Elite Sports Marketing – Sponsor a Sports Team

Chris Barnard:
It seemed so important at that time because that was another time. Uh, I think we’ve got better as a society in, in bringing up sort of mental health, particularly in things around sport. Whereas there’s a, uh, a rivalry, there’s tribalism, there’s all sorts of patriotism and nationalism involved. But also the “check-in” um, idea, I mean, in a way, you kind of wish that that Norwich City team had been at an agency, surely they’d have got a multi-million-pound payoff, right, for running such a good campaign. Certainly, one of the best sports marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen, and particularly it being for mental health as well. How amazing.

Michael Jackson:
It was simple and unique, wasn’t it? And again, I don’t want to spoil it for people, but your expectations were one thing, and it took you in a completely different direction, and the simplicity of it, you know, that’s the crazy thing. Uh, it was… Yeah, I’m not going to spoil it for people, but watch it and, you know, you’ll see what we’re talking about.

Chris Barnard:
And in your time, so you’ve seen some great examples from Norwich. Um, I’ve seen some great examples from Lincoln City. Have you seen some examples where it’s not gone so well? There’s been partnerships, much heralded ones that have just fallen by the wayside, or you’ve seen sponsors want to leave sports teams early because there’s reasons that it’s just not clicking or they don’t feel they’ve got the value that they were looking for, Michael? Have you got any examples of that?

Michael Jackson:
Yeah, quite a few. I mean, you know, I have a certain eye on these things because of the industry I’m in, right. So I always ask myself, why, why have they done that? And what’s the connection? And there are a couple, one real simple one, uh, was Heinz Mayo, who sponsored the Euro 2024. And my simple question is why. I did not get that at all. Uh, yes, it was the summer, but we didn’t really have a summer. So that kind of, you know, you kind of… Heinz must have signed that contract with fingers crossed really and hoping for good weather. And unfortunately, that didn’t appear. Also, it’s short-lived. It’s only for a period of a month. And they will have paid tens of millions of pounds for that. Um, that same money could have got you a very, very good, very, very good team in the Premier League which is watched every week by 3.4 billion people. I’m not sure they were best advised, I guess, is my point.

But I guess one of the ones that kind of sticks out, and certainly, you know, the talk of the town is with, with Manchester United. So their previous two partners were Chevrolet and TeamViewer. It would seem that both wanted to leave before the end of their terms. I guess the problem is there is pitching to a, to a brand. Um, and I’m not saying Manchester United did anything wrong, but what I’m saying is, you know, Man United will say we’ve got a billion social media followers and, you know, one of the biggest teams in the world, or one of the richest teams in the world. And, you know, look at our history, you know, Alex Ferguson, David Beckham, Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs, the Neville brothers, etc., etc. So on the face of it, yes, absolutely. Look at all that. That’s incredible. I’m a Manchester United hater, but I have to take my hat off to the fact that during Alex Ferguson’s time, they were the best team in the world by a very long way. Um, so, um, I think the problem is that those organisations, Chevrolet, um, and TeamViewer kind of bought into the big shiny lights, you know, the Vegas lights of, wow, you know, this is incredible. What didn’t clearly happen is people didn’t think, using Chevrolet as an example, who’s going to buy our cars? Because yes, there are 3.4 billion people watching the Premier League, but the majority of that is outside of the UK. And the majority of it is outside of Europe. So when you think about it, it’s probably, you know, people in the Philippines who are earning 30 dollars a month. So they are extremely unlikely to be buying one of their cars. So the percentage of people who actually fit the criteria is absolutely tiny. Um, and I think they cottoned onto that probably a little bit too late and TeamViewer very, very similarly. Um, so I think there has to be that honesty and integrity.

You know, when I speak to clients, I, you know, I’m absolutely clear. We have told… we work, as an example, we work with a betting brand called Spreadex, right? Now you can pick and choose whether you like betting in sport. The only thing I would say is, um, there’s alcohol in every single stadium. So I don’t take complaints about betting too seriously. Um, so, uh, we work with Spreadex. Spreadex are a UK-based, unlike most betting companies, they’re a UK-based betting company based out of Watford. Um, and we did their first deal in football, which was Burnley’s front of shirt in the Premier League, uh, a few years back. And once the furore of the kind of deal taking place sort of happened, we sat down to him and said, well, what’s important to you? What do you want? What do you need? Um, and it was quite clear that they’re only after UK customers, right? They can’t and won’t take bets from outside of the UK. So we said to them, then why are you spending Premier League money? You need to be in the Championship because that is where the UK fan base predominantly is. The fan base of the Championship is something like 85 percent UK-based, so that’s what we did. We took them there. We as an agency lost, would have lost money by giving them that advice, but that was the right thing to do. We built that trust and that relationship and we’ve done a number of deals with them. We’re currently on the front of Sunderland’s front of shirt, as you can see above my head, for those watching the video. Um, so, you know, it is important. Those kinds of things are important. Yes. Um, things could have been done differently and I think if there’s honesty and data as part of the project, I would, I would like to have thought that would have been done better. The deal still may have happened. But then I think the rights and what come with that package would have been different to what they were. And potentially there was more return on investment for the brands. But I think it was more a case of we’re this big giant club, put your logo on a shirt, you’ll do fine. Absolutely.

Chris Barnard:
Yeah, and I love that Chevrolet example because that brings us nicely back to a core marketing principle, which is knowing your customer, knowing your audience, knowing what you’re trying to achieve. And I suppose that the most important part of any partnership, no matter whether that is on a level with Man United, say, or your local village team.

Doing your due diligence and understanding who you will be marketing to and what your messaging should be in that environment is kind of the most essential thing you can do really, isn’t it? It must be such an important part of your role must be, um, understanding the sort of team’s personality and how they are, and then understanding your client brand’s personality. How do you go about that process? I think that would be fascinating to our listeners, just to get an insight from you in terms of how you decide. So obviously as you, as you correctly identified there, um, obviously Chevrolet and Man United for various reasons hasn’t worked out there. How do you stop that happening as, as someone who works in this industry? How do you go about the process of matching a brand who comes to you and says, we want to achieve this with a team who you think they can do it with?

Michael Jackson:
Yeah, well, I mean, first and foremost, um, it took time, but it’s knowing people at all these clubs. So I personally know people at every club in the Premier League, the Championship, League One, League Two, rugby league, rugby union, and county cricket. I know people in the NFL, every NFL team, every NBA team, and so on and so on, La Liga, etc., etc. So that takes a long time. Then you are regularly communicating with these people, you know, what’s going on, you know, what’s happening, you’re following the leads, you’re following results. So you kind of take all that information into hand, even history, right? So when you’re selling a front of shirt at Birmingham City, you’ve got to understand, right, well, they’re a League One club right now. But where have they been for the last 10, 20 years? What kind of club are we talking about? Um, because if you… and adversely, you would kind of look at Wrexham who have come up the leagues, you know, if you’re talking about historically, well, yeah, non-league, that’s what they are. They’re a non-league club, but they’re not right.

So you have to kind of take all these things into the equation, but one of my favourite ways of doing it, and I’ll be on a Zoom call or a Teams call, um, and I’m talking to the client and I’m asking them, you know, what’s important to you, you know, tell me what’s, um, who your customers are, where are they, all these things. At the same time that that is happening, I’m playing guess who, uh, you may remember the board game. Does, do they have glasses? No. Uh, do they have ginger hair? No. Right. Oh, it’s, it’s Tom. Right. I do that, but with sport, right? So someone will say to me, well, you know, the UK market is most important to us. Okay. So not the US, not Europe. Okay. All those go down. Um, it’s probably going to be football just because of the size. Okay. Rugby, cricket go down. It’s got to be a club. Um, we’re based in London. That’s where HQ is. And so it’s got to be geographically close to us because we’ll be taking clients along to, um, hospitality to wine and dine them, etc., etc. So all the teams up North go down and the Midlands go down and, you know, it’s got to be a Premier League team. Okay. So no Championship, no League One, no League Two. And slowly but surely you’re, you’re closing the net on exactly what your client’s looking for.

Michael Jackson:
We do that really well. And again, you know, we will take into account certain things, you know, the size of the club, the work ethic of the club, the experiences that we’ve had, you know, all these things are massively important. And that’s why when we tend to do deals, they tend to get extended — Tampa Bay, for example, England rugby, for example. Um, because we like to do things right, and doing that and having the data to back that up, to be able to say, we think Brentford’s the right club. And the reason we say that is because Brentford fans are 26 percent more likely to buy your product than any other fan base in the Premier League. They’re 19 percent more likely to spend more than £100 a month on a product like yours. And all these things that sort of back up what we’re saying. We’re not just saying, well, it will look pretty on Brentford’s shirt, so maybe you should do that. It’s not that. That may have happened in the past before my time, but it’s certainly not the way I work.

Chris Barnard:
It feels like a really exciting time in sports sponsorship. It’s something I’d be bullish on if I was creating my marketing channels at the moment. And there’s obviously a lot of chatter going on, um, due to TV series that may have become popular in the last few years. Particularly on Netflix and Sky. We’ve seen the evolution of these series.

Um, of course, Deadpool taking over Wrexham was a big story. Uh, we’ve had the Sunderland ’Til I Die documentary. I’ve recently watched the Mission to Burnley documentary that I thought was very well made and very interesting. How do you feel these TV shows have contributed? It’s probably, um, part of why it feels so exciting in sports marketing at the moment. And it’s probably brought a new audience of, um, brand marketeers who are now interested or at least look at these partnerships, Michael, who might not have been that excited by it before.

Michael Jackson:
Yeah, I think, uh, the one I’ve watched, um, and really was kind of the foundation for the others really, was Sunderland ’Til I Die. And the great thing about that was that it was a club that was free falling. Uh, when the documentary started, you know, it was that season that they, they went down to League One, I think. Um, and yeah, it was a club in tatters, but what you got to see, rather than what you saw the aftermath of on a Sky News report, was actually what was happening, you know, in those windows that you could see behind the reporter, right? You could see the decisions that had to be made from, you know, the tea lady right up to the chief executive. And, uh, and you know, the heartfelt love and sweat and blood that these people had for their team. You know, these were decisions that weren’t taken very lightly. And I guess it does give some people an insight into these things.

And it makes a good point about the whole kind of betting situation, right? So, um, if you’ve got a club that is not particularly wealthy, um, that doesn’t have billionaire owners, and you find out that your team has got betting on the front and you’re upset about that, right? You don’t think it’s morally right. That’s a decision for you to make. But the club might not have any other offers on the table, certainly not suitable offers on the table. So they have to take that money, whether they like it or not. It’s not great, it’s not brilliant, but it’s a decision that has to be made. And I think those kinds of decisions are sometimes missed out on. You know, I’ve seen club fans say, “Oh, why have we got betting? I’m not renewing my season ticket, I’m not buying a shirt,” etc., etc. I know of deals where there was nothing else on the table. So what do you want? Do you want to moan about having a logo on a shirt or do you want money in your club’s pocket to spend on your community? It comes back to these Netflix series, especially Sunderland ’Til I Die, where they are having to make these really difficult decisions. Um, some of the fans are not going to like them, but it saves the club.

Chris Barnard:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think Sunderland fans, I mean, if you look at their, I suppose that they’ve been through a bit of a transitionary period and are on the up now. Um, and, and equally in sports sponsorship that I’d say that’s been through a transition period and certainly on the up. And we’ve seen changes. I mean, I remember when I used to work in, um, print advertising. And we opened up a backspace solus. It was called, which used to be the front-page ad, but basically, we opened up a back-page ad on the sports paper so that people could advertise there and align themselves to Lincoln City and our writing. But if I think back to then, 20 years ago, the creative was very dry, quite boring. But what we’re seeing from sports partnerships now, Michael, is a lot of, a lot of humour, a lot of creativity, particularly with short-form video, long-form video.

Do you want to just talk us through about what’s hot in sports sponsorship at the moment, the people who are absolutely crushing it, I hate using that term, but the people are absolutely crushing it. What are they doing at the moment to make sure that their brands stand out and capitalise on, on, on the trends and the zeitgeist of the times?

Michael Jackson:
Yeah. I mean, look, you’re right to say 20 years ago, I think most partnerships were very much copy and paste, right? You know, we’ll give you a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and, you know, good luck to you. I’ve seen, you know, we’ll invoice you in a year’s time for next season’s stuff. But now clubs are so, so much smarter. And, you know, whether you’re speaking to a Premier League team or whether you’re speaking to someone at the bottom of League Two, everyone’s very, very professional, right? Everyone knows that you’ve really got to start with a blank piece of paper when it comes to a partnership. So, you know, what is important to the client, right? Why offer someone hospitality for games as part of the deal when their offices are based in Australia? Right? They’re not coming to games every other weekend, right? But that used to be what happened. That’s what you get in the package. So take it or leave it. You don’t use it, you don’t use it, but it’s there. Now clubs won’t do that, right? If they know if you say to them, well, look, you know, most of our business comes from social media, great. Well, we’ll, we’ll do more social media.

So clubs are very savvy now in actually building bespoke packages for the client. And some of that is educational. So, you know, we work with, we’re working with a brand right now. It is hard to kind of explain what they do. Even they find it hard to explain what they do. So actually what we’ve talked to them about is actually saying, well, let’s get the club to do a video, a content piece, an education piece. So actually, rather than trying to say what you do, let people see what you do in action. And that is a way that we’re helping them to kind of educate people on what they do and how that might be of interest to them. So we’re working on that.

But I think stories, real-life stories, is where it’s at. You know, again, going back to COVID, we’re all stuck at home, we’re all on our social media, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc., and we like seeing real-life stuff, and teams understand that. And so these days it is more about those kinds of real-life stories. So, you know, I use as an example Jack Grealish. His sister is disabled. Um, I can’t quite remember what it is she has, but he spends like so much time with her, away from the football, away from training. He will spend so much time with her, and they are actually, you know, it’s hard to tear them apart. But actually, you know, Man City have produced videos with the two of them together and just kind of showing that, yes, he’s an extremely well-paid football player, but this guy then goes home and spends all that time with his sister. You know, he’s a real down-to-earth kid, and sometimes that gets forgotten. So I think it is good that you see these types of stories.

But also, you know, on the community side, that is why businesses are so keen to get into the community side of clubs — it shows them doing good, right? Because it’s really easy to shove your logo on a shirt. But actually, we’re not just here for that. We are here to help the community. We did the deal between England Rugby and Allianz, Allianz being one of the biggest insurance companies in the world. It’s a massive global organisation. It’s really easy to look at that in cold daylight and say, you know, that’s a big giant organisation, cold-hearted, etc., etc. Absolutely not. When we sat down with them, they said to us, “Look, we’ll be England’s partner as the official insurance partner of England Rugby, but only if we get the women’s game,” and they are the title sponsors of the women’s game. And that is really where their focus was. It was about empowering women, getting women back into sport. You know, they didn’t need the England men, right? That wasn’t what they were there for. They did it because it was part of the deal, but actually, they’re really there for the women’s game. So I think, again, we forget there are actually real people on the brand side who are really trying to make a difference.

So I think you’re seeing that more and more. Um, and yeah, I think it’s a great thing because, yeah, where it used to be transactional, now there’s real human stories being told. There are real benefits to the fans and the fan base. Um, and yeah, you know, I’m pretty sure if any of your listeners look at their own clubs and just took a look, there’s stuff going on and it’s something that’s being pushed by the brand, and it’s putting money in the club’s pockets, which I’m sure they’ll be happy about as well.

Chris Barnard:
The marketers amongst our listener base will certainly be rejoicing at that, Michael, that you’re talking about the importance of storytelling, something marketers have been banging the drum about probably since the start of time, but it’s come back again, particularly in the last few years, that it’s so important to make that emotional connection.

Chris Barnard:
Of course, a lot of the fans of these teams have an emotional connection with their club, and sometimes they have it with, uh, players as well. There’s a particular player at Lincoln City who we all get teary-eyed about, uh, called Lewis Montsma, who was, uh, a Dutch defender who came over a few years ago. Um, really a Rolls Royce defender. Some people will be saying you don’t have Rolls Royce defenders in League One, but he was an absolute Rolls Royce defender to us as Lincoln fans, who have had some great defenders actually over, um, say the last 20 years. Actually, some great defenders, but there’s a great love for Lewis Montsma. He came over, um, and he had, he’d done an ACL injury. So, um, everyone was aware of that. And then in sort of the three or four seasons we’ve had him, he’s managed to do another two ACL injuries.

But because everybody remembers how amazing he was, uh, not just in that season, but how hard he’s worked to come back, how he’s a first hand in the air, always for community, for foundation work, um, always gets a warm reception from the fans. It’s such a story that everybody is so desperate for him to get back on the pitch, desperate for him to do well. There is such a connection there. Uh, and we’re, we’re hopeful. We’ve seen him on the bench a few times. He gets clapped as he walks out and does his sub stretching, which I’m sure he enjoys.

And there was a big clamor at the end of the year. There was a concern that he’d, he’d be let go, uh, maybe go back to, uh, Holland, but actually, he stayed on, they gave him a short-term contract, and really the fans were desperate for that sort of thing to happen. They’ve always put so much faith in him. I’m sure in a lot of ways he actually wants to repay the fans. I mean, that is not, other than sports marketing, I’m not sure that there’s that kind of vibrance or loyalty that you can engender anywhere else outside of sports marketing, Michael?

Michael Jackson:
Well, it’s hard to say, isn’t it? But I would say that football can do that to you, right? It is an emotional heartbeat for so many people across the country and across the world, obviously. Um, you know, and it does those kinds of things. You know, it warms a heart, doesn’t it? Right. Um, he will have put his blood, sweat, and tears into that club and the club appreciates that. Uh, and clearly, to Lincoln City’s credit, they’ve listened, right. You know, how many clubs don’t listen? I’m a Chelsea fan and I’m, I’m, I’m imploring the owners to stop buying players. You know, it’s ridiculous.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s… And I think it’s weird because I think from the outside people think, “Oh, you know, it’s all transactional. It’s all about business, etc., etc.” Actually, I think it’s almost the opposite. I think we’ve come a long way from the days of transactional relationships between teams and, uh, and sponsors. And then that’s just in those two words: They’re not called sponsors anymore. They’re called partners. And, and rightly so, because sponsoring a team suggests that you put money into it and, you know, you’ll get your logo somewhere. Partnership is very much what it’s all about. You know, “What? How do we make this right? How do we make this better?”

And an agency like mine exists because we are able to — because look, it’s great if you can go speak to Lincoln City and you want to work with Lincoln City. Great, brilliant, fantastic, wonderful. However, is that the right route to go? Or should you speak to someone like me? Where I can say, well, actually, I think who you are, what you do, I think Cambridge United is the better team for you. And here are the reasons why. If you go speak to Lincoln City, they will promote Lincoln City. If you go speak to Chelsea Football Club, they will promote Chelsea Football Club.

What you get with an agency like mine is, first and foremost, honesty, blatant honesty, and as I’ve already pointed out, if we feel you should be spending less money, we’ll tell you. If we think you should be spending more, we’ll tell you. We will be able to sit down and actually work out what is the data telling us? What clubs fit for the reasons you’ve provided to us — location, uh, you know, needs, wants, etc. Um, and so that, for us… And look again, let me break this down for you. I get up, I talk about sport all day, and I get paid for it. I have the best job in the world, as far as I’m concerned, right? Nothing — I, I, yeah, I can’t… I haven’t had a sick day in eight years because I just won’t allow myself to do it because I’m so keen to get on with it.

Yeah. And so it is that important to me. And these things are so important to me, having that integrity has kind of built us to where we are in such a short period of time. We’ve done some other things. We’ve built this online platform where people can see what is available. It’s, you can’t just see it on the internet, you have to have a unique link from us, and we’re very sort of picky on who sees it because there’s a lot of important data in there. But it’s kind of brought something new to the table for both football clubs — well, sports teams, not just football — but also for the brands as well. Uh, and that’s kind of what’s put us above some of our competitors. And it’s… Yeah, yeah. Just great.

Chris Barnard:
And you mentioned value there. Value is so important for marketers, so important for brands. Like you say, the partnership aspect, the two-way relationship being so important. And I like how you’re saying there again. A lot of people would quite naturally say, uh, myself with FeedbackFans.com, “Okay, well, I’m a Lincoln supporter, so I’m going to go and sponsor Lincoln and I want the front of shirt because everybody tells me that’s exactly where I’ve got to be.” But that’s not the case, is it? I’d just like to explore in our last question together the pitfalls, just so that we can give people some things to look out for, some red flags, some green flags, hopefully, and how these businesses, um, brands listening can get the most value out of their sponsorship. You’re sort of saying follow the data, and that’s, I suppose, the value you’re adding in these partnerships by saying, “Wait, hold on a minute. It might not be Lincoln City for you, as fabulous a football team as they are. Uh, you might actually be better sponsoring Cambridge United, uh, who we’re going to beat on Saturday, or another team for another reason.” Naturally, it doesn’t have to be that front of shirt.

Could you give us a breakdown? I think the listeners would love to get a bit of an idea of the numbers. How much does it cost? I imagine some people have been listening to the whole podcast, and we’ve done well to hold them back to this point, Michael, waiting to hear sort of how much these packages normally cost through the divisions? Could you give us some info on that?

Michael Jackson:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s… None of this is kind of like a secret, right? But I guess no one talks about it. Clubs won’t sort of out and out say, “Oh, it’s going to cost this,” because they’ll tell you, “Well, you know, it depends on what the package looks like,” etc., etc. But yeah, I can definitely give you some numbers, but you’re right. One of the biggest issues we have initially with some people is that they’ll come to us and say, “I want to sponsor Lincoln City,” and the first question is why? Right? So we have to… Because so many of the times it’s heart over head, right? They have this passion. They love football. They love their team. They want to do something with the team, but is their team the right place to go? So, you know, I won’t dismiss it immediately. I’d ask the question, “Why Lincoln?” Well, maybe, you know, your head offices are in Lincoln, and maybe your customers are in Lincoln. In that case, perfect, brilliant. But actually, if you want a wider audience and your audience is quite a young audience, and, um, they’re motivated and they’re on social and all the rest of it, then I would be pushing you towards Cambridge United because Cambridge has universities and colleges. So, you know, Cambridge is full of young people who are using social media, who are purchasing most of their purchases online on their phone. So we would look at all that information and data to help you make the right decision, not the decision that comes from your heart, as hard as that might be for you.

Again, you know, and it’s interesting you bring up the prices because we did, um, it was actually on LinkedIn, and we put a post up saying, “How much do you think it would cost you to have your logo on a sort of mid-level F1 car?” So I’m thinking McLaren, I’m thinking Williams. Um, and I think, you know, it’s a full McLaren side doing really, really well this season, but they’ve been just every year ago we did it. Um, and we gave three prices. We gave £1.5 million, £7 million, and £20 million. Now the majority of people put £20 million, the most of the rest put £7 million, and some, like 13 percent, put £1.5 million. Now the correct answer is £1.5 million, but people’s natural assumption is, “Well, it’s Formula One, it’s a billionaire’s playground, so it’s going to be £20 million.” And so there is a misunderstanding or a lack of education in regard to the kind of cost of these things, I guess. So, we try to kind of revert that.

So again, using football, and, you know, I want to make clear that we do deal with rugby and cricket and the NFL, NBA, but football stroke soccer is, is clearly what people know best, and the Premier League is what people know best, so I’ll use those as examples for the moment. Let’s leave out the top six — the Chelsea’s, the Arsenal’s, the Tottenham’s, the Man City’s, the Man United’s, and Liverpool, if I didn’t already say that. So your sort of Aston Villas downwards, really.

Um, so at the bottom of the Premier League, you’re probably looking at about £3.5 to £4 million for a front of shirt. You’re looking at going up to that kind of sixth place, up to £10 million. So the numbers don’t jump that much. So, you know, most of the Premiership you can get from £3.5 or £4 million to £10 million per season, right? Then there’s the big jumps, right, to the, the Arsenal’s, the Chelsea’s, you know, you’re talking from £30 to £65 million. Um, Man United being the most expensive, uh, of, of all of them. Um, that kind of gives you an idea of the kind of cost for the front of shirt in the Premier League.

In the Championship, you’re looking at, at the top end, uh, it’s getting to the million-pound point, you know. I, I think, um, I think that’s probably already here. I think, yeah, I think about a million, but maybe one club would get a million, but everyone else is kind of like the bigger teams would be like 800k. The bottom of the Championship, you’re looking at 350k, something like that per season, 350k.

Michael Jackson:
League One, at the very top, you’re looking at 250k if it’s a big team — if you, you know, Portsmouth were down there last year, Derby were down there last year, Sunderland were down there the year before — those kinds of teams are going to get 250k. At the bottom end, you’re looking at about 150k. And then in League Two, you’re looking at kind of 150k down to about 100k. It doesn’t really go much further down than that. And those are the front of shirts. And then you’ve got the sleeves. And so, yeah, I mean, I could spend another half an hour just talking about this subject, but that gives you an idea. But I will add, if you went to a mid-table Championship club and the front of shirt was 500k a year, you could probably get an official partnership for about 50 to 80k. And essentially what that is, is you’re getting the same things that the on-kit partner is getting — the sleeve partner or the front of shirt partner — but just less of. So you’re getting hospitality, but less. You’re getting LED around the pitch, but less. Social media, but less. But a lot of the same stuff. And it’s much more cost-effective.

Your listeners will have heard it before, but the official airline, the official toothpaste, part of the official, whatever it might be. So, um, it doesn’t have to be an on-kit relationship for you to kind of get exposure through the club, you know, hospitality, social media posts through the club, video activation, etc. So, there are different ways to cut it.

Chris Barnard:
Yeah, and that’s some great insight. I think a perfect place for us to wrap up. I think we could have gone on for another couple of hours. There’s quite a lot of questions I’ve still got for you, but we’ll leave them to be asked by the listeners in the comments. It would be remiss of me, though, to let you go without the final Bear Business question we ask everybody.

It says a lot about what our guests like to do in their downtime when they can get a couple of hours to themselves. And the question we ask on that, Michael, is what’s your favourite game? It can be a video game, card game, board game, anything you like to do to unwind. What do you like to play when you’re not, um, sort of setting up these fabulous sports marketing deals?

Michael Jackson:
Yeah, you know what? I’m a massive gamer. Uh, I’m a console gamer. Um, which will disappoint probably half your audience. Um, I see a computer, and I don’t want to go then spend the rest of the evening sitting, playing with a keyboard. Um, so I’m a console gamer. I, the majority of the time, have been an Xbox, uh, person. Although more recently, I switch between Xbox and PlayStation. My favourite games are like open-world games, right? One of my all-time favourites is Fallout 4, um, from Bethesda. Um, can’t stand the garbage they’ve produced since, but Fallout 4 — I love that. I think I’ve completed it like six times.

On the PlayStation, uh, The Last of Us is, and Horizon is a more recent game. Again, they’re all kind of open-world, mission-based campaigns where you’re going back here, and I love that. I love that because also, it’s that kind of freedom to pick up and drop off whenever you like and just kind of enjoy the journey, enjoy the story, rather than, you know, being killed every 30 seconds, um, on Call of Duty or something.

Chris Barnard:
Yeah, they are truly fantastic choices. I’m totally in agreement with you there. Um, I really like Fallout 4 as a game. I used to play, uh, quite a lot of it on PlayStation, although I have gone back to being a PC gamer these days, but I’m hoping by this point, we’ve not got that console-PC snobbery anymore.

Michael Jackson:
It exists, it exists, mostly from the PC lovers, but my brother’s one, and he’s like, “Oh, you should get yourself one.” I’m like, “No, I’d much prefer to sit in front of a 75-inch screen TV, uh, with my legs crossed, you know, just like a 12-year-old, even though I’m a 47-year-old man.” But I do, uh, it is a bit of an escape, right? It’s just a sort of chill-out, relax time. But, um, I don’t really feel like I’ve got a lot to get away from, to be honest with you, because, yeah, you’re getting WhatsApps from Juventus and, you know, calls from New York Jets and, you know, reminders from Chelsea about our meeting next week. Um, I would, if you’d have told me this was what I’d be doing when I was 16 years old, A) I would have called you a liar, and B) I would, I would have been very impressed. Um, yeah, here I am. And, um, it’s brilliant.

Chris Barnard:
I can hear them turning off our podcast in their droves in true jealousy that they’re not living your life, Michael, but I think you’ll have inspired a lot of people to try and break into this sort of industry, right? Because it is fascinating. I was so excited to have you on the podcast. I know it’s something that a lot of people would aspire to do. Uh, I myself harbour an ambition at some point to be working in a commercial, uh, environment in a sports club that I like. So I’m particularly interested in it. And I’m sure a lot of the sort of aspiring entrepreneurs and some of the business leaders who want to partner with sports brands will have learned a lot from today.

So thank you ever so much for your contribution. Lots of information will be in the show notes — the Norwich City mental health campaign we mentioned and other things. So please follow those links. I’ll also put links to Michael’s social media, which is where I found him, so you can follow him on LinkedIn and check out his website. Go and reach out to Michael if you’d like to engage with him. But thank you ever so much, Michael.

Michael Jackson:
Brilliant. No, really enjoyed it. Thank you for your time.