Sports intelligence company Gemba launches sponsorship evaluation tool Turnstile
Sports consultancy Gemba has launched a new tool aimed at help advertisers and sports administrators value sponsorship packages.
Turnstile takes in factors such as tickets, hospitality and media assets, the effectiveness of logo exposure and the engagement and purchasing power of the sport’s fans.
Gemba’s CEO and founder Rob Mills told Mumbrella how the Turnstile tool took two years to develop as the company identified weaknesses in how brands and advertisers valued sponsorship packages.
Gemba CEO Rod Mills: Global sponsorship market is worth $US 62 billion
“The global sponsorship industry is a $US 62 Billion market, yet there has never been an effective valuation approach to help buyers and sellers assess the appropriate price for a sponsorship,” said Mills. ” For decades, media equivalency metrics have provided valuations to the market that bear no connection to the actual contract prices of sport and entertainment assets.”
“The consequence of only valuing exposure is that it forces rights holders to cram more logos on their content and this in turn creates share of voice issues for sponsors. We felt that the industry was locked in a vicious circle and we needed to provide some sort of circuit breaker.”
Gemba has been operating since 2006 with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Shanghai and London employing 42 staff. For the last two years Mills himself has been based out of the company’s Shanghai and London offices as the company worked with Formula 1 on developing the product.
Before joining Gemba, Mills was head of marketing for Adidas including being a member of the company’s Global Olympic Task Force for the Sydney Olympics.
“In addition to mass media and digital channels, the valuation methodology also encompasses the emerging Esports sector,” said Mills. “Our recent work with Formula 1 was a great demonstration of the ability of Turnstile to capture all these channels in the valuation,”
Along with Formula 1, Gemba has recently completed valuations for an English football club, a global football competition, a Grand Slam tennis tournament and the rights of a gaming service. By the end of 2018, Turnstile hopes to have completed valuations for more than USD 750 million of sponsorships.
With sports rights values appear to have peaked, Mills sees TV rights as still being the key revenue for codes in coming years although sponsorships will become increasingly important: “While Broadcast will still be the major source of revenue for premium sport and entertainment assets, sponsorship will become increasingly important.
“The challenge will be for rights holders to create engaging propositions for blue chip brands who want more than just exposure. Building, and in turn pricing, their intellectual property value will be critical in this process.”
