful, authentic campaigns.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Marketing Spark, the podcast where we dive into conversations with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and marketing leaders to uncover strategic and tactical insights on growth, overcoming challenges, and achieving success.
Meet Ishqim Jali, CEO of Open Sponsorship
00:00:21
Speaker
Today, I'm excited to be joined by Ishqim Jali, the founder and CEO of Open Sponsorship, a platform that connects brands with some of the world's top athletes and influencers.
Open Sponsorship's Success Stories
00:00:33
Speaker
From securing over $1 million dollars in funding from Serena Williams Venture Fund to partnering with global icons like LeBron James and Tiger Woods, Ishfim plays a key role in the sports sponsorship landscape.
Ishveen Jali's Recognition in Sports Marketing
00:00:47
Speaker
Under her leadership, Open Sponsorship has worked with major brands like Walmart and Popeyes and closed deals at major global events like the Paris Olympics and the Paralympics.
00:00:59
Speaker
Recognized as an Inc. 100 top female founder and a Forbes 30 under 30, Ishveen has also been at the forefront of influencer marketing in the sports world. Welcome to Marketing Spark. Thanks for having me, Mark.
Inspiration Behind Open Sponsorship
00:01:13
Speaker
Why don't we start with your origin story? What inspired you to start Open Sponsorship for connecting athletes and influencers with brands?
Challenges in Sports Sponsorship Industry
00:01:21
Speaker
I think it was a work in progress. There were multiple little things in my former life that kept happening. That led to the Eureka moment. but say his face everyone The Eureka moment was essentially the idea of an Airbnb or a LinkedIn for the sports sponsorship industry. It's a $60 billion dollars industry and really fragmented. Very much a boys club where you read that on the inside or the outside.
00:01:44
Speaker
Lack of transparency, no ah ROI metrics, all of that. What we did is create a two-sided marketplace to put both sides together, brands on one side, athletes, teams, leagues, events, influences on the other.
From Sports Agent to Entrepreneur
00:01:56
Speaker
Obviously, we've morphed into more tech-enabled agency on top of the platform since, but really at the beginning, I'd say I was a sports agent.
00:02:04
Speaker
And multiple little things happened i was working on a golf tournament and i was talking to the marquee player which means i said she's paid extra to be there as a big brand and this was actually in india when i worked in india. And the marquee players from england did you do any other sponsorship deals while you're out here is not really my agent doesn't really know anyone.
00:02:23
Speaker
in India, or basically nearly every place that I play in now, because obviously golf is so global. And this was back in 2010, 2011. That was interesting. I've never really thought about the fact that a lot of people's agent is their best friend or someone they know from their locality. And as soon as you go global, the goal for a tennis player, your agent is not really that well-equipped to pay your deals. That happened. Another thing I was working for a client in Columbia and I was looking at a sponsorship deal and the timing wasn't right. they were Let's reconnect in six months. and I thought, God, I'm going to have to go back there to reassess the whole situation. This just seems really antiquated in a world where I like just started using Uber and dark and all of these homes. And that was, wait, why is there not this? So I think those little things that made me go, I think there should be a platform to do this.
00:03:10
Speaker
Let's take a step back
Ishveen's Non-traditional Business Background
00:03:11
Speaker
here. You were a sports agent. I'd love to get some more details about what that involves, what you liked about it. And what was that moment where you recognized that this was the entrepreneurial opportunity that was right in front of you? All these experiences that you had, people you had met, everything came together. did you Did you see yourself as an entrepreneur before what you're doing now, or was it one of these happy accidents that just emerged?
00:03:37
Speaker
I grew up in an environment where my parents both retired doctors.
Cross-border Sports Agency Beginnings
00:03:40
Speaker
We're not a business family. It's not something we do. I studied economics at university, and then I became a management consultant. I studied arts, but then people were not being entrepreneurs. That was in 2006 when I graduated. This was not a career. Again, sports was not a career that you had. it Accounting, law, consulting, banking, et cetera. Before open sponsorship.
00:03:59
Speaker
I started my own agency to try and do these cross-border deals even when I started that I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur. This is a newer term. I thought I was solving a problem. I spoke to the market a bit and people especially back at the in the day. If you're in India, you do Indian deals. If you're in England, you do England deals. What if I want to do deals for someone
Innovating the Sponsorship Marketplace
00:04:19
Speaker
abroad? I thought that was really interesting.
00:04:21
Speaker
but After I was a management consultant, just to give you a bit of a story, I moved to India but for my first foray into sports. I worked on cricket, as you can imagine, field hockey. I loved my experience in India, but frankly, after a few years, I realised that I wanted to be back to England, but I thought my skills are quite relevant. A lot of the cricket watching diaspora is in England, there's probably deals to be made. But people just were not getting their heads around this idea of cross-border. That's why I started the agency. I feel even when I open sponsored it now, I wanted to be an entrepreneur or business owner. I just, I felt there was a problem and I wanted to solve it.
00:04:54
Speaker
The classic, I yeah have an itch and I need to scratch a ah proposition. yeah What's really interesting is obviously the model is too is two-sided. You've got brands and you've got athletes on either side. So where do you start? It's one thing to say, I want to create a marketplace. I want to be the eBay sports sponsorship. I want to have supply and demand.
00:05:15
Speaker
What comes first? Do you attract the athletes? Do you attract the brands? Do you try to do it
Business Model Evolution and Revenue Strategies
00:05:20
Speaker
the same time? Talk to me about those early days when you're trying to take an idea and build up the model. And on top of that, get ammunition so you can run the business. What does that journey look like?
00:05:32
Speaker
There's loads of iteration, right? So the first thing we did was, as I said, I was very obsessed with Airbnb. I thought, but and let's try their business model where we take 3% at that time. It was 3% from the deal. Maybe it was both sides or maybe just from the deal.
00:05:47
Speaker
I'm quickly realize that's not gonna be feasible because the deal sizes that we were doing at the beginning even talking about with two hundred and fifty bucks they weren't very high business model iteration that was huge today where we landed we charge a management via subscription the to basically be your agency of record and we take a cut of the deal between ten and twenty percent.
00:06:07
Speaker
As you can see, it's definitely evolved over time. To your other part of the question, where do you start? So we onboarded the athletes first and frankly at the beginning it was, I thought we were going to do this with teams and events and leagues and athletes. It was really the rise of influencer marketing that led to us to be so athlete focused. The other thing is obviously team deals can be a bit more expensive. Having said that minor league deals can be very inexpensive.
00:06:32
Speaker
but we kept hearing brands go, yeah, but athletes are interesting because of their social profile. I have to say when when I was a sports agent, repping people, athletes didn't even have social media. The way that you would work with an athlete is to do a TV shoot, and you'd have to put that athlete on your billboards and that in TV. So obviously, that was very expensive. So you have to have the full campaign around it.
00:06:51
Speaker
Now, any brand can just pick up an athlete and their own social media profile is going to be the distribution channel. I think that was social was huge for the expansion of athlete deals. One other thing was because it used to be TV deals, billboard, radio, and you have to buy the media, which is expensive. You wouldn't do deals unless you were doing it with the top one, 2% because it wasn't really worth it. Whereas now, again, not to that point.
00:07:15
Speaker
You're this athlete only has 50,000 followers but they're very engaged. They're in a certain locality or they follow him because he's a fast-proof fisher or whatever else. He's got an inbuilt audience and I don't need to spend any more on distributions. I'd say social media really changed the game for us and the way that we saw the business, much for the better and that's why we went down the athlete route.
00:07:34
Speaker
So before we get into Serena Williams and all the athletes you have on board, I think it's probably a good idea to describe the model. Tell me ah about how this works. What do brands get? What do athletes get? What does the business look like? As I said, that iteration over time, it would have been a very different thing if we'd sat down with each other six years ago. But today, the way that we are,
00:07:55
Speaker
A few things happen again. Covid was a big shift, a macro shift in the way that people work. Social media is a big shift in the way that people work. Obviously the economy and things that are happening. I think as a startup you have to be quite reacted. The big thing that we had about three years ago was we started hearing this.
00:08:12
Speaker
thing come out of clients who won walmart as a client which is obviously huge fortune watch but they said to us look we love your tech we love your reach we love the athletes we love all of this we don't really want to be involved in purple we don't have time the bandwidth we don't want to learn any more tech.
00:08:27
Speaker
my team calls it hashtag not another login. What we did is I want to agree we had this amazing platform and now we offer you the ability to pay us to manage that platform and manage the services and deliver you output and we charge you more for it. Our margins are better but actually you're loving the fact that you don't have to spend time on this. Today what happens is brands come to ours because they have a need for influencers ideally athletes because that's I will back bone but often it can be lifestyle wellness or all of the other genres as well they come to us and they say we love the fact that we have seventeen thousand athletes and we love the fact that you have that we love the fact that you have social listing and data and demographic data and all of this stuff but what we want is you to run our strategy for us.
00:09:10
Speaker
For and with us we are an extension of their team and we're partly relying on platform but we're partly relying on our expertise of having done so many deals so we charge about 1950 a month so just shy 2k to be your influencer manager as an extension of your team 20% of our brands are doing product only deals.
00:09:30
Speaker
About another 30% are doing very very small, $100 to $500 deals, very micro. Maybe just getting you user a-generated content to repurpose. And then that other 50% is doing deals from anywhere from 2K to 30K, depending on the size of the person.
00:09:45
Speaker
I understand the model at a high level. Give me an example of an athlete and what does it look like? What are they doing? What does the brand want? What is an athlete willing to do? I'd say 65% of our deals are very social media heavy. So brand is sending product.
00:10:05
Speaker
That's a man's whatever there is a fashion whatever product to the athlete and the athlete is creating user generated content. Ideally and obviously we try and create it if you buy this funny we find funny people if you buy this series is educational whatever it may be.
00:10:20
Speaker
Basically, the athlete will then post that on social media, their channels, and then the brand has the right to essentially repurpose it. So, use it in their paid ads, their organic, on their website, in their email marketing, across the board. So, that's the typical deal.
00:10:36
Speaker
Beyond that, we have essentially athletes doing appearances, attending an event and telling them a holiday party. A lot of companies at the moment are driving partnerships with their party retailers. They've just gotten to Costco or they've gotten to Walmart. A lot of brands, we want to have the athlete go into store and pick it pick up the product and be like, hey, love this product available now here. And then we'll do other things, photo two shoots. But they are decreasing in number because Obviously you don't need to spend all of that money when athlete and a lot of the top-tier athletes also have their own production team around them. So it's even easier to get good quality user-generated stuff without the cost of a photo shoot, which really helps to minimize the cost.
00:11:17
Speaker
In terms of the matchmaking, does a brand come to you and say, Hey, I want to have a relationship with Tiger Woods. Or would a brand say, I want relationships with these type of athletes in these particular sports and you do the recommendations and matchmaking. How does that work?
00:11:38
Speaker
A little bit of both, we prefer the latter because yeah unless you have infinite budgets, it's often, and even then a lot of those top tier talent, like they say no a lot, we prefer the latter. And even if you said Tiger Woods, why is it because he's golf? Is it because um he's a black and um is it a black guy in a white sport? Is it because he's whatever his vibe or his age or whatever else we try and zoom out a bit. There's two ways that we do our matching on our platform, put up a campaign, a bit of job posting.
00:12:04
Speaker
So looking for athletes who are retired from this or live in Florida, whatever the criteria is, who love, who have dogs or a diabetic or whatever the criteria is. And then athletes and agents will apply to work with the brand. The other is when the brand will also give us a criteria. So, hey, social listening keywords or different vibes or whatever else. And then we go out and create that list.
00:12:28
Speaker
I'm a sports fan. When I look at sports figures, I'm biased because I think a lot of them are pretty amazing. Some bad apples as well. From an influencer marketing perspective, is this a hot commodity now? Are you the right company in the right space at the right time? Sports has become a sort of global industry. NFL is playing games in London and South America. Do you find yourself further by luck or by circumstance in the eye of the hurricane?
00:12:56
Speaker
Obviously, right time you say that we've been going almost 10 years. We've waited for our chance, but I would say the conversations today, everyone is thinking of an influencer strategy. If you have an influencer strategy, you're often thinking about what's next. Athletes are a natural add-on. The way that you think about it is if you're in the health and wellness space, athletes are often your first influencer. You want validation, the testimonial, the content from an athlete.
00:13:22
Speaker
If you are in a non-health and wellness industry, let's say beauty, fashion, non-sports apparel, cooking, whatever, any other vertical, you probably go for your niche influencer first, beauty to beauty, cooking to chefs first, and then your second one is probably general, and then again, athletes come in.
00:13:41
Speaker
I'd say we're definitely finding we're relevant for everyone. I think it's it's just about for us the hardest thing is the education around. and This is why we added on our full service, our account management. The problem is people think it's just about getting a person, and it's definitely not. It's a little bit of a triangle. It's who's the right person for your brand. That's obviously important. You pick the wrong person, it's going to fall apart. But when you get the right person, what are they saying? ah they is ah Are they talking about your 50 percent discount?
00:14:10
Speaker
coupon code, or are they talking about the attributes of your brand, or are they talking about a specific product, or are they making it a day in the life of and incorporating in their life? Or are they saying this was a special, is it a before and after? what so I think the messaging is really important, which obviously makes sense because in any other creative, you wouldn't say a script is not important. But I think with influencers sometimes people forget how important that is. And then the third bit is what's the median?
00:14:36
Speaker
So, there's a big difference between an Instagram story and an Instagram reel. A story disappears after 24 hours, but it has a link through click. A reel stays on the feed forever, but there's no links. And there's a difference with TikTok, to Instagram, to YouTube. There's also a difference if they do it in person and you shoot the content versus if they're doing it at home. And I think, so the thing right now is,
00:14:57
Speaker
We still have a lot of friends who are even when they use us get it we didn't get sales and that's obviously the holy grail of all marketing is to drive or why i think this. With the right time but we're still having to figure out what really hard on how do we deliver or why is that it's not just about the match i think we were quite naive at the beginning we thought we were much dot com and we realize that didn't really produce anything we sit down look at us did we advise you enough on the right strategy.
00:15:24
Speaker
i don't know if this is applicable in the b to b world influencer market have ups and downs everyone and want be associated with high profile personalities with large social media followings it was super attractive and why wouldn't you want to connect yourself with someone who had a large following but Sometimes the the execution didn't happen. and the The personalities didn't perform as expected. They didn't get the results, as you mentioned, that brands were expecting. It would be fair to say that influencer marketing is not a bit of a roller coaster. It's up and down. Brands get excited about it, then they lose faith in it.
00:15:58
Speaker
How much education do you need to do with brands and athletes for that matter in terms of establishing the rules of engagement, educating them on best practices and working with them to be realistic about ah ROI versus we want a massive spike in sales. How much work is involved in educating both sides of the equation here?
00:16:21
Speaker
I think tons of work is required, but having said that, as I said about a little while ago, people don't have time. I thought this joke that everyone's unemployed, retired, or overworked. unlike the I know that we do it with our team. It's cool. Can you also do this? Can you also do this? So people who are, I'm the marketing person, I know I knew how to run Facebook ads and now I'm being told to do influencer. and Should we educate them? Yes. But actually what we found is they're saying, can you just give us the results? Can we trust you? can we Can you help us out and do it for us? I actually think that's a bit of a win is to get the trust and then say, here are the five people we recommend. Let us write the content brief. Let us just produce the results because ah ultimately I'm sure you feel the same way.
00:17:00
Speaker
I don't, as a CEO, when someone comes along and they were better at doing this, I'm cool. Can you just do it? I don't need to know how you're doing it kind of thing. And then even on the athlete side, we can teach them how to do better content graders, but in a way what we do is just, here's the brief, follow the brief. Oh, here's an example of a video that looks really good. Or here's the reason we picked you because of this thing that you did is really trying to simplify it. That's who will complicate the education and turn everyone into PhDs in influence marketing. So in a sense it's influencer marketing as a service.
00:17:30
Speaker
Basically, I want to talk to you obviously about the Serena Williams relationship. She's the world's best tennis player. She's an amazing business person. She's gotten into the venture capital world. I can imagine how that relationship might have started, but can you give us a story about how did you get to Serena Williams? I'm sure she's approached by a lot of entrepreneurs. How did you convince her that this was something that she should be involved in?
00:17:54
Speaker
We were super, super lucky. obviously She's absolutely amazing. When we were raising our round, multiple people who were partaking our round for to say, have you looked at this deal? um And so we it was over Zoom because it was towards the end of mid-COVID. And so we got the opportunity to pitch her. She was super engaged to ask loads of questions, just lovely, but also not for the sake of it, real. And that was awesome. And then so we did that pitch and she was interested, the timing, and we were closing quite quick and then we went back and said, okay, well, extend for you. And so again, just really lucky that she came in and that we had the ability to invent our investors. to keep the round open for her, which obviously they were very happy to do. And then she's been awesome. So our first ever retreat post COVID, we did. And she zoomed in and spoke to the whole team. And that was amazing. It's been really fun. Of course, I'm really lucky that many people put us in front of her. And she and it was actually amazing because we did the, she did the investment and um literally about four weeks later, we did a deal for Venus completely separately. And she was like, oh, that's cool. I'm just the mustard in you guys. And you just took us. Given your experience raising around, congratulations on the math because raising money is super hard no matter what company you have. What advice would you give to female entrepreneurs um seeking venture capital? Are the rules different? Are there obstacles that you have to overcome as a female entrepreneur?
00:19:20
Speaker
And then if the rules are different, I think you maybe have to be slightly, it's hard to say, but I think you have to think maybe a bit more aggressive with your own validation and getting people to be the champions around you. Say, there's a lot of people who are helping the amount entrepreneurs out to get you in the room. I think it's probably never been easier to be in the room. But once you're in the room, you definitely have to look hard to get a major your path, especially if you're in non-seamal focused industries. I think it's getting better, but something I struggled with at the beginning, the first time before we we got money from Serena, the round before that, I met a lot of women and they would say we're focused on beauty or fashion or female health tech and things like that.
00:20:06
Speaker
And I felt, okay, who's going to invest in the founders who are working in male dominated industries. I do get the amount of money going into those industries needed to go up to bring them to Equilibrium, which we've seen, but I do think it's really important to support.
00:20:21
Speaker
Women scientists and engineers and sports people and things out. So i I think that was the thing, but it's definitely much easier now. I'm not taking it away. I'm sure it is still really hard and I haven't based now for three years. So I don't know what the environment's right is right now, but it it feels better.
00:20:39
Speaker
I did want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the Paris Olympics and the Paralympics and how those deals materialized. I'm based in Canada. During the Olympics, one of the big stories for us was Alicia Newman, who was the first Canadian woman to win a medal in pole vaulting. She has a huge social media following. She raised a lot of awareness around influencer marketing and athletes' ability especially amateur athletes' ability to monetize their activities. Tell me about those deals. How did they happen? What was the mechanics of getting involved with the Olympics and the Paralympics?
00:21:14
Speaker
I was actually just looking, and I was like, it's Alicia Newman in our UK system, and it looks she has, which is cool. Anyway, the Olympics come down every four years, and every four years brands go, we want to do something with the Olympics. Obviously, one of the challenges, there are athletes 365 days a year, every year between the Olympics as well. We do try and make sure that we are we jump on trends, whether it's Olympics, or whether it's Super Bowl, or whether it's whatever, but if they're good content creators, we try and keep them alive. Four.
00:21:41
Speaker
way before and way after. But of course, you have to react to the brands and there's a lot of brands. And we do it in our marketing, Olympics around the corner, start thinking about Olympics and whatever else. I think one thing that we've seen is the big brands will have an Olympic strategy, but a lot of brands just have an influencer strategy of which athletes is part of the world, of which Olympics is part of that. We did a deal, we did a campaign for Vitrokast, the Kroger-owned commerce site, and they had one Paralympian, they had one retired NFL player, they had one college,
00:22:09
Speaker
content creator. I think that is the beauty of having Olympians mixed into other things and obviously one of the challenges with the Olympics is it's hard to know who's going to make the Olympics. We also did strategy deals where and then they didn't make it through the trials and that backfires a bit. It's obviously really tough. I would say it's a big advantage of working with us because we can do deals very quick turnaround.
00:22:31
Speaker
and you can actually pick up a limb begins after they've gone through trials but those deals are amazing of course this is the first year to paris where in paris where the limits lighten up a lot about social media. And they really athletes do more which is absolutely great there was a less restrictions it was more social posting which obviously benefits everyone to really enjoyed and love doing paralympic deals because it's great content and everything else but it's such a bit feel good fact of the brand and also these athletes deserve that money as well.
00:23:01
Speaker
asking a big picture thing is just getting your sense of the future of sports sponsorship over the last, you know, five, 10 years, sports has exploded in terms of the size of the deals and the broadcasting rights that are out there for all the major sports. NFL teams are worth $5 billion dollars and it's become a a global, a mega global industry.
00:23:21
Speaker
What's your take on the growth of the industry, the impact of technology, the willingness of brands and teams to drive revenue from non-sports-related activities? What do you see as the biggest opportunities or the biggest growth right now? I think a few things. say One is brands It used to be that team, the athlete was big and the brand was latching onto that. And we're seeing more that the brand is actually also big because often when we do these deals, often the brand will have more Instagram followers and a lot of these athletes do what these influencers do. Right. And so I'd say, and you're seeing that with sports right. Where is what is the advantage to both sides of this? So I think we're going to see more relationships where.
00:24:10
Speaker
They're coming together to build something powerful. Both sides are leaning. I'm going to use the credibility, the validation from being part of this NFL team or athlete or league or any sport that they're also going to get from me. Maybe it's data, maybe it's technology, the AWS NFL relationship, whatever it may be. So I think you'll see that more.
00:24:34
Speaker
I think with social media, whatever your views are, it's not going away. And we thought Instagram was going to be big and then it's like TikTok and now TikTok's everything and I'm sure the YouTube shorts is coming up and I'm sure they'll be the next one in the next few years. And so I think keeping an eye on that and realizing that social isn't going away, digital's not going away. We're being asked by brands, hey, can we partner with an MBA team, but just digital?
00:24:59
Speaker
And a lot of that is also it's very trackable. I can put a unique link and and just see what the results are versus a logo in a stadium. and I have no clue how many people saw it. Did it drive anything at all? I think trackable is that another part of sponsorship. Digital as meant sponsorship is trackable.
00:25:15
Speaker
I've never really existed it in the sponsorship world before. So I think that will be a huge part of it. And then I think that there is a lot of this stuff that we do with education as a repurposing. We'll do one deal with an athlete in a brand and said they will use that. The best brands that we have, they will use that content in their emails, drives loads of sales. They'll use it on their website to increase conversion rates. so not to They'll pass it on to maybe third parties to say, Hey, we've already done this deal. Do you want to use it? They'll use it in their PR. And so I think Sponsorship has previously sat in quite a silo, which is always my ingredients with sponsorship. is Where's the marketing team? and they' Oh, they're working on creative over there. We're the sponsorship team. We basically spend loads of money on deals and no one really cares what we do. I think that's going away and it would be really lovely for people to think that sponsorship is a seat that is done and everything is done around it kind of thing. want to ask you one question about the athletes in your portfolio, of LeBron James, Tiger Woods. Is there an athlete that is super popular, that brands love, that wouldn't be considered a tier one kind of global superstar? Is there anybody quirky or surprising within the portfolio that comes to mind that you would point to and go,
00:26:28
Speaker
because of this guy's social personality, because of the fact that he's engaging and accessible, that brands just gravitate to this athlete. Anybody come to mind? I'd say obviously on the back of the Olympics, Ilona Meher, Chris Mazda was one. You can tell because they go from being an athlete to going to dancing with the stars. Those are e obviously crossovers. Another one that's really interesting is athletes' partners. Typically athletes' wives, but it could be the other way. Really high engagement, often on not some sort of reality TV show, the Real Housewives or whatever else. I'm married to an athlete. I think why they're really popular is because they do the behind-the-scenes stuff.
00:27:03
Speaker
I'd say we see it in football, but they're usually good athletes as well. But maybe they're more of a personality on field. Chad Johnson's a great example. I love working with Chad. We've got Vernon Davis. They've got personalities. They're retired, but they're still relevant if Chad Johnson's really funny. And he also has a lot of finality. So he loves soccer. Sifa, he plays games a lot.
00:27:29
Speaker
So often these things are really useful when you can say that athlete has, they're not just ah an on-field athlete. Russell Westbrook is an on-field athlete. He's so serious. Whereas you've got other people who they're a little bit more jokey and they are a little bit more verbose and they give you more of a behind the scenes. Maybe they do more locker room shots. Those these are really good as well. Who are your most popular female and male athletes in your portfolio?
00:27:56
Speaker
to do deals with. ah We're doing a lot with Vernon at the moment. He just started a a podcast. So that's quite useful as well because it's another form of distribution going back to that. So we've done quite a bit with trying to think female. It goes and ebbs and plays. At the moment, we're doing a lot with Dallas chemied Cowboys cheerleaders. That show just came out and it's a lot of trending. So that was quite useful. I'm trying to think during the women's soccer team, we've done a lot within the past.
00:28:23
Speaker
That was awesome. and We actually just did a deal with a WNBA player, Lexi Hull, and it was a giveaway campaign. and Not that expensive. Pretty amazing. And Caitlin Clark, she commented and she entered the competition, which was just great. Loved that. So I think I wouldn't say there's one. It depends on the season by season. We're hoping to do a deal with a a US-based tennis player at the moment, who I won't talk about to jinx it. But again, as soon as they do well, they get limelight and then we went out trying to jump on that bandwagon. Any examples of deals that just exploded wildly beyond your expectations or the brand expectations? Anything go viral or just catch fire? Second question. We did a deal with the Formula One driver, Alex Albon, and OnePlus, and it was his team's idea for the creative. Again, talking about why I love this new model where
00:29:20
Speaker
You work with them to say, what do you think is going to get engagement versus here's the script. And obviously the brand vetting it, but they did something where they shot. He shot himself on the one glass bone, but with the filter where he had no hair.
00:29:34
Speaker
And he's got quite a big mane of hair. And so obviously it went quite viral because people were like, oh my God, if you got rid of your hair and everyone realized it was a filter, but it was a really good filter. And so that was amazingly well received, really good impression, shares likes. As I said, I love the Lexi one. I love these deals where Caitlin Clark will comment, you can't even pay for that. So you can pay, it's a cost a lot of money. So that was really good. Some of our big photo shoot deals. We did a deal with Sean White.
00:30:03
Speaker
That has done really well. We have a tool where we can see who is a user of the brand already. We do anonymous customer matching. Those deals that you do, whether the athlete is already a consumer of the brand or a fan of the brand are just great because they just resonate so well and it's just so authentic.
00:30:24
Speaker
This has been an amazing conversation. At the end of these interviews, I usually say, where can people learn more about you and what you do? I guess I should add to that. If someone's an athlete and they're looking to expand their brand, and if there's a brand looking to connect with athletes, where can they connect with you? Where can they learn more about how how your platform works?
00:30:47
Speaker
Absolutely. Let's start with the athlete side. It is free to sign up. Open sponsorship.com. Really easy. The best way because you can go in, you can download on Maybach and then you can almost a Tinder. You can swipe left and right on campaigns and just apply and get going. And once you start doing deals, our cap management team will spot you and help you out a bit more.
00:31:07
Speaker
so I'd say anyone athlete influencer whatever just go to online obviously if you need help there's a chap out there so that's really useful and as I said bre to sign up we just take a cock small cut of the deal when Sosa went right on the brand side obviously a big part of this as you said was education about why we do it the way we do it.
00:31:23
Speaker
why we think of ourselves more tech enabled agency than just a platform. So love for anyone just to reach out. You could go to the sponsorship, get in touch with me. We do free strategy sessions where we'll discuss your goals and how athletes could slot in. So you can really visualize what it looks and then get going from there.
00:31:39
Speaker
Thanks Eshvin, and thanks for everyone for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps others just discover the show. and If you're a B2B SaaS company looking to accelerate your growth, overcome marketing challenges, or refine your strategy, I'd love to help. As a fractional CMO and strategic advisor, I create tailored marketing plans that deliver results. Feel free to contact me via LinkedIn or visit my website, marketingspark.co. I'll talk to you soon.