Unlocking the Partnership Revenue Puzzle

Navigating Common Challenges for Organizations

by James Jordan, Director, Marketing Partnerships

By nature of the seat that I sit in at TurnkeyZRG, I have the fortune of speaking with corporate partnership leaders from a variety of sports and entertainment properties on a weekly basis.

While a conversation may have been scheduled to discuss a specific item (e.g., a new role, candidate review, reference check, etc.), my sincere curiosity and interest in the corporate partnerships space inevitably leads to a deeper conversation, often with many tangents.

One said tangent surrounds the challenges that a corporate partnership leader may face, which if solved for, would allow their business to grow significantly relative to where it is today. Now it goes without saying that these needs can vary dramatically from property to property, however, there are a few answers I hear often that I wanted to take a few moments to outline.

Enhanced Value Proposition (Assets & Rights)
What a property can package and offer to brands will directly influence the success that the property has driving partnership revenue. Whether it be physical assets, IP rights, access to talent, community programming, or otherwise, the ability to create truly custom packages that are targeted to meet the brand’s objective(s) for the partnership is key. What an enhanced value proposition truly means for properties can look very different.

For a small market challenger property, this could mean something as simple as investing in more TV visible signage inventory to package into deals. For some of the more sophisticated properties with a large portfolio of partners, enhancing the value proposition to be out in-market securing new brand partnerships and net new dollars can be far more challenging. Often the marquee physical assets are sold, and high revenue-yielding categories are filled with category-exclusive relationships, so how do those properties continue to show aggressive YoY growth? There are several tactics employed, but one that intrigues me the most and that I am incredibly bullish on is the power of the portfolio. Of course, this is not something that all properties can leverage, nor is it an easy feat for those that are able to. With that said, there is tremendous value to be captured by those that are successfully able to navigate multi-property deals within their portfolio. Being able to approach brands with the optionality that a portfolio offering allows can prove to be a game changer.

Revenue Driving Mindset
While the partnership sales team are the folks in-market daily engaging brands to drive revenue, the properties that maximize revenue generating efforts are the ones that have a collective understanding that it is a shared responsibility. Depending on how the organization is structured, the activation team may not be responsible for renewal or upsell conversations. If this is the case, it is critical that the activation team still has a revenue mindset while managing their book of partners. They are the individuals closest to the partner on a day-to-day basis to hear about things like shifting brand priorities, new budgets, etc. If the account managers are constantly asking themselves how what they are learning from their partners can turn into an upsell opportunity or a better positioned renewal conversation, then this will reflect itself in a revenue uptick. This same mindset can then be extended across other departments that will touch partnerships (i.e., marketing, media, community, etc.) and when everyone internally is rowing in the same direction with the same goals of over delivering, elite execution, and intentional focus on new areas of opportunity, the compounding impact, as a result, can be truly staggering versus what it can be when the ownness is solely left to the partnership sellers because it is “their job”.

Evolving Sales Territory/Market
The sales territory that a property must play within (if applicable) will directly inform the overall potential opportunity that exists. This topic of conversation is particularly prevalent within the NFL and the evolution of the NFL’s Global Markets Program. Historically NFL clubs have been restricted to activating within their DMA as defined by the league office. This meant that NFL team partnerships (not NFL league partnerships) could only be activated within that club’s DMA and were thus regional. While this rule still governs domestic partnerships, since 2022, clubs have been able to activate partnerships in international home markets (IHMA) as awarded by the league. If we take the LA Rams as an example, they have grown from only being able to activate within their Southern California DMA, to now having the ability to activate alongside brand partners in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea, and Japan. The expansion of sales territory now allows for upsell conversations for current partners to activate the partnership on a global scale, the creation of brand new in-market assets to monetize, the option to offer exclusive rights to multiple partners within the same category (by market), growth of audience/fanbase, and so much more.

There are many more examples that I could reference in addition to the few addressed in this article. If I wasn’t typing with one hand with the other one in a sling, I may have included a couple more!

To anyone who would like to connect and continue the discussion, please don’t hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn, or reach out directly via email and we can find time to connect.

To get more content from Curtis and James, please subscribe to our newsletter here.

ABOUT TURNKEYZRG

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, music 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.