How MLB’s pitcher’s mound became a multi-million dollar asset

In a sports world dominated by conversations around broadcast rights and ad spend, what’s the real media value of sponsorship?

In this episode of StreamTime Sports, co-hosts Nick Meacham and Chris Stone are joined by Franco De Bonis (VISUA) and Georgie Webb (Vision Insights) to explore how brands, rights holders, and agencies are moving beyond vanity metrics to uncover the true ROI of sponsorship. From AI-powered exposure tracking to high stakes valuations on everything from jersey patches to Ted Lasso cameos, they break down what’s driving smarter sponsorship decisions—and where the industry is still falling short.

Key Points:

• What delivers more value: a commercial during the World Series or in-game brand exposure on the field?
• Why are 1 in 3 brands still struggling to accurately measure sponsorship ROI?
• Which metrics actually matter when measuring sponsorship value? 
• How do American and European sports differ in how they value digital and broadcast sponsorship assets? 
• How is AI reshaping sponsorship measurement down to the millisecond?

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the next episode of
Streamtime Sports. My name is Chris Stone.
I'm the community lead, joined as always by our CEO, Nick
Meacham. Now, Nick, today we're going to
be talking about sponsorship value in media.
And we spent quite a bit of time, you know, in recent
episodes talking about advertising, thinking more, you
know, kind of your traditional commercials.
We've not necessarily talked about the sponsorship side and
exposure when it comes to media.And before we deep dive into

(00:32):
that, Nick, I'm just going to ask you a question if there's
any, you know, maybe sports sponsorship moments that
necessarily stick out to you. I think when I was, you know,
going through this, the one thatsticks out to me is always
singing the Super Bowl and the Gatorade dunking the coach, you
know, the winning coach, you know, and for me, that's
something I'd imagine is not contractually obligated for
Gatorade to get that extra TV coverage.

(00:54):
But it's now become an iconic moment where every Super Bowl,
the winning coach gets dunked, you know, and you know, whatever
flavour Gator, I think you can even bet on which flavour
Gatorade the coach is going to be dumped on.
I think I'll say that. And to me, that just seems it
was like one of those moments, one of those examples of a
sponsorship that is getting extra value from, you know, it's
not just a sponsorship. It is now literally an iconic
moment that you know, the commentators are looking to

(01:15):
speak on after the game in the biggest, you know, TV moment of
the year. Oh, that's that's about as good
as it gets from something that like lives on as a legacy.
I'm not even sure what the agreement is and even the fact
if I I bet that if Gatorade was asserted as a sponsor and
partner of some of these leagues, people would still call
it that. It's a bit like Xeroxing
photocopy, right? It's the brand lives on even

(01:35):
though you might not be using a Xerox machine.
I think it's the same thing if you get away.
Interesting question. I can't I really struggle to
think of anything that jumps themind that lives on like that to
the same to the same level. But there's been some
interesting activations over theyears.
The one that really jumps out tome is a a great sponsorship
activation which lives on through social media.

(01:56):
So effectively was do you remember?
I don't know what college bowl it is.
I think it might be even cold. I know we're knowing.
I know we're not. We're talking to non American
audience, a mix of audience here, right?
But bear with me for a second. I think it's the Pop Tart bowl.
Yes. That is one of the most
extraordinary activations I've ever seen for any sporting

(02:19):
events and it could only happen in America, but it's almost like
after that experience of seeing that in action.
If you haven't seen it, for those that are tuning in, please
just go onto YouTube and just search Pop Tart, Pop Pop Tart
bowl and it will come up. There's a number one clip, but
that sort of activation is something that it's such sitting

(02:41):
on the fine line of horrendous and brilliant that it just
works. But if you take a one step
further, just an inch further, it's it's a disaster.
And that one, this one has stuckwith me ever since I saw it.
And I can't, I can't get it out of my mind.
You know what, Nick, I was thinking of that as a, as a more
modern example. It was just, it was just great.

(03:02):
I mean, some of the content theyproduced off the back of it, the
amount of engagement they must have received from a social
media perspective. And you're right, I, I hear
Europeans getting upset about the idea of a halftime show
Europa, you know, UEFA Champions.
Like I can't imagine what they would do with the Pop Tarts
celebration. This is all sorts of another
level, so I think I'd love anyone can find a better example

(03:22):
of something that is more extraordinary as an activation
that would 100% get rejected in every single market across
Europe, yet lives on an infamy across the US sports sponsorship
landscape. Well, today, to take us a little
bit more in depth and kind of actually understand what all
that equates to in terms of media value, we've got 2 experts

(03:44):
to join us today. One of them is Franco Debonis,
who is the Marketing Operations Director at Visua.
And then we're also joined by Georgie Webb, who is the EVP of
Client Services at Vision Insights.
And the two of them work together.
So Franco and Georgie, I don't know, is there any other
examples that maybe pop out or anything you want to add to
those as kind of, you know, great examples.
You know, you, you guys are, youknow, living and breathing this

(04:05):
stuff every day. No, like I'm stuck on those two
now because that's all I can think of.
I mean, the Gatorade 1 is just organically grew from a
celebration and now it's tradition and it has done
wonders for the brand there. But yeah, the Pop Tart one was
insane. I think, I think these days

(04:27):
brands look to go a little bit more viral and a little bit more
organic in their approach. I mean the most recent one is is
Liverpool and the Sala moment with the Google Pixel camera
right on the face of it seemed such a natural thing to do.
But consequently we found out itwas actually all staged and no

(04:50):
one really cares because it it got like half a million views or
whatever in the 1st 2 minutes orsomething like that.
So yeah, there are, there are some incredible ones.
I do remember though when I werea lad, the Premiership was
actually the milk though. I think it was a milk cup back
in the day and it's not really an activation but it is a

(05:16):
something that lives on for a long time.
I think anyone of my age would remember the ad with the two
young kids talking about wantingto be football players while
drinking milk and one of them was saying to the other one if
you don't drink your milk, you'll only be good enough to
play for Acclington Stanley. Yes.
Do you remember? That that is, yeah, I've seen

(05:37):
that. Yeah.
That's a great, that's a great. It lives on.
It lives. On for Yeah, absolutely.
Generation and a half. They're just these wonderful
concepts and activations that ifyou capture the the zeitgeist of
the moment and the and the people's attention, they will
just remember it forever. Yeah.
Well, we're gonna actually, likeI said, dive in today a little
bit more about what that actually equates for businesses.
And I think perhaps maybe beforeI hand things over to the

(05:59):
experts, Nick, maybe just you togive a little bit of a framing
of this. Like I said, we we have talked
quite a bit about advertising. Now obviously the people that
are advertising at the same brands are going to be doing the
sponsorships. But perhaps maybe just from your
perspective as we look at the sports media ecosystem, kind of
what role that is playing or why, you know, there are experts
in the space that are joining ustoday to kind of talk about why
that ecosystem is changing and that relationship is changing

(06:22):
well. One of the big things that's,
that's evolving and it's, it's taken a long time to get there
is the, the, I guess the value of those digital assets and
visibility that sports is bringing to the table has been
grossly under monetized for somefor, well, since, since, since
digital basically began. And only now through what we're

(06:42):
going to talk a little bit abouttoday and what Visua does and,
and, and other assets and accessof information wherever they
gather. Plus seeing the change in the
way brands are approaching the digital space, it's just
creating so much more opportunity.
And in fact, sponsorships, if you take a step back and look at
sponsorship as as a topic, as a theme, as a, as a monetization

(07:02):
stream of sports, that is a life.
It has been the lifeblood of sports since you're right, right
in the early stages of becoming professional, right.
But this transition into maximising the digital assets
that are available, not just thephysical assets has been a
really tricky journey for sportsto overcome.
And therefore it's leaving a huge amount of value on the

(07:23):
table. And when we've been talking
about on the advertising side, the, the bit that sits in the
middle and is actually the better fit for sports is that
sponsorship here because of thathistory that exists around it
and that fact that it's been part of the, the fabric of, of
sports for so long. So the fact that we're now now
able to measure sponsorship moreeffectively, get more value out

(07:44):
of digital assets more effectively, just get more
information to really make the proof case.
Because sometimes sponsorship had a bit of a window of time
that they really started to struggle to justify it's value
to brands when they started getting everyone getting a
little bit more analytical. But now I think we've overcome
that hurdle a little bit. And now you're starting to see

(08:04):
more and more brands have a better understanding of how to
measure successful sponsorship. Where historically it was a
little bit of a, we think it works.
There's some positivity we get from it, but we're not really
sure how to quantify all of that.
And now I think we're in a much better place for that, which is
really exciting because that means that the monetization of
of sports is just going to continue to fill out those other

(08:24):
areas. And we've talked about the more
say subscription LED approaches that exist and we've talked
about the need to go the other way and promote accessibility to
content. That's where sponsorship and
advertising really comes to life.
So really excited to to talk more about how sponsorship is
getting valued and being accessed and measured.
Because I think that's really where particularly the the

(08:46):
sports teams and the leagues andthe rights owners themselves are
able to take control of their revenue generation.
Whereas obviously the advertising side is still in a
bit of a middle ground between the broadcasters and the
platforms and those who are controlling the live broadcast
specifically. But if in this instance talking
sponsorship, it doesn't, you don't have to have any of that
control to be able to maximise that value that comes out of

(09:07):
sponsorship assets like what they come through digital and
and physical. So I that, that sort of set the
scene. Well, I think it's a really
important time. I think an exciting time for the
industry and there's been huge growth in revenues across
various markets, which we're going to hopefully give a bit
more insight as we go along today.
Yeah. And hopefully, Franco, that
leads directly into kind of the first thing that we wanted to

(09:28):
talk about was sort of saying the scene a little bit and how
we've got to this moment. You know, Nick sort of talked
about the increase in data to beable to do these sorts of
measurements. Maybe perhaps just give us a
little bit of an insight into the work you guys are doing at
Visual and how you are helping organisations take advantage of
this pivotal moment that we're seeing from a sports industry
perspective. Yeah.
I, I, firstly, I, I agree with what Nick said there in, in

(09:50):
terms of the how brands are are beginning to understand how they
can properly measure. However, a counterpoint to that
is there's still a very large percentage that that does not do
that. I was actually yesterday where
this was a European sponsorship association where they presented

(10:13):
a survey of their member base where 33% of them said that they
either don't measure or don't understand the data that they
receive. Now that's a significant chunk
of pretty significant brands whoare spending a lot of money and
not really understanding what itmeans.

(10:34):
I think that's because to Nick'spoint, there is a lack of
knowledge about what can actually be achieved today.
The the level of data, the levelof granularity that they can get
is not really understood. So they kind of flounder in that
grey area of well, we've spent this.
The only thing we can do now is look all the way over here and

(10:56):
figure out did the sales go up and there's a lot of space in
between and a lot of actions that you can take to improve
your efficiency and efficacy of your sponsorships.
We'll get into that more later on.
So I think that's, that's a really key point.
And when we dig into some of thedetail that between Visua and

(11:20):
Vision Insights, we can actuallydeliver to, to brands via the
rights holders. And that's another key point.
I think they, they, they came out saying, you know, really
rights holders need to take brands by the hand because
ultimately they're the ones receiving the funds and saying
here's how we can help you justify that sponsorship.

(11:40):
So it's a really just as visual and vision insights kind of work
together to deliver that. It's really about brands and
rights holders also on that side, working together to figure
out what the best outcome can be.
You throw agencies in the mix aswell, right?
Because sometimes they're, they're working on behalf of the
brand and they're then receivingthe data from the property,

(12:03):
manipulating it again. And then the brand gets
something ultimately different as well.
I mean, just quickly that that point, Georgie, I think is
actually one of the main things that has actually held back this
industry in a lot of instant, a lot of cases, right?
Because I don't want to be too negative towards the agency

(12:23):
world, but I've heard stories and Chris, you're out, you've
been in that world before that, you know, when you're managing
multi billion dollar accounts and so forth, looking at a basic
different way of measuring performance alongside all the
other activations and channels you're measuring.
It's very difficult to like translate those over over on top
of each other if you're presenting a massive report on

(12:45):
what you've delivered for, say, a client to that scale.
Because let's face, sponsorship depends on which which brand.
But typically sponsorship is 1 channel of many, many channels
that they approach, not just onecall.
They might use that asset in a lot of ways and therefore that
translation for an agency be able to talk the right talk and
make sure they can bring that intelligence alongside

(13:06):
everything else they're doing and wrap at a nice bow and give
them to them to prove that it's validated has been has been a
huge hurdle for the last, I'd say last 2010, 20 years in
sports. Given even when I joined sports
pro in 2010, it was a thing thenthat I knew it was, it was
talked about. So it's only gotten worse.
So but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I think we're on, we're on the

(13:28):
tipping pole. We're just heading back the
right way now and it's getting alittle bit easier.
Yeah, I agree with you 100%. There was a time when people
said you never get fired for buying an IBM, right?
And there's been a long time in in sponsorship evaluation where
the metrics you could say were more vanity than sanity.
And when you start delivering real data that shows that

(13:53):
actually maybe, and this is still happening today that
Georgie can speak to this, the difference between companies out
there and vision insights and the data we provide is, you
know, there could be differencesof millions in the perceived
value. Which of those two numbers, if
you've always delivered that vanity figure, do you want to

(14:13):
now go to your C-Suite and say, actually, this is what this is
what this sponsorship has delivered.
This is the real number. But OK, it doesn't look as good
as what we've been saying for the last few years.
And I think there's got to be that tipping point where we get
down to sanity. And because that can really now
drive decision making. If you if you, you know, anchor

(14:36):
on the real number, it's going to be the critical thing.
And in terms of that, just to give people an idea, like could
you just explain as best you canAnd you know, we'll post some
videos later. Will there be some graphics and
videos, things like that. But just before we really dive
into some of this, just tell people what visual exactly is
doing and then explain some of that relationship with vision
insights and how the two of you guys are leveraging that.

(14:57):
Okay, well, I guess I'll start from the visual side and then
I'll hand over to Georgie in a in a, in a way which is very
synergistic with what we actually do day-to-day.
So basically we receive every video of every game in every
major sport in the US. They are sent to us and our

(15:18):
system then picks that up and itgoes through a number of phases
within that. The first one is where we will
identify the commercial sections, OK, So the ads, we
need to remove those sections because obviously those brands
are not related to the sponsorship.
So those are taken out. Then we have something called

(15:39):
segments in some sports. It's important to understand the
context of what is being seen onscreen.
So PGA for example, a segment would be what hole are they on?
So that the PGA want to understand that, OK, these
brands were detected on hole oneversus hole 234 and so on.
So that's an important thing. And and same goes for other,

(16:02):
other sports, the different context.
Once that's done, we go through our brand detection phase.
So this is a essentially a what we call visual AI computer
vision. So it's then fed through and the
system is trained to understand the brands which are important
for that specific sport, which can differ.

(16:23):
So the brand library for MLB is different to NFL is different to
NHL and so on. So it goes through that
detection phase, identifying allthe brands that it can see
within the within the, the video.
The next stage then is understanding what assets or
what we call placements the brand was identified on, because

(16:45):
that's critical. If you're a shirt sponsor, you
want to know when your brand appeared on the shirt versus a,
a lower tier or some structure element or a, or a beverage
bottle or something like that. So we identify from the brand
what is the placement. All of that data is then put

(17:05):
together in terms of time, exposure area and so on.
And we even do things like player tagging and object
tagging. So not only what object or asset
was the brand on, but what player was related to that.
So the rights holders can then say to the brands here are the

(17:29):
players that actually delivered the most value to you on this
asset in these particular games.So once that's all done, we
output a file for each game. And within that file we have
various elements. So there's obviously we provide

(17:49):
a snapshot and a short video clip for every detection.
Now that's critical because I mean, there are some major
players in the market including the big names like Nielsen who
don't provide this, they'll provide a, a general kind of
overview report. But our approach is fully

(18:10):
transparent because it's done 100%.
Every single frame is analysed. There are no assumptions, there
are no sampling of the data. It's every frame is analysed.
And so that means every detection is down to the
microsecond or or or of time that you get.

(18:34):
So you get a snapshot and a clipof every detection.
You get the placement named and the brand name that is has been
detected. And then you get 2 sets of data.
You have track level data. So that means every single
detection is highlighted based on how long it was on screen

(18:55):
for, time in time out, the size of the detection and so on.
And also we have a confident score as well because I can get
into more detail on that. But essentially, how confident
are we that the detection is, iswhat we think it is?
And that will be based on how small, how blurry, you know,

(19:16):
the, the, the exposure was. So we have that track level
data, but then all of that can get rolled up into an exposure
level data. And that means if you have,
let's say four or five differentexposures of that brand on
screen, well, you don't want to multiple count that.

(19:36):
So we roll it up into one, what we call exposure with an
averaged out time on screen, size on screen and that kind of
information. So all of that gets output and
it's then received by Georgie, by Georgie's team.
So then at this point, over to you.

(19:56):
Yeah, we get the the nice complete product which is which
is super useful. Obviously we have a a media
operations team that work closely with Franco and and
Visua to get the footage in a position where we can run it
through their their AI tech and then.
We actually have created from the metrics that come out in

(20:17):
that raw data our our vision score, which is our discount
factor, which Defranco's point before you know you've got your
gross value, which teams really like to provide, but the
discounted value which is more representative of of what the
the brand is actually receiving.Yeah.
So we, we load it into our user interface, clients can log in

(20:42):
and, and philtre through all, all the data, look at, isolate
different assets, isolate different games.
If they've changed creative 1 from 1 game to the next, you
know, what's the impact on theirvisibility.
As Franco said, you know, we've got all the clips, so they can
download MP4 videos of any clip that their brand is receiving

(21:06):
across the season, which is a huge differentiator for us.
I started out 15 years ago at Repucom where we were one of the
only vendors sort of doing this or one of the new vendors that
were providing this kind of analysis.
And we had three or four still shots that you would get just

(21:27):
example still shots. And some providers even today
are just doing still shots or not even any image proof of
performance in their platform. They just do it in offline
deliverables. So the fact that we have this
transparency and visual providesus, you know, with all these
clips is a huge benefit for for our partners.

(21:48):
And Georgie, I think the, the interesting part of that and
frankly what you've talked aboutis what the knock on effects of
having access to that information can be.
Because then you also can createmore confidence and a better
relationship between the brand and the the rights owner to say,
look, you know, we're deliveringwhat we say we are rather than
just telling you we're doing it.And that that confidence I think

(22:11):
is really, really important whenyou're trying to create a
partnership that is meaningful, that it justifies the big
paycheck that you really have tofeel everyone is getting due
value out of that visibility. So I think they're not going to,
it's not just about the sales bit, but it's the confidence of
making sure that relationship isreally transparent and visible
and then you can adjust things on the fly.

(22:33):
Whereas sometimes if you don't have access to the, the data and
the, the way in the fashion you're talking about, you may
not be able to assess the performance of some of these
sponsorships until it's too lateto then resolve some of those
things along along the way. So it's, yeah, it sounds really
important. I didn't realise you were from
Replicon days. That's come from my, my hot, my

(22:54):
home country Australia or Paul and Danny, which I know, I know
them quite well. And Chris, I don't know if you
noticed Miles used to work for them as well back in the day.
Yeah. So one of our our former
commercial director who's who's moved on, he's another Aussie
who was there is one Miles, Miles rose a shout out to him
and I think it's his first shoutout on the on the podcast so
far. Awesome.

(23:14):
Yeah, Yeah, we, we get a lot of anecdotal feedback from clients
in terms of having these clips. And because we're analysing at
30 frames per second, it's almost like we cannot believe
that you captured that like thatwas how, how are you getting
this level of granularity for the analysis that they haven't

(23:35):
been able to see before? And that's thanks to to the
Vizua team. And I think just to bring it
back to you a bit here, Franco, you mentioned some of the
metrics that were being used anda lot of them being sort of
vanity LED metrics. And you know, I've got access
now and you know, we might show some clips of it later on.
Some of the data you send, you know, it is quite extensive.
You know, it is not just oh, here's impressions, things like
that. And to your point, you are
measuring things down to the millisecond or how much of the

(23:57):
screens being used. Maybe just talk a little bit
from a measurement perspective how that is changing and what
that means in terms of making those decisions or being able to
determine ROI. You know, you guys aren't just
focused on some of those basic metrics, you are looking at
different things. So maybe just sort of how you
see measurement changing what you guys are gauging and kind of
how that's evolving the the ROI discussion?

(24:19):
Yeah. I mean, I think I have a couple
of interesting images to highlight that there's this
football image here, this this sort of I, I've just taken a, a
creative kind of approach to it.But you have this image of this
footballer who is just about to kick a ball and all around him
is brands around the lower tier,upper tier, There's a brand on

(24:44):
the back of his shirt and there's a lot going on.
But if you look at what we then see within that you will, you'll
see a a bunch of effectively things that we look at.
So obviously the time on screen is a is a critical one.
When did it come in, When did itcome out?
How long was it on screen for? And that also goes hand in hand

(25:08):
with size. Georgie can speak way more to
the value of is something betterif it's larger and shorter time
on screen or longer and smaller on screen.
And I guess it's what asset is it on that will determine that.
But then another factor is the clarity and that's really
important. People think that AI is some,

(25:29):
you know, we have these movies like Terminator and so on.
You know, it's going to AI is taking over the world and it's
super smart. And the reality is AI is a
toddler that's learnt to put shapes in a box, right?
But the difference is once you've taught that toddler to
put this, the star in the * shape and the square in the
square shape, unlike a human toddler, it can do it at

(25:53):
millions of shapes per second. So it's highly efficient, but it
has its limitations. But those limitations are
actually work in our favour whenit comes to this kind of
approach. There is the human factor when
we talk about things like clarity, a well informed human

(26:14):
that has seen a brand a million times will be able to tell what
that brand is from this amorphous BLOB of pixels, right?
So when you have humans doing analysis like this, which a lot
of companies do because they, they don't have a system that
analysis every frame and they, they, they just don't have a

(26:35):
system like ours, you get this kind of false reporting of
things that no average fan wouldever know what it is.
But someone who tags brands day in, day out will just tag this
BLOB because they recognise thatBLOB as a particular, you know,
brand X. So the AI can detect because

(26:59):
it's taught a particular brand, it looks at it like an
uninformed human. It only sees what it can
recognise and not, it doesn't make any assumptions of kind of
what it is, but where it does, we have this confidence score.
So George's team can then start to look at that and say, well,

(27:19):
we want to rule out anything below this level of confidence
because it's not really a properdetection.
So you know, that can be adjusted and so on.
So we have clarity also visibility, how much of A brand
should be visible before we classify as a good detection?
Is it 10 percent, 50%? And again, that's a level that

(27:41):
can be adjusted and we typicallygo on at about 50% of that brand
needs to be visible for it to becounted and detected.
And then we have things like a prominence and share a voice,
where is it on screen? And the how many other brands
are on screen? And, and Georgie's team use that
this what they call a clutter score to then inform their

(28:03):
discount based on if there's lots of other brands on screen,
then obviously that exposure hasless value than if it's on
screen, prominent right in the middle and it's the only thing
visible. So, yeah, those are the kind of
important metrics that can now be brought out, especially when,
as you said, you bring it down to the millisecond of detection.

(28:26):
You know, we're not assuming that because it was in frame 1
and it was in frame 31 because they're only doing 1 frame a
second that it's, it's, it's been there the whole time.
We can tell that it's, it was there on a fast moving sport,
ice hockey. In one second you can be from
one end of the arena, the rink to the other end of the rink.

(28:48):
So we get right down to that millisecond of data and it might
have been in, then out and then back in again.
So you get this really accurate level of data of what was
visible combined with all this other stuff of clarity and
prominence and share of voice and so on.
So yeah, that's essentially what's possible these days once

(29:12):
you start analysing it with withthis level of detail and
granularity. Georgie, I was just wondering to
sort of Franco's points there, how do you approach it?
Where you do you do you have things that you keep as many
things as universally aligned aspossible because Tran could talk
about dialling up or dialling down some aspects of the

(29:32):
measurement to measure that value for the in the eyes of the
client. Do you try and keep it
universal? So there's some universal
measures across the the all of the different clients to be able
to turn what's working, what's not.
Or do you do it on a client by client basis what they perceive
that to be worth? No, it's, it's definitely, it's
syndicated and and standardised.We obviously do do custom media

(29:55):
evaluation as well. But as it relates to the 8 or 9
core sports in the US, well, thefive men's, the four men's
majors, we're not currently doing MLSNWSLW, MB, APGA Tour,
LPGA Tour, It's all standardisedso that we can do competitive

(30:17):
benchmarking, which is a bigger component of what we do and what
we allow clients to access, which historically, again with
other vendors, they have had to,they get their data, nobody
else's data, but we're like, why?
They they can see everything. So, you know, the Chicago Cubs
can see what all the Chicago teams are doing and who's the

(30:40):
who's partnering with them and how much value are their
partners getting with other teams in the market or across
the league. You know, the Bulls have
Motorola, the Bucks have Motorola on their jersey patch.
Who's doing better for Motorola.So, yeah, we keep it standard so
that we can do that kind of thatkind of analysis.

(31:01):
And, and just I'll just add to that.
I think the, the point I was making was that the technology
is very flexible in how it analysis and, and what the data
that it delivers. When we started working with
Vision Insights, we did effectively about a year of test

(31:22):
analysis before Vision Insights went live as it were.
And that was a, A, a massive commitment to the validity and
accuracy of the data purely to dial in some of these, you know,
knobs and dials that we can, we can play with to deliver exactly

(31:44):
the configuration and the data that Vision Insights felt was
most representative and most accurate to the market.
And I have to say that commitment, we, we've not seen
that from any other partner thatwe've worked with.
It's, it's a, it's a phenomenal commitment to time and cost, but
well worth it now. Yeah, we were.

(32:05):
We're adamant to get it right. And for our business we we focus
on on TV exposure. I don't we can talk through, you
know, beyond broadcast and into digital and social as well.
But we want to do that right? Because we see a lot of vendors
who are trying to do everything and they're good.

(32:26):
They're like fine at each thing,but they're not excellent at
each thing. And so we did.
We wanted to invest the year. We brought on Kristen Elhart,
who is the absolute guru of media valuation in the US and
she's worked tirelessly with theVizwa team to get the analysis
in a place that that we have it now and we made a lot of

(32:49):
strategic decisions early on because of the broadcast
distribution. This might be going on a on a
tangent, but the broadcast distribution in the US is
totally different. It's very regionalized across
NBANHL and MLB. You'll have the home team feed
and the away team feed or a gamethat's nationally broadcast.

(33:12):
And in the past what we had doneat prior companies that we'd
work for is just the home feed and then we would duplicate it.
But with the with Visuo, we're, we're doing both.
We're doing the home feed and the away feed and the insights
that we're getting on how each RSN is actually producing the

(33:32):
game is unreal. Anything close to players, the
jersey patch, the benches in icehockey, you're looking at a 7030
split in terms of the visibilitya brand gets on their home feed
versus the opponent's feed. Because the opponent feed's not
going to show your players, they're going to show their

(33:53):
players. And then with the introduction
of new digital assets in the NBA, you've got virtual
placements on the Centre Court and three-point arcs and they
can be different on each feed. So by just doing one feed,
you're actually not able to provide a full valuation for for

(34:20):
a client. Well, I'd actually say you
haven't take us a new direction.You just you know, you sent away
like a podcasting prone to the next topic where we were going
to start to talk a little bit about the fact of what are some
of the differences you're seeingon a market by market basis.
And you know, I think from a broadcast perspective, you
already highlighted some of the key ones, which is the existence
of the RSN world, whereas in theUK, primarily whatever games on

(34:42):
Sky or TNT Sports, that's the game that's on.
There's a lot of different intricacies.
So it would be kind of interesting from your
perspective. You've talked a little bit on
some of those, but just some of the differences in the way
sponsorship is either being measured or the effectiveness of
it from AUS market perspective maybe compared to a European
market perspective. Because Nick kind of said at the
start of the show, you know, ouraudience is kind of covering

(35:03):
both of those markets pretty well.
So it would be kind of interesting to hear a little bit
more, you know, both from your guys's perspective, sort of what
those two different marketplaceslook like in terms of how
sponsorship is being effective from a media perspective.
Yeah, definitely I can. I can certainly speak more more
to the US I'll, I'll let Franco touch on on the Europe, but in

(35:24):
the US, if there's a space, they're going to brand it
particularly obviously NASCAR, but baseball as well and global
I field now I was looking at their data the other day.
It's like it's like a NASCAR car.
It's like everywhere. It's it's just everywhere.
And what we're doing as well is not only measuring the exposure

(35:46):
of corporate partners, but also league IP, the team IP,
broadcaster IP, because these are white space opportunities
down the line, right? So, you know, if in the NBA they
move from a patch to the entire front of jersey where the team
name is, we're going to have that that data.

(36:08):
But yeah, they brand, they brandeverything.
And it can be quite regionalizedbecause of the broadcast
distribution in terms of the sponsorship portfolio.
So you'll have, you know, local restaurant chains having
sponsorship packages or the Regional Hospital network or,

(36:31):
you know, the local auto dealership rather than the
national brand. And this is where we can also
help teams as they go to sell and pitch with having this home
and away feed analysis. An example in hockey is the home

(36:52):
and away bench. So again, the away bench is not
going to be broadcast as much inthe home market as your home
bench. So your away bench should be a
national brand because that is going to be seen across every
RSN across the country when you're playing different teams.

(37:12):
So we, we can be that strategic,but yeah.
But the regional and distribution, the regional
brands that are selected, I think is is quite unique to the
to the US market. Georgia were you saying was
saying that you could I don't want to put words in your mouth
or I've got I misunderstood thatyou could measure effectively

(37:35):
what a space is worth. What if there's no sponsor there
to give them the data and say hey this is worth about X in
value to go to market? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. And we've done that.
We did that with the Super Bowl.So for the last few years, for
our first few years, we did overnight Super Bowl analysis

(37:55):
just to kind of get our name outthere.
But, you know, if there was a takeover of, you know, a naming
rights partner of the Super Bowl, we would be tracking the
Super Bowl logo throughout the broadcast.
So if there was a brand associated with that logo, how
much would that cost or how muchvalue could that receive?

(38:18):
We've done it with the NHL referee patches in the Stanley
Cup, the MLB post season as wellwith with referee patches before
they they got the partner. So, yeah, anywhere that
currently is not branded with a corporate logo, but does have a

(38:39):
team or league or broadcaster IP, we we have that data.
But we also do pure white space analysis, as you said, Nick,
where, you know, let's say a jersey sleeve, there is no logo
there. So we can train a model to
identify the, you know, there's no logo, but we can identify

(39:01):
what is a jersey sleeve. You just train the model with a
bunch of data and it then says, oh, OK, I now know what a jersey
sleeve is. Feed it the data and it will and
it will show you how much time exposure that jersey sleeve
received. Naturally.
Then you would be able to say OK, if if there was a logo
there, this is how much exposurethat logo would receive.

(39:23):
But obviously George you were talking about the the US side, I
mean Franco, we for those who spend time in Europe, they are
clearly not as brand centric of of putting things wherever they
can, which comes with its pros and cons of the market.
What do you do you do you therefore measure?
I mean you talked about the clutter.

(39:44):
That was the clutter metric, I think was one of the ones you
talked about. Is that score really highly then
in in in Europe versus the US asa result of that?
It, it's actually it would be a little bit lower because
there's, there's just not in as much exposure of brands on
screen. At the same time, I think that
the obviously we have clients inin Europe and the key difference

(40:10):
is how much more granular American.
Rights holders and brands want to get in their data.
It's not just about, as I say, it's not just about jersey.
We have data going to vision insights where the requirement
is jersey, front, jersey back, jersey sleeve, in some cases

(40:32):
sleeve, left sleeve, right cap. It's not just a cap, it's cap
front, side, back. So the the amount of analysis
that happens, which then allows rights holders to inform brands
in a much better way of look, ifyou were instead next year, if

(40:53):
you were to take the, I mean sounds obvious, right.
But if you were to take the front of the jersey or in some
cases actually if you take the back of the jersey, you get more
exposure than the front in some particular sports.
So you just get this level of granularity and depth in the
data that we don't see in Europe.

(41:13):
Also in the US as Georgie said, you get this these virtual
insertions, the amount of virtual brands that are placed
in the footage. And I don't just mean graphics,
I mean in place, you know, in NHL, the dasher boards are
basically overlaid and you have on field stuff and you have, you

(41:36):
know, so there's a lot of virtual insertions that happen.
And like you look at one of the biggest rugby tournaments in the
world, the Six Nations, and still when people fall over on
on the pitch, or they're, they're scrummaging or whatever
it may be, they, they get up from the middle of the pitch and
they're just black from the Guinness ad, right?

(41:57):
So I mean, it's literally still painted on on the pitch.
That's the, that's the level of difference.
Whereas that just wouldn't happen in the US.
And the, the advantage of makingit digital is that you can do
this highly personalised if you're sending the feed, you
know, people watching in South Africa could see a South African
brand there instead of, instead of a European brand.

(42:18):
So it just gives that that levelof sophistication which just
isn't quite there yet in Europe do.
You think, Franco, that I will give AI will give a thesis and
you can agree or disagree it it's just a lack of
understanding that sits in Europe about the value and

(42:40):
impact that level of brand branding has to a brand in the
space. Because I we run events.
I've been to countless events. I've heard countless sponsor
execs talk and they always make a big point of they don't just
think about. They don't want to just have
their sticker on the, on the, the shirt and what they want to
tell stories and several which Iget, I don't hear that same

(43:02):
mindset in the US because they they do really they, but it
seems like they really understand the value of having
brand visibility. They're not looking at like it's
almost like in the Europe, they talk about it as a negative,
having that brand visibility almost in, in weird ways.
And sometimes I've heard a talk with that sort of tone, whereas
in the US it's completely the opposite.
It's all positive positivity. So do you have a thought on

(43:24):
that? Yeah, if you're thinking about
what George, you said at the beginning about the RSNS and the
the ability to display differentbrands and even local brands and
so on, and the fact that so muchis branded in US sports when you
don't have that in Europe, it's almost seen as crass to have too
much branding, right? But if you therefore embrace

(43:46):
this virtual insertion of stuff,it allows you to expand the the
exposure that brands can receivewhile not crossing that line of
crassness. You know, we don't want to put a
logo on everything, but if you can rotate those logos out for
different regions, and we know that look at Premiership

(44:09):
football in, in how many regionsit's shown across the world, you
can actually make really informed decisions.
And if to your point, if you have the right data, you can
start to really put two and two together and say, OK, well this
placement, this asset delivers huge value.

(44:30):
And so we really need to make that a virtual insertion so we
can leverage that across different regions in different
ways. So yeah, that's, I think it all
comes together based on when youhave the right data, you embrace
technology and move forward withit and you think about
regionalisation, you can, you can just achieve so much more.
Well, I was actually Georgia going to give an example of

(44:53):
actually going off the track when Franco, you were talking
about the regionalized assets. One of the things I love to talk
about is piracy, and I find it really interesting.
That's when you find out people are pirating content.
I think it was Vinicius Junior was in Paris watching a football
match and he had a stream in thebackground.
Everyone's like that stream is clearly coming from Australia,
so you must be using a dodgy fire stick.

(45:13):
So I love the digital ads because for some of the still
shots they get. But back on track to what we
were talking about South GeorgieFranco's sort of talking about
this American European mindset. I'm not going to ask you to put
an exact dollar amount on it, but is there a rough percentage
you could say of money that's being left on the table?
Because maybe European sports properties maybe aren't taking
the same, I guess maybe not ruthless approach to, but this

(45:35):
more like objective approach, you know, is there a percentage
of money that's maybe being lefton the table?
Oh, that would be, that would betough to to to estimate.
I will say that it's not every US sport.
The NFL, for example, has a lot of regulations at the league
level in terms of what brands can be near the field.

(45:56):
And the broadcast production of an NFL game is very focused on
the field and the players. So an NFL property will need
more than just TV valuation to provide back to their partners
because all of their partner assets typically are, you know,
in the upper tier on the scoreboard, things like that.

(46:19):
So they get, it's almost like lucky if you if you get exposure
across an NFL match. But yeah, the, the traditional,
you know, NBANHLMLB ones are arethere's a lot of value,
especially MLB pitcher's mound is now a graphic insertion.

(46:40):
And you think about how often that view from the pitcher to
home plate is in a 3 1/2 hour broadcast.
I mean, if you're thinking aboutthe World Series and a
commercial spot is going for $700,000 per 30 seconds and that
view is getting a significant amount of, of exposure at A at a

(47:04):
very high cost. Or, you know, Super Bowl's
always the, the, the winner in terms of the the spot cost.
But yeah, any, you know, insertions across the football
pitch or goal lines, you know it, or across rugby as as Franco
said, there's a, there's a significant amount of, of, of

(47:24):
value that a property could, could provide a, a brand
obviously depends on what that brand's objective is.
A lot of brands come in just to raise awareness and so having
just a brand logo is fine for them.
Others have the awareness and they want to spread a particular
message, in which case you know they're they're looking for a

(47:47):
different type of activation, but.
So Georgie, just on then the, you've, you mentioned the
example of the MLB in the 32nd AD for the World Series.
How a how well are you able to correlate the value of that 32nd
AD to that sort of exposure on the mound and and crossover them
so that you could advise a brandon how to approach the

(48:11):
investment on on that particularasset?
Yeah. So that's actually, you know
different vendors use different methodologies to create to sort
of translate duration into value.
We partner with aggregators of media spent so home team sports
for the regional networks and guideline for national

(48:31):
broadcasts. So we know how much brands are
spending to have commercials runin that specific game.
And we use that dollar amount totranslate our durations into
into that sort of gross value, which is why our gross value is
called the equivalent commercialvalue, which we find is a is a

(48:54):
very easy methodology for agencies and brands to
understand. And it's in like terms.
So you're spending this much across your advertising
campaign. This is the TV exposure value
measured in exactly the same way.
So the last thing I want to moveus on to is the conscious of
timing. But it is something, you know,

(49:14):
we've alluded to a little bit and we've spent quite a bit of
time talking about, you know, media value.
We've not talked about beyond just traditional broadcast and
just the role social media plays.
And Franco, I think this may be an area we we lean a little more
into yourself in terms of what you guys are picking up.
But the live sports is just one part of it.
It's obviously the the most expensive part for broadcasters
to pick up. But that, you know, I talk about

(49:37):
all the time. I maybe watch six hours of the
NFL on Sunday, but I watch probably triple that amount on
YouTube and social media across the week That actually the time
I'm spending is being, you know,exposed beyond that.
And just you provided a couple different stats.
You provided a good example of Tiger Woods, you know, in the in
our conversation beforehand, just talking about what this
means for sponsorship beyond broadcast.

(49:58):
But good just for you to kind offrame that a little bit, some of
the value that's out there. Yeah.
And I think actually in terms ofI think the US market is, is
getting in on this more than Europe.
And it's this joining together of social data and broadcast
data because our technology can be used equally as well to

(50:21):
analyse video and images in social media feeds as it can for
broadcast footage. So if you can extract all of
that data and put it with your broadcast footage, you can then
be have a holistic view of what that sponsorship of the team or

(50:43):
the stadium or whatever it may be, broadcast graphics, whatever
element has delivered for you. And it's really not happening so
much, certainly not in a connected way.
In Europe, obviously people analyse their own social feeds,
but they're not looking at, as you say, Chris, think about a

(51:06):
key moment in a, in a game, in whatever game you're thinking of
that Tiger Woods moment, which is still viewed today and still,
you know, and, and the, the count is rising.
Those moments live on for a verylong time and get significant
views. You're talking from the stats
I've looked at, even 3-4 years ago you were talking about a 10%

(51:31):
addition on top of whatever broadcast exposure and that was
that many years ago, I, I couldn't find anything more
recent. So you're talking about
significant percentage added on purely in terms of impressions.
If you then start to value that because those are key moments.
So you're talking about, you know, your brand's going to be
front and centre potentially or,or what's going to be.

(51:54):
So George's team would value that in a very different way.
So yeah, I think it's a big missed opportunity in truly
being able to bring all of that data together and understand
your different activations and how they're working not only
from your paid but also earned exposure.

(52:16):
So yeah, that's I think key. Another area that the US might
be a little bit ahead because they're they're probably
20/16/17 is when a lot of just social media evaluation vendors
came out the gum gums, which is now relo Zoom, blink fire and

(52:38):
they have really sort of focusedinitially on social and then
spread out to include TV. So they went sort of the
opposite direction. I was just going to say the and
the ability to even translate some of those things Franco to
the language and the like for like metrics that agencies are

(52:58):
using for the broadcast is againjust another way to bring all
that synergize all that that data together so brands can
really think of things holistically rather than in, in
isolation. Yeah, I mean, you've got, if you
think about the pure footage, those replay moments which are
broadcast on social, it's the same footage, it's just

(53:19):
additional views. But on top of that, you have all
the fan stuff. You know, when, when, if you're
a jersey sponsor, you've got thefan showing before, during,
after the match, all of that content is, is there as well.
So you also have things like, I,I mean, a really brilliant
activation by John West the, theTuna can tuna company.

(53:44):
And they figured out that obviously they, they are
sponsoring in, they sponsor in various countries, but in
Ireland they sponsor the GAA, which is a, you know, regional
sport and it's the national sport.
So it's key. And So what does tuna have in
common with with sports canned tuna protein and athletes need

(54:06):
protein. So they didn't to George's
point, they have a brand sponsorship for in in game
footage and that kind of stuff. But then they activate around it
this protein message linked to assets related to GAA and so on.
So, and that's in social, it's in advertising and even in

(54:28):
person real life activation. So you start to pull all of this
together and you have a very different idea of what's working
and what's not working and whereyou need to invest more or less
or so on. In addition to that, you know,
talking about beyond the kind ofthat that's sort of social media
related, but you also put some notes in here.

(54:49):
And I love one of the examples. I'm a big Ted Lasso fan.
Anyone that watches Ted Lasso, I've got a big believe sign that
sits above my my my office space.
But things like even like drive to survive, you know, with
Formula One on Netflix or, you know, W Tambien and Ted Lasso,
Is there anything you guys are necessarily doing to kind of
talk about what the value of those particular things at?

(55:09):
Because I do think we are sitting in a space now where we
are seeing more and more things like drive survive.
Are those types of things something you guys are able to
measure that goes in addition tothose sponsorships?
Or is that something that sits separately outside what you guys
are doing? No, absolutely.
The Ted Lasso is a real example.We worked with West Ham.
So they came to us and they, they wanted to know the the

(55:31):
value of the Betway jersey patchbecause they had such a big
integration into the show. And with them, obviously with,
with the Visio team, we did the analysis and then, you know, the
next step is how do you value Netflix streaming audiences when
that information is not super publicly available?

(55:53):
So that's when our again, Christina Hart, media guru, she
built models on the what was publicly available, what we knew
about the series CPMS around Netflix programming and and
created evaluations. So that was that was a very real
example that we did work on. And certainly properties know

(56:16):
that their brands are getting this extra exposure across these
sports documentaries. So they will want to include as
much exposure in their recaps back to partners as they
possibly can. So it's a natural extension for
us in terms of analysis. Yeah, we even did the Gavin and
Stacey Christmas special, which was super interesting because

(56:41):
obviously the moment during the stag, the beginning of the stag
do where they all take their kidoff and and underneath is the is
I think it's bet way again. So yeah, we have that.
But we really shouldn't underestimate the power of some
of these documentaries and this ancillary content drive to
survive, pardon the pun, drove awhole new fan base.

(57:07):
An increase in female followers,right?
So now Formula One has a 40% female following, right?
Whereas it didn't have before. Now, this is according to I, I
forget the name of the lady who presented from Ellemis, a beauty

(57:27):
brand. And they were looking at how can
we grow our market share, What can we do?
And you would think a beauty brand in Formula One wouldn't be
very synergistic. But actually looking at this,
these numbers and this growth infemale following female fanbase
meant that, yeah, they, they said, OK, we're going to, we're

(57:49):
going to sponsor a Formula One team, not only because of the
female fanbase, but because it also allows us to open up our
market to the male fan base as well and start to launch some
male oriented products. And so that's what they did.
It also ticks a box for them. And I don't mean that in a, in a
throwaway sense, but there are now six female drivers in the

(58:14):
Formula One Academy that hopefully we will see come
through the ranks and end up being Formula One drivers.
One of them was the first femaleto ever drive a Formula One car
down the street of Bahrain. So you know, when you're talking
about women in sport, it, it, itmeets every criteria of a

(58:35):
company like Elimis wants to meet.
So, and it all changed because of a, of a programme like Drive
to Survive. So we can't underestimate the
value of that. And if you can measure that and
some of the exposure that you achieve in those in that content
versus broadcast content is going to be vastly different.

(58:56):
So it's really critical that youstart to understand where you
appear everywhere. Frank, just on the the
documentary piece, one of the challenges that exist obviously
is just the access to ratings and viewership.
How are you able to quantify that for say Netflix?
And Netflix has have historically been a very close

(59:18):
book. They have started to open up now
there is lot more access to hours of consumption.
Are you using those metrics you're able to get from Netflix
or are you how, how do you measure all that?
So fortunately that's not my problem.
At all that's. Ours.
I will have that security, yeah.Yeah, yeah, as you said there,
there's a certain amount that's publicly available.

(59:38):
So we knew initially what we didwith them was, was the sort of
last couple of episodes of of season 2 I believe.
And then we did the entirety of season 3.
And there were there was publicly available information
for how many people over the course of a month, So not just,

(59:59):
you know, when the episode was released that.
Had watched the the finale and so we built a model and then for
various other episodes as well. So we built a model to to kind
of plot that out. We used a platform that can tell
us what percent of digital traffic is coming from what

(01:00:24):
country because in some press releases it would say X percent
came from the US and it was thismany.
So then we would take that information to then build out
the extrapolation further. So it was a lot of a lot of
different inputs. And obviously, we were very
transparent with West Ham in terms of how this was all coming
together and built a model that they agreed on ultimately to

(01:00:50):
then provide the value back. Really funny question from me.
I mean, you've shared a couple of good examples of how it's
come to life and how it's reallyhelped some brands.
Frank, are there any other examples that come to mind that
you think are a great example of, I guess, a brand getting
extra value out of those relationships that maybe you
you've been across? We are, we are one step away

(01:01:15):
from, you know, Georgie would beor vision insights team would be
a lot closer to that brand engagement.
So nothing really comes to mind from my perspective from that.
I mean, I can only speak to the,the range of sports and the
range of on the granularity thatwe that we operate within.

(01:01:39):
So, yeah, I mean, Georgie, I I guess you're better to deal with
that. Yeah.
One that actually came to mind at this, this start of our
conversation was Unwell Hydration and they are now a
lead partner of the NWSL and it's Unwell, which is a sort of
a digital company podcast. And they created a, a beverage

(01:02:04):
and they are now sort of crossing over into just
traditional sponsorships with being the, the main beverage
provider for NWSL, which is traditionally always going to be
Gatorade or Powerade or body armour.
And so this is or prime has sortof entered the, the market as
well. So this is a, a new one

(01:02:26):
obviously looked at the, the target audience that is watching
women's sports in the US, which has changed a lot in the last
year. This is largely driven by, you
know, key players like Kaitlin Clark in the WNBA.
We work outside of just media evaluation.
We have syndicated research tools as well.

(01:02:47):
So we can track the demographic shifts of of a fan profile
across cross leads and teams andand actually help teams pitch to
brands that are aligned with thesort of brand messaging that a
partner could be trying to to send send out.
So I think, you know, they saw that their profile is is

(01:03:13):
becoming a little bit more mainstream, which is great.
Like there's a higher audience. There's, you know, more men are
coming into that, that audience still a significant amount of
women, but the men tend to have daughters, their daughters are
listening to this podcast and they are going to become
consumers and will follow the trend of of drinking those

(01:03:36):
beverages. So I think that's a that's an an
interesting new one that the crossover from just creating a
product out of a podcast to to integrate into sponsorship.
Well, that's an excellent example and wraps.
Things up nicely and you know, Georgie and Franco, I apologise
if I, I take you brought you a little late.

(01:03:57):
Maybe you're going to miss your next meetings, but it was just
it was a really interesting conversation.
I love the some of the the examples.
I certainly feel like I learned a lot.
You know, some of the, the data you're talking about, you know,
70% versus 30% home and away, things like that.
There's a lot of really great examples.
And I think Franco, you did a good job explaining sort of
where the technology is now making these sorts of valuations
more possible. But I found this to be a really

(01:04:17):
fascinating and enlightening conversation.
So I appreciate you, Franco and Georgia coming on and joining us
today. Thank you very much.
Thank you for having us. Thanks buddy.
Now before. You go if you liked.
What you heard today, be sure torate and review and just let me
know what you think on social. You can find me on most social
platforms at Sports Pro Nick. And please do spread the word of
the podcast. There's no better way of
marketing than word of mouth, whether that be in person or on

(01:04:39):
social media. And if you don't like what
you've heard, what you think we should be doing more or less of
something, then reach out and let me know as I'd love to hear
from you. Thanks.
Stream timers until next time.