Steve (00:00.142)
What a distinct honor it is to have today on the transaction report all the way across the Atlantic in Ireland, Dara Purse. He's the managing director of the brand fans. And what makes me so motivated about tonight's discussion, what makes me so motivated and interested in today's discussion is that Dara is one of the foremost experts in the field about going under the hood of sports sponsorship.

looking deep into the bowels of the industry and recognizing that there's a way to demystify what did we as brands, corporate sponsors, actually get for what we spent. And it's 70 years that this industry has left that in quote unquote, under the veil. And today, Darryl Pearse, what a pleasure it is to have you on the Transaction.

Daragh Persse (00:56.979)
Thank you, Steve. It's great to be here. I'm a big fan of your work. I love listening to podcast. So really looking forward to, like you said, getting under the hood.

Steve (01:06.072)
So we're gonna get right to it literally. And well, I don't have a hood here, but if I did, I would go, I don't know where, I'm not an auto mechanic, but I think you and I are sports sponsorship mechanics. And let's first of all, just define what that engine would look like. So from your vantage point, your expertise at the Brandfans who started this company in 2011, based out of Dublin.

You've had notable clients, leading clients in the field of sports sponsorship, led variety of activations that obviously have led companies like Vodafone and others to feel very satisfied with the work you've done. Your agency focuses on sponsorship strategy development, all aspects of activation and evaluation. So when you look at your business, let's define for our audience, so that I want to make sure we're on the same page from the get-go.

to you is there to evaluate in sports sponsorship? So let's take that question and unpack it by the following. A, what is sports sponsorship?

Daragh Persse (02:16.799)
look at a really simple level sportsmanship for me is an opportunity to get close to fans in a way that no other opportunity provides to a brand. It's a chance to emotionally engage and to deliver an experience beyond what that fan is getting normally, I guess.

Steve (02:38.519)
So when, let's look at the options. So there's that old Harvard Business School, BATNA, best alternative to negotiated outcome or agreement. What would be the best alternative to a sports sponsorship that comes close to a sports sponsorship?

Daragh Persse (02:57.129)
I think creating an invaluable product. me, product marketing and sponsorship marketing are two areas that give you the best opportunity to create an emotional and useful connection with fans far beyond any medium that exists. So if you create a product that's indispensable in your life that you can't live without, that's amazing product marketing. Equally, you create great sponsorship that adds value to a fan's experience.

they start to depend on it, that it's part of the ritual of sport and consuming sport, you've hit it, you've hit the nail on

Steve (03:35.918)
And for those, Dara, who say, hey, listen, I'm a proponent of sponsoring concerts. And I assure you that my concert with Taylor Swift, pound for pound, can deliver or deliver more than your sponsorship of Manchester United. Or I think you have, is that Liverpool behind you? Forgive me for my, I think it is Liverpool. So by the way, I should just mention for the record that about 25 years ago,

Daragh Persse (03:56.581)
It is a failure.

Steve (04:03.457)
I had a partner globally in one of my businesses who was called the Super Sub, David Fairclough. David is one of the nicest gentlemen I've ever met in my career, both personally and professionally. Just a little shout out, even though he will probably not be listening to this podcast. But with that said, what happens as an alternative? You mentioned sports sponsorship offers you the best reach, the best connectivity with your passionate consumer.

Daragh Persse (04:08.661)
Oh yeah, I've been taken many times,

Steve (04:32.917)
What is it about sports sponsorship, as we go to define this for our viewers today, that you feel has a leg up overall on an alternative and that being, let's just say, outright concert sponsorship?

Daragh Persse (04:49.491)
Yeah, well, I should say from the beginning that the brand funds works across all areas of sponsorship. So sport, music, the arts, charity, etc. And I think there's a role for all categories with all different sponsors, depending on who your audience are, what you're trying to achieve, etc. I think the advantage sport has is it is a far more mature category. It's defined by very clear

elements of broadcast, of exposure, reach, passion points and understanding of the fans. So the environment when you enter into sports is an easier one to navigate. It has more options. It has more clearly defined benefits and probably more opportunities to reach your fans. So it really does depend on what you're trying to achieve. But certainly you can see why sport is a first port of call.

because it has that maturity, has that many ways in and many ways to engage.

Steve (05:52.142)
Yeah, I've never really thought about it. You you have a, let's say a concert with Yo-Yo Ma or the three tenors as an example. And lot of value added that in reaching, depending on how a sponsor would integrate into that, in reaching a very specific target market. Obviously a host of VIP corporate hospitality opportunities, lots of point of sale that can be done. But there's no question while you can integrate music into sport,

you don't really do the reverse. So you're not exactly expecting to see some form of competitive sports event leading into the three tenors concert, if you will, or a Taylor Swift concert. Number two, just as you were speaking, we have the ability as fans universally to turn on the TV and watch the identical competition and have an enormous motive.

feel that frankly can pit you against me. If you're Liverpool and I'm from Arsenal, we have immediately a certain, you're my nemesis if you will in one way, that while you're not a derby at the same time, it's something that is very important that I feel, I feel a competitive edge against you. And there's the theater that's created in sport that immediately evokes absolutely an elevated passion that you just don't associate.

with again music in a way that while there's a lot of emotion in music and there's a universality of our ability to feel connected to a particular song or singer and there's a lot of nostalgia behind that. The ingredients of sport that make it such an on-demand, such a powerful tool, I suggest might not exist within the framework of music.

Daragh Persse (07:40.979)
Yeah, that's very different. I sport, for instance, if you look at within a family environment, sport can often be a common denominator from grandparent to parent to son to grandchild. You have this collective interest and shared passion for a team and event. And that tends to be a collective, I suppose, interest across the family unit. Whereas within music, you would often have different

passions, interests, categories, all that sort of thing. So sport definitely in that sense does that. I think I love what you say about the competitive nature of sports. mean, even within friend groups that don't see each other for one end of the year to the other, you keep in touch around your passion of sports, your team, the opportunity to mock the team that's not doing so well or your friend who supports the team that are relegated. And so it has this unique ability to create.

fantastic community and network and it's very different in that respect.

Steve (08:45.313)
You know, and again, just to pursue that further, I really value what you just shared because at the end of the day, we would usually look at the older generation and say, you liked what type of music? That's so antiquated and always there's this intergenerational kind of scorn, if you will, where the parent or grandparent might look at the son or the grandson and say, how do you enjoy that?

Daragh Persse (08:59.167)
Yeah.

Steve (09:11.945)
And whereas I, let's say, as the son might look back and say, you know, I'm just not into swing or, you know, big band. And as my grandparents might have been, if you will. So it's a great point you make that, please.

Daragh Persse (09:24.733)
There's often no choice. don't know about the family, certainly the family network within over here in Ireland and the UK and across Europe. The team you inherit is the team you're staying with and you have no choice to change that. And it's very rare. Sometimes there is changes to follow the popular team, but essentially you're following the team you're handed.

And certainly within Ireland, goes a step further because the team, the area, the county you're born into is the team you're going to support. And again, no matter what the dynamics, that's who you've got and you're going to stick with it.

Steve (10:05.581)
You know, it's a great point. Well, there's been over the last 20 years, perhaps a movement towards, at least here in the United States, towards following an athlete of choice. Whereas certainly historically, it has always been the team, your city.

the New York Yankees, you or you might have the New York Mets. I'm an old New York guy. So at the end of the day, it's always been team. But again, we've seen now this kind of new generational support of an athlete, more the athlete flows because in the old days, the athlete usually committed to a team for life. They were lifers. It was almost an old IBM model. You were there for life, proctor and gamble, if you will. In today's world, it's a little bit of a changing demographic commitment, if you will, passionately.

but you're absolutely correct. You can pass down that generation to generation a love of A, the geographic centric nature of the team of choice. You can pass down the stories from father, if you will, mother to son and daughter of the experiences they had with their team of choice or athlete of choice. And it becomes almost part of the family heirloom that

Dad met, if you will, Lee Westwood or the former captain of Manchester United, who's escaping me for a moment and I knew him well from Ireland back about 25 years ago, Roy Keane. There you go, thank you. And you look at Roy Keane, if there's a picture of dad in the living room with Roy Keane and there's an autographed message to Dara.

Daragh Persse (11:32.959)
Right, right,

Steve (11:46.699)
to Darrow, what a great day we had together, your friend Roy Keane, and that's legendary.

Daragh Persse (11:51.771)
Yeah, yeah, I should say for anyone listening that knows Roy Keane, that's probably the last thing he would ever do. yeah.

Steve (11:58.51)
I had him by the way in my headquarter with my staff in Hong Kong back in 2000 and for about two hours I was not there but they were going absolutely wild I don't know if they signed any autographs to anybody but I do know at the end of the day as we try and I think this is in this going under the hood moment what I like about what we're doing there's a method to the madness and that is to try to unpack

What is not only powerful and exponentially powerful about sports sponsorship, but as we start to do that and realizing that I like you, I know you're involved in multiple types of entertainment sponsorship and working with clients in that regard. And there are times where absolutely a brand just might make sense to sponsor that concert or that opera or whatever it might be, arts and entertainment activity, culturally.

But again, the full package of sports sponsorship and that, as you said, that availability and access to what it can offer in a broadcast sense is just unrivaled. So as we go further, let's start to look at what you might measure in sports sponsorship. So why don't we try to take the categories in any direction you would like, whether from the most significant downward. And let's, in fact, let's do it that way, Dara. In today's universe, back pre-2000,

you had a, let's just call it a 50 year gamut, a 40 year gamut, where certainly it was, hey, don't even talk to me if you don't have broadcast. And it's free to air broadcast. It wasn't even cable at the time. And that's first of all, the starter. Just tell me what your footprint is from a broadcast. I'm a sponsor. I've got the brand. I'm willing to pay you money.

but I need to see a sizable footprint that's relevant to my demographic. Is that still the foremost factor of what drives, of all the factors, is that the number one that drives sponsorship decision-making? If you were looking at a bell curve, whatever expanse the outliers might be, is that still number one or not?

Daragh Persse (14:16.093)
I would say in general terms, probably not. I think what's really interesting about the timeline that you mentioned there from around, I started in sponsorship in early kind of around 2000. And I think you're right. You were buying eyeballs effectively back then. We worked in football with Manchester United, with UEFA and Formula One. And it was a calculation of here is the exposure for our brand. We are building a global brand.

We need exposure, we need reach, we need some level of understanding of what our brand is. And so the focus very much was let's get the brand out as much as possible, as wide as possible to the territories that are important to us. Formula One does that, football does that, and we were able to tick a box. I think what was interesting in the subsequent kind of 10 years, I would say mid-noughties to 2015-ish, roughly, I think you saw quite a shift in

all areas of sponsorship towards loyalty in particular. So you would see a big focus on great brands and sponsorship using their assets to reward their customers, to encourage their customers to join, to keep them with them, to encourage them to recommend them to other areas. So this whole, I suppose, momentum around loyalty and focusing sponsorship on the customer.

became a kind of really big theme. What I'm finding in the last 10 years, and certainly we see it from a trend point of view, those elements of exposure are still really important. The loyalty and the way you feel about the brand sponsoring is really important. But this third dimension of doing something good in the world, doing better for the world, whether it's environmental, social, cause marketing, CSO.

the grey lines that exist between that. It's about creating more depth around what your brand stands for and what issues you're tackling in the world and brands are really kind of focused on this area. It's a trend and an area when we research that constantly in the last few years has become the most important. So to kind of frame back awareness and eyeballs in sport will always be there. It remains a constant.

Daragh Persse (16:40.351)
But if you think of the marketing funnel, a basic marketing funnel from awareness to consideration, to preference, advocacy, loyalty, sponsorship and sportsmanship play a really key role in all of that. So maybe in the early 2000s, we were more focused on awareness and eyeballs and reach and maybe association. And that's still the case. But then we started to think more about, well,

If we're in this space, how do people feel about us being there? What are we doing and saying about our brand in that space that people will feel differently? And then further on, does that make them think differently about us? Will they purchase us? Are they more likely to stay with us? Are they more likely to be ultimately advocates, which is the greatest, in my view, one of the greatest success points of all. So I think

Yeah, to summarise, you're absolutely right. Awareness, eyeball sport has that power to reach and to define that reach very clearly. It then be underneath that. has the power to tell stories, stories about fans, stories about volunteers, about clubs, dedication, commitment, innovation, community. There's so much in sport and there's a few brands I think of that have done this really well.

There's so many great stories you can tell to find your place as a brand within that sports sponsorship and then drive ultimately better results for your business, better outcomes for your business because ultimately reach and audience is an out, it's an output, it's a number. What's more valuable is the outcome. What is the difference it's making to your brand and your business and proving that.

demonstrating that is the ultimate that we like to get to.

Steve (18:41.847)
So we're gonna just probe into how we look at defining that value. I wanna ask just a question parenthetically. Can you succeed in loyalty and building loyalty? And would you recommend a loyalty program for sponsors if they were involved in a sports event that did not have the TV broadcast associated with it?

Daragh Persse (19:11.157)
100 % definitely. mean, in fact, you know, we touched on music a little bit. Music tends to be very effective in the loyalty space because it doesn't have the TV exposure that you get with sports sponsorship. But what it does have is access and VIP and all the kind of great things that you can use to drive loyalty. gives you, sponsorship gives you an opportunity.

to make the experience for the fan better. And if you can do that, that will, should drive loyalty towards your brand. That's the opportunity because if you think about it, sport is my passion point. It's the thing I love the most. If a brand comes into my space, all they're doing is interrupting my enjoyment of the thing I'm most passionate about.

So when a brand comes in, it has a responsibility to say, well, I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm going to make it better for you. And as a result, you're going to choose my brand in the future. it's a theory, a simple formula. It's not as easy to crack, but that's the theory.

Steve (20:22.859)
And we know that to build that loyalty, you're going to use what we would usually call a lot of the other benefits of sports marketing to actually create that loyalty. So if we can, let's just what we would value, again, looking under the hood with that initial objective of trying to understand what are we actually looking at at the engine? What are those benefits that we're about to value? So VIP corporate hospitality is another tool.

Daragh Persse (20:33.469)
Yeah.

Steve (20:51.629)
to use to actually create, establish that loyalty and value with a brand. Where would you place that in the pantheon, again, of sports marketing benefits, sports sponsorship benefits, when you evaluate how to build that collective of various pieces of the puzzle that are gonna make a brand successful in appealing to their target market?

Daragh Persse (21:17.769)
Yeah, yeah, look, it's one part of it, but it's again, I see it as an output. Let me take a little step back and kind of explain. Within when we're looking at the value, when we're getting under the hood of a sponsorship, there are three areas that we look at. The first is the qualitative impact. So this is assessing a lot of what we talked about in the funnel. It's assessing levels of awareness association.

of equity, of meaning. So does this sponsorship of this sport make me think you are a more innovative brand or a more exciting brand or whatever, or a community based brand or an Irish brand, whatever it might be. And then we get into the, it make you more likely to buy us and so on? So our first part of what we look at is an entirely qualitative piece around

the impact it's having on your brand. And it's really important and we benchmark against lots of different types of sponsorship to define how successful a sponsorship is being. The second is the real hard nosed stuff. It's the numbers. And this is about kind of what you talked about. What is the exact value of my sponsorship in terms of dollars or euro and cents? And I think this is an area that we built our business on.

initially because it was an area that we felt people were shying away from in sponsorship. If you do the equivalent of media and advertising, there's no area left that's ambiguous about how much value you're deriving and the cost of the, you know, the various metrics that exist within media buying can define exactly what you're spending your money on. ethos was we're going to do that for sponsorship. We're going to tell you exactly how much this is worth.

And therefore, if you're a rights holder, how much you should be charging in the market. And if you're a brand, how much you should be paying and what your return investment is and how that looks against other properties. So some of your hospitality comes into that. What's the value of having a hundred people playing a game of football on a pitch at the end of the season in the big stadium or a VIP ticket to him or an ordinary ticket or a signed shirt or meeting Roy Keane or whoever it might be, you know.

Daragh Persse (23:43.903)
So every single asset you get from a sponsorship has a value. Alongside that, every piece of reach that you mentioned earlier has a value. Social engagement has a value. So ultimately, we are able to determine all of those values. The key nugget, though, and the greatest bit of that value is then, what am I selling more product?

And this is the great, this is great. I mean, we love this with our clients. If we're able to identify bottom line revenue impact from the sponsorship, the CFO will love you forever. You've already proven the impact from a brand point of view. You've determined the values there from the assets, but by the way, we're also selling X numbers of merchandise or X bottles of beer, or we're the...

The fans that are engaging are spending more on our network than anyone else or, know, whatever these might be. Or a utility has greater loyalty. So what's the value of that loyalty? So proving that is ultimately the outcome and proving that is the panacea. It's the greatest place to be. The first two elements of the third one of any evaluation is what's next? The future. We determined all the results. How do we do better? How do we create better equity?

How do we improve reach or visibility awareness? How do we sell more product? How do we engage more fans? How do we become a better sponsor? All of that future facing. So you look back, you look at the present, you look at the future. And that model for us has proved a very effective way of, you know, like we said, getting under the hood. And you mentioned VIP hospitality. It becomes very clear within that model and where that sits. How important is it?

this business and actually in some cases it's not important so let's get rid of it or let's have twice as much of it and give something else up or pay more for that or less for this so it becomes a trade and a transaction when you come to your sponsorships you evolve them constantly better rights better access give some things away take some things in and you're constantly making this a better experience

Steve (26:03.969)
So first of all, I think that was extremely well articulated, extremely well articulated, perhaps the best I've heard on the transaction report. So I extend my gratitude to you. Number two is let's then look at you put out qualitative, quantitative, and then ultimately maximization. How do we...

how do we learn and then iterate and move forward so that we can really reap as much as we can. We call it untapped value here at SportsBiz. Our main company is a technology business. And so our whole focus is similar to you and obviously in a little bit different way, obviously we're not an agency, but at the end of the day, looking at what was left on the table or looking at what can be maximized in a way that had not been and very often brands

go through the motions of sponsorship and are not even aware of what could have been employed and very much elevated so that they just got a lot more for what they spent. So as I see it, qualitative, quantitative, and then the future, again, how do we tweak, how do we get more out of this, what can we do to maximize, how do we further the relationship with the brand?

You mentioned that one of your roles is to evaluate what a sponsorship might be sold for by the property, by a team as an example, and another is what a brand might pay for that. So the first question is, are those two always equivalent?

Daragh Persse (27:43.349)
We rarely have the opportunity where we're representing both at once. So we would be on one side of the table and perhaps the rights holder maybe on the other side would have applied a similar. Yeah, go on.

Steve (27:55.992)
So I'm gonna interject if you don't mind, Dara. And I'm not, there's no hot seat here, but it begs the obvious question. If, since you worked with Arsenal, Arsenal had hired you to evaluate sponsorship. Let's just say they were selling field signage, any type of signage event, Jumbotron, scoreboard, whatever it might be, field signage.

Daragh Persse (28:01.692)
man!

Daragh Persse (28:11.443)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve (28:25.153)
But then they didn't hire you, and actually Vodafone hired you to evaluate a sponsorship of precisely what our friends from Arsenal were going to hire you for.

Does your model automatically output the identical number no matter who's hired you?

Daragh Persse (28:43.445)
No matter who's hired us, Obviously we would normally have a different number to what they have in mind. If we're representing one side or the other, the numbers wouldn't match up. But if independently we were hired in that hypothetical case, it will output exactly the same number. What you do with that number, yes.

Steve (29:03.277)
Can you just help me understand that last comment? How is it possible that the, if it was an identical number, how would it be that your last point was that the numbers might not align because what the team might be telling the brand might be more than the brand wants to pay. But if you're guiding the brand on the identical number, then there should be perfect symmetry.

Daragh Persse (29:18.451)
Yeah. Yeah.

Daragh Persse (29:27.221)
There would if the brand and the rights holder both hired us to do exactly the same job, the number would be identical, definitely. But in most cases, we're hired by one or the other. So our number that we might provide to a brand will inevitably be different to what the rights holder had in mind. Then in the negotiation, it kind of comes down to, well, there's a couple, obviously always a few elements of negotiation, but one of them is

we would arm ourselves and our client with as much information, intelligence as possible so that when that negotiation kicks off, we're in a strong position to say, okay, you're here, but for the following reasons, we're here. I lower down usually. And, you know, in our experience in most negotiations, we are armed with more intelligence than whoever's across the table.

Steve (30:26.828)
Yeah.

Daragh Persse (30:27.163)
they would have other factors like market rates like if you talk about arsenal arsenal could be selling in the market at a certain rate and they rightly have decided if we sell to anyone else we're not going to go below a certain level we're going to maintain our rates and that's perfectly understandable because it could devalue their entire model so yeah yeah yeah yeah so valuations are

Steve (30:48.319)
It's like a real estate, very similar to a real estate still, they don't devalue the market.

Daragh Persse (30:56.405)
We always start bottom up. We always start with what is there? How do we evaluate? Where do we get to? Then there's a market reality of where you are and where that rights holder is selling. If those two aren't compatible, then there's decisions to be made. Do we try and drive extra value or do we say, actually, strategically, this is such an amazing fit, maybe we're going to spend a bit more than we needed to or we wanted to, I should say.

Steve (31:23.565)
So if you were looking, and it could be the New York Giants football team in the NFL, or it could be Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, or any team for that matter, I don't wanna make it specific to one of your clients like Arsenal. But let's just take a team. Do you have a preference between Tottenham and the New York Giants?

Daragh Persse (31:43.306)
I'd love to work for the New York Giants, so let's do that.

Steve (31:45.102)
Okay, let's go to the New York Giants. Although I have just an obligation to tell you, I don't wish that upon you. Today, my team has been a mess for many, many, years, too many years. So with that said, let's go to the Giants. Let's go under the hood. Your company, the Brandfans, is hired to do what you just said. We're going to do an evaluation. We're going under the hood. We're looking at the engine of the New York Giants.

Daragh Persse (31:52.927)
Okay, for now.

Steve (32:13.579)
And we're trying to put a value on sponsorship. And for the moment, I'm going to change this hypothetical and just add one ingredient. In the NFL, the NFL is one of the last purest leagues in the world. So there is no field signage. You don't see any branding. You see utility products. So you'll see the Gatorade dispenser. You'll see the now the Sony headphones that took over the Bose contract.

You'll see the Microsoft tablet that the coaches use, and the Wilson football, American football. But you simply don't see any other branding at field level as an example. So with that said, let's just pretend there were, okay? And then there are other ancillary ways that brands will get visibility at venue. How would you go about telling the New York Giants what they should be charging?

for a sponsorship and I'll leave it to you to define the sponsorship scope as you so choose.

Daragh Persse (33:17.695)
Well, first of all, again, when we go from the top of the funnel is that level of exposure the brand is going to receive. So we measure that through tracking, AI tracking of logo exposure through TV broadcast and make that equivalent to TV audiences around the world online as well through various different platforms. And we develop and I think it's a common enough model.

We develop out an advertising equivalent value for those discounted for quality size, know, position impact, all that sort of stuff. And from that, we come up with a value of exposure. Then adding in all the other assets that the giants can bring to the table as well as IP, which, know, is a harder number to get your head around, but it's the intrinsic IP, the value of being associated with that brand, which is not.

your direct measurable value.

Steve (34:17.281)
Are you a big proponent, is your company a big proponent when you're working with brands to integrate use of IP? Of the team's identity, the name, the logo of that particular team?

Daragh Persse (34:23.283)
Yeah.

Daragh Persse (34:27.541)
100%. I mean, that's the that's what you're buying into. You're buying into the equity. You're borrowing the equity of that team. I'm sorry about the Giants at the moment, but in general, you're buying into the positivity that exists around teams, including the Giants and everyone else. And you have to recognize that IP value. And it is really, in some cases, it's the difference between the tangible value and the market rate. You know, that unknown is is often the IP value that exists.

Steve (34:57.901)
So you're looking then again, use of IP, media distribution and valuation, which use AI in the process. And obviously it's probably a nonlinear model because you're assessing what share of screen they got versus location on screen and clutter and other factors and duration, et cetera, et cetera. When you look at other factors that you would go and value for that team, you mentioned earlier,

Daragh Persse (35:15.539)
Yes.

Steve (35:24.429)
100 people coming for a VIP corporate hospitality engagement at the New York Giants, where maybe they're with the quarterback of the team and they met the owner, John Mara of the team. How do you go about attempting to take the intangible that's always been intangible in our universe where brands have just accepted VIP corporate hospitality is super important. The more I can get my super VIPs engaged in a pro-am or some type of engagement.

Daragh Persse (35:27.699)
Yeah, experiences, yeah.

Daragh Persse (35:46.079)
Yeah.

Steve (35:53.326)
that's novel, we memorable frankly for life, that produces assets, meaning images, photos, video, something that's collectible that you always remind them that Vodafone brought them that remarkable experience. How do you go about Dara looking at that 100 person event in any sports context?

and look the brand in the eye and say, we're capable of quantifying that for you or for that matter, for the team itself.

Daragh Persse (36:25.139)
Yeah, so in our experience, there's two ways. The most effective or at least the most valuable is quite a sophisticated tracking around who those people are that you're taking on those experiences and what impact that's going to have on the business.

Steve (36:39.757)
And when you say who those people are, you're referring to the VIPs of the brand.

Daragh Persse (36:42.707)
Yes, the guests. Yeah. And you know, those guests in all days of sponsorship, if you went to Formula One, you could have the same guest at 10 out of 12 races and there's no particular value to the business. Sophisticated clients now have a model and it's a process you go through to understand who you're bringing to these events and what tangible return on investment that's bringing at a bottom line level. So

The onus becomes quite heavy on the salespeople to ensure who they're bringing. What is the subsequent performance of that person, that guest, that client over the next 12 months? Did it bring in extra business? Did we renew that contract? And maybe some of it is soft, but you're really looking for those hard measures to then put a tangible value on real outcomes from that hundred people playing on the page.

It's really powerful. It's incredibly sophisticated and difficult. And some brands will shy away from it because of the nature of being difficult. But also it can expose you a little bit. If you think about justifying sponsorship and you can't prove an outcome to the bottom line, it sort of rightly gets the CEO saying, well, why are we doing this? And that's a good thing. It's a healthy thing.

The second part, is less important, but you can put an actual value on what it would cost you to create that experience or buy that experience. And that includes everything. You know, as part of any team sponsorship, you're going to get access to players to turn up to events. You could pay for that in the market. So you can value every component. But like I said, the most powerful bit is CFO, we delivered X million euro in business.

and maybe 100 % of that is not attributable because everything else is part of that, but we got it over the line or we would contribute to that margin.

Steve (38:46.487)
What about where fan engagement and literally one of the, I would call certainly one of the elite elements of sports sponsorship is the ability to create experiential activity above independent of VIP corporate hospitality. The idea that I might have, let's take the US Open Tennis Championship where you have 750,000 people coming through the gate over a two plus week timeline.

Daragh Persse (39:02.879)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve (39:14.733)
I think they increased it by 100,000 because of fan week they did this year for the first time. So it's one of the largest attended singular annual events in the world. But obviously having some type of fan interactive commitment by the brand consumer facing. How do you go about attempting to tell again whether it's brand or team assess the value of that week since we're going under the hood.

and trying to look at a formulaic, how do you, if you heard that 5,000 people came through and literally took a chip shot at the open championship we call the British Open here, but if there was something set up and I'm gonna stick with your good friends Vodafone and there was a chip shot experience that someone won a year's subscription or rights to.

free billing for the next year, and all you had to do is chip this into the hole, and they did it. How do we assess the brand fan engagement value on a quantitative level that your job is, again, for both brand and team or event? What would we do to look at 5,000 people coming through having taken that chip shot and they were engaged for, let's just say, a cumulative time of 45 seconds at the point of entry of doing it, and maybe they were online for 15 minutes?

waiting to get the opportunity to do it.

Daragh Persse (40:42.707)
Yeah, well, it's a great question because the way we approach it, we have a database of values effectively. So every single engagement in a sponsorship is tracked under our model. And that can be as light a touch as I like on Instagram. I like a video that was created around the sponsorship and that's an engagement. It's a very light touch engagement compared to pitching golf as you described it.

But from one end to the other, and maybe your ultimate experience is handing over the Player of the Match award live on television at the end of a match. Maybe that's one of the most exclusive experiences or being in the paddock at a Formula One race, whatever it might be. So at one end, you have this momentary, tiny engagement with the brand right through and all the way in between this, all sorts of experiences. I might share content.

I might enter a competition. I might give you my details and allow you to call me back. I might win a competition. I might go to an event or a fan zone. So all the way along you're interacting. What we do is value each step along that. So you imagine in social media world, I don't want to say it's easy because I'm making our business sound easy, but we're able to determine equivalent values.

that exist within the social and media world of what it would cost, say, to buy a Facebook like or a social video view or whatever it might be. As you go further up, it gets more complicated, but we have a value that gets updated every six months for every type of experience. Experiential, meet and greet, sign merchandise, they all have equivalent values out there.

that we source. not going to give too much away on where we get our data, but we certainly stand over it and we're able to share with our clients the equivalent. And it might be based on, for instance, a retail experience might be similar to experiential or something along those lines. So all the way along, there's a value, a value for everything. And the second you realize that, realize sponsorship is completely measurable and we're able to determine exact values because we know all of this.

Daragh Persse (43:11.253)
And Yaxterna, you mentioned tech earlier as well. And when we're future looking into the future of the sponsorship, it's often technology we go to to say we need to engage 20,000 more people than we are, 50,000 or 100,000. And it's tech is a great way of doing it's enabled us to engage fans in loads of different ways online, offline, at event, away from event, fan clubs, et cetera. So.

Each of those that we create these new experiences, they all have values that we've got.

Steve (43:43.918)
You know, as you mentioned, tech and the ability to create content beyond will today, I think 34 million new images a day are being created by diffusion models and artificial intelligence. What would you say is the hardest part of the sponsor experience in the era now of let's just call it large language models, generative AI? What has changed in your world that makes it

more challenging for brands when so many brands have access to being able to produce so much content for consumers.

Daragh Persse (44:20.533)
Yeah, well, I think you just hit the nail on the head there. think it is. D picking apart what is genuine engagement versus. What's you know, and another methods of driving up numbers? Not easy. It's a continuing challenge, to be honest. But certainly we look under the hood and we try to understand there are some irony of our numbers inflated when they shouldn't be driving up.

artificial values. So keeping on top of that and how that's going to pan out in the next couple of years I think is probably in the measurement world singularly one of our biggest challenges.

Steve (45:02.317)
Point of sale, point of sale activity. When you see the distinction of a brand, you know, what's called a fast moving consumer good, whatever it may be, retail, know, tire, footwear, apparel, beverages. What distinct advantage might certain brands have when they have that ability to have point of sale activity as a sponsor versus those who simply don't?

Daragh Persse (45:10.846)
Yeah.

Daragh Persse (45:31.763)
Yeah, I mean, again, the further you can connect it to not just the point of sale, but picking the product up, we are finding huge, huge advantages that are retail level still. There's a particularly big global cereal brand that we'll all be familiar with. I won't get into it, but I've invested in a grassroots program here that involves effectively on-pack redemption for one period of the year.

That's incredibly successful for them. Within the pack, on the pack, there is a redemption. Bit like a coupon, yeah. And it gives you a discount on an asset that a family might be interested in. that's their most successful period of the year because they have this direct incentive in that retail environment, in the point of sale to not only

Steve (46:02.387)
What does that mean by the way?

Steve (46:10.733)
So on the box, the serial box.

Daragh Persse (46:30.751)
promote the sponsorship, but give people a reason to choose their product over someone else. And that's incredibly effective. So point of sale, even in an online world, that retail point of sale environment is still working really hard.

Steve (46:47.277)
How many sponsors are there, let's say a traditional, and again, for those, I I spent a year living in Marble Arch back in 99, 2000, in and out, when I was based in Hong Kong. There's a lot more to the UK than just soccer, football. Obviously you guys are extraordinary in many, many other sports, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, et cetera.

Daragh Persse (46:54.622)
Okay.

Steve (47:12.619)
When you look at actually how brands sponsor a team, what would be the average, if you will, sticking with European football? What would be the number of teams that a Liverpool or an Arsenal might have as part of their, quote unquote, official partner, official sponsor portfolio?

Daragh Persse (47:35.349)
You know, that's great. It actually changed massively back in the sort of mid noughties. Manchester United, we've talked about, were one of the pioneers of changing their sponsorship model to a model I'm not crazy about, but it went from this idea of having a title sponsor, a shirt sponsor, a shirt manufacturer and say seven or eight secondary sponsors across the obvious categories, beer, etc.

And they and with each of those sponsors would have global exclusive worldwide rights. They were one of the first to say, we're going to scrap that and we're going to offer regional rights. So effectively, they could have three telcos, one in Africa, one in Asia, one in America. And I'm not a fan of that because I believe in the power of the partnership and building that equity and so on. But I can see why it makes sense. It's numbers.

It's low maintenance so you don't get looked after as much but you get a certain amount of IP and a few assets and away you go kind of thing. So under that model and there's a few clubs doing it you're looking at you know 40, 30, 40, 50 partners worldwide.

Steve (48:55.757)
In the UK market, example, if I show up at Old Tratford, which I just read today that there's a $2 billion new construction project that they're going to tear down Old Tratford that's been around for 110 plus years and build a new stadium, which I know must be extraordinarily both joyous and very much mournful at the same time for many, depending on how you view it. But at the end of the day, how many brands might I see in the UK itself?

Daragh Persse (49:18.834)
Yeah.

Steve (49:23.231)
being a part of the Manchester United portfolio.

Daragh Persse (49:26.805)
If you're in that physical environment, you're probably only going to be exposed to about 10, 12, maybe 14. Yeah.

Steve (49:32.802)
So let's just say for the moment 12, let's say everyone hired the brand fans and you were working equally with every single sponsor of that team. Can sports sponsorship be optimized by all and still cater to a demographic market where you'll get the ear, the passion of that consumer.

presuming that those 12 brands have a very similar target market? Or does it rely on this disequilibrium, where you have a host of sponsors that are never going to activate well, and therefore, Dara comes along, helps one or two of those do really well, and therefore, sports sponsorship can excel because of this lack of equilibrium and the power that came from the agency relationship that you have stewarding a brand to do it well.

Daragh Persse (50:11.358)
of you.

Steve (50:29.119)
relying on many others to simply really do a mediocre job.

Daragh Persse (50:35.271)
Yeah, that's you're absolutely right. Two things I would say on that fundamentally, you're absolutely right. If a brand comes in with the enthusiasm, the budget, the resource, the expertise behind them and not just at a strategic agency level, but creative and media and social and content and tech, if they do that well, they brief well, they get behind it, they can out muscle any partner with creative, amazing communications that are fun.

insight fan driven, you know, the door is absolutely open and you do see where junior brands who have paid less in fees come in and usurp the larger, more traditional or sedentary kind of sponsors and do a fantastic job. So I would agree 100 percent. And I'm not always against it because I think it's a good and healthy

for the sponsors to be pushing each other and doing great work. And there is room to own an area and go after it and tell great stories and develop great sponsorship strategies. So, yeah, definitely creativity can win out. The second point I was going to make, you do see some rights holders mitigating against this now. And it's a fear that, OK, I've got a sponsor up here paying me X.

I have another sponsor coming in paying 10 % of that who are going to usurp my title sponsor. I can't allow that to happen. So there will be restrictions put in place and whether that's geographical, financial, whatever, you see that coming into play, which again is a shame in a way because I think the big sponsors should step up and do the work and be creative and take on that challenge, you know?

Steve (52:30.093)
You know, we started out by talking about storytelling, one of the comments you made about the critical nature of building loyalty through storytelling. I want to yield to you in this final aspect of our conversation. Tell us what comes to mind, share with our viewers a great story about a sponsor who nailed sponsorship in a holistic way that you feel if you had to...

speak as the keynote speaker about what is an indication of excellent sponsorship. And for those who want to yearn for excellence, this story would help them really understand what made for a great sponsorship. What comes to your mind?

Daragh Persse (53:18.685)
Okay, well, I'd love to mention my local clients, but I'm not going to do that. So I apologize to them in advance that I because they are there's a there's some great work, fabulous work. But I do think when I take a step back to that question, there are definitely a few at point two and I there's a few runners up, but I'll go to P &G proud sponsors of Mums.

So this was a campaign that was run around the several Olympic Games. It was done under the master brand PSG who have dozens of domestic brands within their portfolio, their target audience.

is the main buyer in the home, which is usually the mum. That's the reality of it. And maybe that's becoming less of an insight nowadays, but certainly when this was executed. So some people would complain it would felt outdated. For me, it was just a brilliant recognition of the dedication that mums put in to supporting their children through the journey of becoming a sports star.

Steve (54:31.969)
So you're referring to when they showed the athletes in the village actually having daycare that Proctor and Gamble had facility.

Daragh Persse (54:38.645)
Yeah, and falling down and getting up early and all the sacrifices. And I thought it was a brilliant insight into that world. I dare anyone to watch the content and not shed a tear at the end because it's so emotional, which again, I love, brings it to life. So I've had criticism for using this before because the insight of mom in the home is becoming outdated.

I don't care to be honest, it's a brilliant piece of work. It's intelligent, it's emotional. It uses an asset as well because the Olympics has a sponsorable product. It doesn't give you a lot back. You pay a lot of money, but you're paying for IP. You don't get lots of assets. And I think the work they did and they've made a few kind of movies, content pieces around it was really fabulous.

Steve (55:26.829)
Mmm.

Daragh Persse (55:36.051)
I have lots in my head, but if I pick one, that's the one I go to.

Steve (55:39.95)
Yeah, Paris 24, actually, they actually built on that and built the Olympic nursery, which was fascinating. So I want to, and again, it's going to give us the perfect cliffhanger to do this once again. I hope you enjoy, I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. We'd love to do it again. I want to leave with a counterpoint, if you will, in a very, very friendly TLC way. I find it interesting that you spoke of that campaign.

because much of what you just described was communicated by creative commercial advertising. And so therefore from a sponsorship standpoint, I can achieve that without even being a sponsor of any event, any team, any league, any venue. So by virtue of just tying it effectively with the sports theater and creating a compelling, as you said,

passionate, tear-jerking, meaningful, sentimental, creative campaign. I actually, in this case, the illustration as I heard it, didn't need any tethering to any sports sponsorship.

Daragh Persse (56:50.119)
It did. And probably what I didn't do justice was explain everything else they did around the Olympics. will agree. Actually, it is a great point because in the world of guerrilla marketing, there is that opportunity to say, create that association without doing it. And in the Olympic environment, think, you know, various manufacturers have done it for years with great success. So I'm around the World Cup as well.

Steve (56:54.637)
I'll take your word for it.

Steve (57:05.44)
Absolutely.

Daragh Persse (57:16.597)
I'll leave you with one lovely little thing they did, which was part of their asset at the Paralympic Games after the main Olympics. They arranged for the mum of one of the athletes that won the gold medal to present his medal to him on the podium, which is another beautiful story that came out of it. So I will say that only came about because they were an official sponsor. So maybe that helps a little.

Steve (57:42.51)
Brilliant, brilliant. Well, listen, we've gotten to that point. Dara Purse, manager director of the brand Fans. I should also mention you established ESA Ireland, which is the European Sponsorship Association, I guess, branch in Ireland. And what what a just a pure pleasure. What a pure pleasure, a really meaningful exchange. I know our viewers, when you're listening to someone like Dara.

I can only imagine that for those on this side of the Atlantic, you're thinking he needs a branch office here in the United States and a clone, which will come, which I guess through AI will be facilitated by the end of the year. So, I mean, really, of all those with whom I've spoken, I would say this was clearly just the way you have a mastery of our industry and a methodology.

that what was most important that I heard today, as you were speaking and I was going to ask you the question, I didn't need to. Because you said every six months you're updating your methodology. And our motto here, by the way, the transaction report is powered by SportsBiz. And as a tech AI platform, Alicart solution that we build individually, one at a time in the match maximizer measurement areas of sports sponsorship. At the end of the day,

to remain static, you know, we have a slogan here, iterate till we exit, whatever that means, but iterate product, iterate person, that in today's world, you can't remain there is you're either going up or down. And I loved how you communicated with the rigor that you're engaged with which you're engaged, but the fact that you're not married to a model that is static, because it's impossible to even attempt

to be involved in any aspect of the pre-contract decision-making process, how to maximize, and then ultimately how to look at value generated in a world where, first of all, the demographics are so different. They're changing by the decade and perhaps by today, by the year. We're gonna have a Gen AGI, and then we're gonna have a Gen Superintelligence.

Steve (01:00:01.675)
And we're moving at a clip that is just unprecedented in human history. And you answered one of the key questions without even having to be asked. It's just the rigor and tenacity and ability to look internally on how to continue to evolve your business. So again, Dara, pleasure having you on the transaction report today.

Daragh Persse (01:00:21.937)
It's been a huge pleasure. Great to chat to you Steve. I hope you have a great evening.

Steve (01:00:24.533)
Likewise, we'll do it again. Thank you. Kristen.

Daragh Persse (01:00:28.661)
Thank you.

Daragh Persse (01:00:35.667)
Yeah, I really.

Steve (01:00:36.013)
How did I miss that?

Steve (01:00:46.326)
Yeah.

Daragh Persse (01:00:52.117)
This will be switched off all of St. Patrick's Day.

Steve (01:00:55.053)
So why don't I do one clip? I'll do... Do you want that for Dara or for me? Okay, so why don't I just say this if I were... Yeah, and why don't I... So at the end... So we'll fit it in somewhere, but I'll say... And of all things, to have you on the program, literally two days before St. Patrick's Day,

Well, give me a second. So do we want to like dinner?

Steve (01:01:33.985)
Today is Tuesday, we'll probably launch it Thursday or Friday. in a transaction report first, what a pure real pleasure it is, I should say, to toast you, to have you on right at the concurrence of St. Patrick's Day.

Daragh Persse (01:01:59.871)
You're a margoth.

Steve (01:02:02.583)
How's that? Is okay, Kristen? There, I'll tell you this. So is he loaded? Is he uploaded?

Steve (01:02:11.277)
OK,

Steve (01:02:18.091)
Sure.

And then Darrell, our team will follow up with you on how to max the heck out of this thing.

We'll continue just for one more minute.