Content Trends in Sports Marketing
By Allie Crone, Vice President at TurnkeyZRG
Over the past few months, I’ve been on a listening tour with heads of Marketing at numerous sports teams across the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB, discussing trends in the market. Several themes have emerged but there has been a common discussion around content and growing the size of the content and production teams.
The world of sports is a constantly evolving landscape, with new players, teams, and trends emerging every year and the quality and quantity of a team’s content has a significant impact on their success. Whether it's the way a team markets itself, the type of content it produces, or the way it engages with fans, the role of content cannot be overstated.
Hiring in this area has been challenging due to increasing sizes of staff, compensation and recruiting talent that will relocate. With a greater emphasis on content creation, it has been necessary to hire individuals who can create this high-quality content but also invest in the resources necessary to produce and edit that content.
While hiring these social media specialists, video producers or graphic designers, sports teams are often reorganizing or creating an internal agency that can service the growing content needs of the organization and support the personalization trend.
Data and analytics are being used more to inform content creation and teams are looking for individuals who have a deep understanding of this. By analyzing metrics such as engagement rates, click-through rates, and social media shares, sports organizations can better understand what types of content are resonating with their audience and adjust their strategies accordingly. Beyond engagement and click-throughs, this will generate more revenue.
In addition to hiring content creators, sports organizations are also investing in the resources necessary to produce high-quality content. This might include building in-house studios for video production, investing in the latest camera equipment, or hiring experts in fields such as graphic design or photography.
The role of content within sports teams is trending to grow in importance in the coming years and is currently trending towards short form videos and less produced content. Whether it's through hiring the best talent, investing in the latest technology, or using data to inform content creation, sports teams recognize that engaging content is key to building a successful brand and engaging with fans.
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Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model. For more information about TurnkeyZRG, visit www.turnkeyzrg.com.