Steve (00:00.45)
break you need anything you need so I just

Jim Andrews (00:02.651)
Appreciate it.

Steve (00:14.932)
When you think about the industry, the business of sports, it's an interesting one. Monopolies don't abound. You could claim that a franchise might be one, but in reality it is, but it really isn't. They're competing against a lot of other sports entities in their particular city and bigger extended sports enterprises in other fields. And then if you're pro, you've got collegiate interests and...

And it goes on and on down to high school today, what's happening at the youth level. But if there was anything that I can think of in my 36 year career that likened to a monopoly, it may have been an acronym called IEG. And I was over and as some of you may know, started my company when I had spent a year learning Mandarin Chinese back in 89, 1990, started my own sports event management business.

And I'll be frank with you, out in the Far East, doing business, all at that time, specific to the region of Asia, IEG and Jim Andrews really were synonymous with the only anchor you had to try to make sense of an industry that was in the midst of transformation. And I'll conclude this intro by saying that the following, the transformation,

was one from what we would call Chairman's Choice, the great days of the Dinah Shore Classic, the great days of VIP corporate hospitality, VIP corporate hospitality being almost in its own right, a singular entity benefit of sports sponsorship. That was good enough to be and to justify an entire undertaking of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases, millions of dollars of spend.

We're in the midst of another transformation, 30 years henceforth, 30 plus years henceforth. And Jim, real distinct pleasure to have this conversation with you, which is gonna be a little bit of a ping pong review and kind of jumping back and forth. But thank you for indulging me on that intro. I really can't think of anyone else, too many. think Mark McCormick might be a good one if he were alive today. There aren't many others, Donald Dell would have been one.

Steve (02:35.582)
today. But there are a few others of course. But you did. You were an anchor in an industry as the seventh man in the company at IAG, Northwestern grad, now professor over there or an adjunct. And it's a really great, great pleasure to have you on the TransAX.

Jim Andrews (02:53.457)
Well, it's a great pleasure to be here, Steve. Thank you for that introduction. And I do have to give certainly credit to Lisa Uchman, IEG's founder, who without her, none of that would have existed. I wouldn't have had a job and been able to do what I've done over the last almost four decades, I hate to admit. So she gets the credit for really kind of being the pioneer and seeing what was coming.

Steve (03:17.432)
She was pioneer, there's no question about that, but you know what, there are, and you were not next gen. And what was so interesting to me, and again, this is not a discussion about any company that's not the nature of the transaction report, it's to really try to explore your and my mind in conversational form as to what do we see, what have we seen, what's changed? And for those who have perhaps new to the game and not even new to the game, those,

Jim Andrews (03:23.596)
That's for sure.

Steve (03:45.581)
new, in the midst, or evolved. mean, no matter how long you've been in this business, every day, every week, sincerely, as we both know, this is a whole new ballgame. We are living textbook history of sports sponsorship and the business of sport. So what you did as you, in particular, you predated the podcast, you predated webinars, you were, if you will,

the first advent into using the tool of technology to communicate educationally. Sports sponsors, I remember watching you in the 90s, might have been in the 90s, early, aughts. Where you used to have these, you know, 30 minute, you know, discussions on sports marketing. So I'm gonna pop to the first side of it. If that was you 30 years ago,

What has Jim Andrews seen today since you were at the Vanguard and you're deploying right now?

Jim Andrews (04:49.969)
You know, the interesting thing, Steve, to me is you're right. mean, we all know all of the changes that have happened in the past 30, 35 years, right? I the internet and digital media being, you know, one of the biggest pieces of that. So on the one hand, it's easy to say, yes, things are tremendously different. The game has changed. We're not doing what we did back then.

But to me, the most interesting thing when I look at the business today and when I work with folks and see what's happening is how much some things haven't changed. And by that, mean just the way that we do things, the way that we approach, whether it's activation or measurement. It's a big frustration of mine and people who've read blog posts of mine have certainly heard me beat this dead horse before, but.

that we haven't advanced as much as we should have, just in terms of the kind of the approach that a lot of both properties and brands take to sponsorships and partnerships. I don't think we've kept up with all of that, the sea change that has happened around us in terms of what we can do in terms of these partnerships.

Steve (05:57.422)
Hmm.

Steve (06:09.07)
You know, I'm so glad you said that because that was actually in just that conversational approach to our interchange. Couldn't agree with you more. And I was thinking about that. Actually, I do probably my most creative thinking when I'm all suited up flying over rock on my mountain bike, which is basically the only sport I can really do it as a competitive level today. And I was out there literally today. It crossed my mind that

One of the things that I would have asked you was specifically and expressly about that issue, that while there are new tools to deploy, and that can alter some of the visceral feel we have with a sports event and some of the access and of course data and insights. And I was thinking literally, Jim, that part of that, and I was gonna ask actually you this question, it just, as I think about it.

You know, we see CMOs, if I remember correctly, there's a stat that says three year to four year tenure for the average Fortune 1000 CMO, if I remember correctly. And I was thinking, is it the fact that we went through this phase of so many younger folk coming from the property side and then shifting over to the brand side? And so you had this enormous transience. Is it because we have this cycle?

of just personnel that never came in to the industry the way you've said it yourself recently a few years ago, I believe on a podcast that I listened to. now? What was it? One of your friends, David Por... Harold. A lot of fun. And you actually made the point about being teaching at Northwestern and said, hey, listen, unless you're...

Jim Andrews (07:52.387)
Dave Perot and Tim McGee, yeah. Yeah, great podcast.

Steve (08:06.156)
Unless you're so committed to this industry, do yourself a favor. You might not really want to major in sports business, right? So is it the fact that we're not a line item within the, there's not a chief sports marketing officer, if you will. Is there a possibility that's part of it?

Jim Andrews (08:24.559)
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. mean, for many years, the sports marketing sponsorship, whatever the department was called, really was siloed. And I think we've gotten better at that, again, on the brand side of you now have more integration. You have CMOs who understand sponsorship. So that's all good. But there still remains, Steve, this

ghettoization, if you will, of the sponsorship roles. And that's why, to the point that you were referring to, I find that people, I have a hard time recommending to young people to specialize because they can get pigeonholed in those sports marketing roles. And then you hit a very low ceiling, only at the biggest of companies, the Coca-Colas and the Anheuser-Busch's.

Do you have senior vice presidents of sponsorship who are significant players and have a seat at the table, so to speak? So I find that yes, there's still the paths. We haven't created great paths for people who really want to be sports marketers. At some point, again, they most will hit a ceiling and then say, okay, if I want to advance in my career, if I want to make more money, whatever it is,

I'm going to have to go into some other role within the business or leave.

Steve (09:55.407)
So in many ways you don't have a flywheel effect. You don't have this incremental creative, this what you and I would have expected. I think I heard you say a years back, 36 years in the game. So that being the case, you're probably now at 38 years. And predating me by two years. And as someone who used to own professional sports events and represent athletes and own the broadcast rights globally and regionally and I think...

Jim Andrews (10:11.033)
I'm gonna find out,

Steve (10:24.91)
part of it and it's worth exploring a little bit. first and foremost, as I go beyond just what came to my mind earlier, that is that we have this enormous human element that says, have an opinion. And my opinion is such that if I have the authority, well, we're going to do it the way I view it. And on the one hand, we could be a title sponsor of a major PGA tour event. And if I come in at the...

at the point where that contract has been renegotiated. And I have an alternative point of view. Well, you know what? Good, good, best of health. I wish you guys all the best. Number two is, I think there's another element that as I hear you speak, comes to the fore. And I think we will escape it a bit. It's gonna take time till we get to the super intelligence level of our existence.

Jim Andrews (10:58.395)
Yeah.

Steve (11:17.966)
But I do think if you look, and I don't think there's any better analog than to use or as a use case than the Super Bowl. And if you look at 72 spots being aired at an average, let's just call it for the sake of discussion, on national level, $7 million, just for production, excuse me, for non-production costs, just airtime acquisition, then somewhere according to Gary Vee, somewhere between another 5 and $7 million, 80 to 100 % on production costs, depending what talent you're using.

Jim Andrews (11:34.993)
Right.

Steve (11:47.204)
You you end up with how many dogs in a Super Bowl that you and I are watching and saying to ourselves, did that just air for 15 million all in for one 30 second spot? How could it have been so bad? How could that have got, like we went to a movie and we said, how did that ever get on the big screen? So I think as long as we continue to have that human element, we're gonna scratch our head and say,

Jim Andrews (11:55.825)
you

Steve (12:15.235)
How did they spend seven, eight figures, nine figures at times, or six figures, and they didn't activate effectively? There were so many tools available to them, so many means for which they could have taken advantage of this, but it just laid fallow.

Jim Andrews (12:34.831)
Yeah, and that's look, we're all guilty of that, right? Do we do we everything we do in our businesses or even our personal lives? Do we do to the fullest extent? No, sometimes there are circumstances that dictate. Well, we can't we we know we should do something, but we just, you know, again, resources, time, whatever we can't do at all. But as you say, Steve, when it's something like that, when it's a major investment like that to not really do it as well as you know you could.

Just it's mind boggling sometimes. the media side of things, the advertising, the creative, that's always a bit of a roll of the dice, right? Somebody might say, boy, I love that. That really, that resonated with me. I thought it was funny. And somebody else looks at it and goes, meh, don't get it. I don't know who that celebrity was. It was in the spot, so I don't care. So there's always gonna be that, I think, a higher element of risk. But when you get to the sponsorships and you're spending, again,

six, seven, eight figures on an Olympic or a World Cup or an NFL partnership. And you're not doing everything you can to because we all know that those when we talk about those kinds of numbers, we're talking about like with the the ad buy in the Super Bowl. That's just the entry fee. That just gets you in the door and it gets you a label that says official partner. And you've got to then create what that means for your brand and what what that's going to mean to to your consumers.

And if you don't do that, boy, did you just waste a lot of money.

Steve (14:07.405)
And so going back to that point you made, so you have individuals within the corporation who, unlike you, are not sports marketers per se. And so for them, this is a strategic tool. And as a strategic tool, they have a lot of strategic tools in the toolbox. So then the question becomes, if it's just one of many core tools, to me, it explains away why so often we can see mediocrity or

we can see right at the get-go, very often when, and again, I'm not here to make this a retrospective and nostalgic discussion on the transaction report, but if we think about our earlier days, and it's still going on ironically, but the pursuit of ROI and this mythological ability for an external party to attempt to even qualify that.

and quantify it when we don't have access to what are your employee costs, what's your overhead, what's your, mean, there are so many factors that would really go into a true ROI that at that is in its own right. What type of concurrent advertising were you doing for correlation or causation? So, I mean, to determine that and put weights, so putting that aside for a moment, you know, I do think we obviously have come a long way and yes, we have stayed static in certain realm. Ultimately,

The train is moving so fast and part of that difficulty in understanding that if you're gonna attempt to measure and assess how you did, if you opted into something from the get-go you should never have been a part of, then it was a non-starter. You chose an athlete that was never gonna be an optimal fit. You opted to sponsor a team that was just absolutely...

the wrong fit for your brand or not. It could have been a fine fit, but it wasn't the optimal fit or near optimal fit. And it goes on and on with athletes in attempting to make an assessment of how do you choose among thousands and thousands of athletes, male, female, college, pro, even younger. So it's interesting. And on top of that, you add in the ingredient that we didn't face up until a certain point.

Steve (16:20.783)
late late late in the 90s, you in the aughts, if you will, with social media, is now you're dealing with technology and you're dealing with properties that never even existed when we got in. And almost on a weekly basis, you and I, on a, let's call it monthly basis now, are seeing new leagues come to the fore. So the choice for decision makers,

Jim Andrews (16:32.913)
Yeah.

Steve (16:48.841)
It is, I mean, if you used to say look at the ball sports, I mean, you're being peppered. And with your expertise in your business today, I understand that you have, again, you're the founder and CEO of a consultancy firm, A-mark Partnership Strategies. And when you see the flood,

of new sports properties along with NIL and thousands of athletes. And Jim, your role is to guide brands and help them or properties, but particularly in this case, brands make decisions about where to spend their money, their investment. How much harder or not, in your opinion, is it today with all of these additions

that are so, so raw.

Jim Andrews (17:45.019)
Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know that it's exponentially harder because there's still, even as you say, mean, all of these long tail and properties that are still, as you say, new ones popping up all the time. It does create opportunity for lots of brands who can't afford to play at the biggest level and don't need to play. Everybody doesn't need to be.

a sponsor of one of the big four sports leagues or one of their teams. So, you know, that's what I love about the fact that you've got these grassroots organizations because, yes, for some brands, there's going to be a match there. That's going to be reaching a target audience for them. It does make it difficult for the bigger companies who have those big budgets, who could be sponsoring a whole bunch of different stuff.

And now they have to make that decision. we go deep into one area? Do we try and, as we like to say in sponsorship, own a sport or a certain sector or segment? Or do we try and populate different things? Because obviously, we don't have a monolithic consumer base. We have people that are interested in all kinds of sports and not just sports, but different types of arts and entertainment and music.

So I think it's more difficult. The more money you have to spend, the more difficult it gets, right? But so many of the brands that we see coming into the marketplace now, which is a big change from decades ago, are companies that couldn't have played the game back then because there weren't enough opportunities for everyone to kind of get in. So from that standpoint, I think it's actually, to me, it's...

We're in a better situation now than we've ever been.

Steve (19:36.932)
hand in hand on that one. And we talk it all the time here in Sports Biz, which we are in the business of AI and analytics and sports guidance and how to make optimal decisions, maximize what you've opted into. And how do you multiply that? Once you've gotten into it, how do you take what you've spent and get so much more out of it the next time you've done it and the time after? So when you look at that, I am all with you on that and a big proponent of that.

On the other hand, you start seeing properties like Unrivaled, the three on three women's basketball, which is now over a quarter of a billion dollars valuation as a property in a year. I believe in 12 months, I'd say it's probably equity value will go over a billion dollars. That's my personal opinion, over a billion dollars in valuation. So of course you're gonna start seeing broadcast rights for certain properties start, the new ones, going up. And as long as those broadcast properties start going up in cost, the rights fees,

we're going to start seeing sponsors start paying more for access. You're going to see more egress to get into a more affordable, which comes down to an anchor of what we believe is going to happen in this industry is really the advent of far more organically owned, as you said, but wholly owned sports sponsorships.

Jim Andrews (20:36.881)
Absolutely.

Steve (20:57.968)
out of necessity and it's also out of effectiveness, a red bull, if you will, effectiveness.

Jim Andrews (21:04.848)
I would agree with that. think from a brand standpoint, that makes so much sense. You have control over that. You can really do what you need to. think the challenge is, and Red Bull has done this so well, but it's not easy, is to make those authentic. To make them not look like they are corporate-owned entity that has been developed basically for the...

purpose of selling products or services, right? And that's, and again, I give all credit to Red Bull for doing that. Nobody thinks that when they're at one of those amazing events that they own and control that, this is just a Red Bull promotion.

Steve (21:48.644)
I'm so glad you said that, I'm reflecting, as you saw in my eyes, perhaps, I'm actually reflecting, they sponsor, in my opinion, perhaps one of the greatest mountain biking annual events in Utah called Red Bull Rampage. And it's such a natural fit. It's so extreme. So you know, it's interesting. Actually, it's the fact that they've taken an extreme category and their name is synonymous with

Extreme, but fortunately not casualty oriented sport. So I believe Baumgartner, unfortunately, when they did that jump from the highest, was it the highest skydiving from the something sphere. I was very saddened to learn in the past six months, he actually died in a tragic accident doing what he loves doing.

Jim Andrews (22:22.318)
Right.

Jim Andrews (22:28.781)
I, yeah, from, yeah, exactly. It was that, yeah, it was not the, yeah, I can't forget what exactly what that was called, but yeah.

Jim Andrews (22:41.009)
Yeah, this year, you know.

Steve (22:44.771)
But that was not on, I'm not speaking with authority. I don't know if that was on Red Bull, so live, I thought that was in a private undertaking. So Red Bull has carved out an extremely complex environment, a high risk environment, an opportunity to showcase remarkable sport and do it effectively for broadcast, but it doesn't become the cab, and it becomes something where people are watching and enjoying.

People leave safely who are competing. But you're right, it's very natural in a drink that has certainly this sense of buzz. I need this extreme focus concentration, setting aside any other conversation of its true health benefits and concerns. But you're right, having that authenticity, which comes back to again, how do you, as an expert,

Jim Andrews (23:26.065)
Exactly.

Steve (23:38.96)
How do you profess to understand authenticity? What is it that you do that's a litmus test that gives someone the confidence that Steve has made a decision and you're my guru, that I've chosen authenticity? What is my blueprint for that?

Jim Andrews (23:41.957)
He he.

Jim Andrews (24:01.745)
Yeah, that's a really great question, Steve, because there's not an easy answer when you're looking forward and saying, is what we're about to create authentic? Because you can't know that 100 % until you put it out there and you see how people respond to it, right? I think you can do kinds of market research beforehand and say, this is an event we're about to introduce to the marketplace. What do you think?

stay in mountain biking, want to do something like this. So we get folks like you or mountain bikers, you know, do a focus group and test it that way and say, okay, they seem to be buying into this, they seem to like it. So, you know, we have a degree of confidence that it is authentic. It's going to be perceived as being authentic, but you don't really know until you put it out there. But I would say, yeah, you got to test it a little bit with the folks.

Steve (24:54.323)
What percent of the brands do you think before they commit on the dotted line, regardless of expense, what percent of them do you think actually go to the market, A-B test or A-B-N test, and actually put forth to their target market and request, solicit, actually receive feedback before they sign on the dotted line?

Jim Andrews (25:15.929)
Yeah, it's a minority. put it that way. It's not the majority, which again, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. doesn't, if you're going to end up spending millions of dollars on a program like that to spend a little bit of money to test it out and see what people think about it first. that kind of getting those kinds of insights from your consumers or other stakeholders, I mean, that gives you a roadmap.

It really says, we can now narrow down. As you said, we've got all of these options for putting our money into whether we're developing a new event, we're sponsoring an existing property. How do we narrow that down to what are the best? Part of that is we have technology, as you're well aware, that can enable us to kind of crunch those numbers and find those really optimal fits. But there's also just that...

going out and testing it and asking people. I remember just a quick story, and this is going back to the 90s, Tankeray Gin, was Shiflund and Somerset at that point, was the importer. And they were looking to do something in the cause-related marketing area. the smartest thing they did was they went out and asked their consumers, where should we be putting our philanthropic and

Steve (26:16.44)
Please.

Jim Andrews (26:40.713)
and sponsorship dollars, want to do good. Should it be in education? Should it be in arts? Should it be in health? All of these kinds of things. And at that point, this is the mid-90s, with that target group of people who purchased gin, AIDS was a big thing. So they sponsored the Tankeray American AIDS Rides, which was a series of bike rides around the country. There was one that went from Boston to New York, one that went from Minneapolis to Chicago.

Steve (26:58.03)
Hmm.

Jim Andrews (27:09.329)
all to raise money for AIDS research. And when they first announced that, and we had them come and speak at the conference because it was so unusual, like, this doesn't seem to make sense to me. It's it's gin. No, exactly. It seems weird. And I actually did the Minneapolis to Chicago ride. And the first thing when we got on site, they were like, okay.

Steve (27:19.662)
No, it wouldn't have passed my muster on my side.

Jim Andrews (27:36.409)
no alcohol whatsoever. You're be on these bikes for five days. Alcohol was banned. It was like, but yet this is sponsored by a spirits company. But they knew that that was what resonated because they asked the question.

Steve (27:53.465)
go this way. So the heart of the last 25 years, the advent in the early aughts, this shift towards experiential marketing, right? It flies in the face of everything that even today and you yourself have written about and we talk about all the time that for most and of course there's a bell curve and there are outliers on both sides where yeah you can at times be monolithic and pursue

one specific benefit of sports marketing, what I'll call the Big 12, if you will. And you could say, okay, I'm really anchoring and I know you're a fan as well and I used to own an awful lot of National Opens and golf. And at the end of the day, golf will always have a very core, reliable, dependable market.

And it's a sure thing when done well. And that VIP corporate hospitality being one of 250 at a venue when you see the souvenir program and recognize that there might be 250 acquirers of some form of VIP corporate hospitality at a singular PGA tour event. But for the most part today,

As you've written about and speak about and guide, we've learned that sports marketing is best when it has a, if you will, a...

an axle, right, and you have spokes, and you've defined these fundamental core spokes that are synergistic. And without them, it's gonna be very difficult if you're reliant on one element alone or a few alone based in a passive way on what the rights owner has bequeathed you in contract.

Jim Andrews (29:51.441)
Not quite.

Steve (29:52.921)
So it leads me, and this is something I grapple with, and I would say on a near daily basis. I try to meditate on and I evaluate and I've lived it and I've dispensed it. What happens when you're looking for authenticity, but now you're being propositioned, Jim, and you're guiding a brand that has had an overture from the NBA, and you're gonna be number 51 official partner of the NBA.

How does one gain authenticity in a sea of sponsors where there is so many competing using the same IP if they even use the IP? How can a brand find that distinct identity or create carve out when so many big super brands and other companies are spending

utilizing the same sponsorship asset.

Jim Andrews (30:53.881)
And that's where activation comes in, right? Because yeah, again, if you're one of 51, even one of 20, you're not just gonna stand out by standing there, putting your official sponsor, the NBA, as a tagline on your advertising, right? You've gotta do something. And you've gotta do something creative and really think about it. And that's where, if I were sitting down with a brand and the NBA,

talking about a partnership, we think it makes sense from an audience fit and all that kind of stuff. The first thing I would ask the NBA is, what do you have coming down the pipeline in terms of new things? Because that's a league that's very good at that, Just this past week, they introduced the rookie patches that all the rookies are going to wear in their first games. And then with the relationship with tops, and then those will get sold as collectibles and all that kind of thing. If they tell me that that's something they've

they're introducing an innovation like that for next season. I'm like, okay, we want to be attached to that. We don't want to just necessarily take over sponsorship of the three-point contest at the All-Star Game because maybe Kia is giving it up next year. Because then we're just putting one logo on in front of another. Unless, again, we have a real ability to make the three-point challenge or the slam dunk challenge, whatever it is.

our own. You know, then, you know, if we have that creative vision to really do something that's going to stand out, that's great. And that, think, is, you know, often what's missing. We don't talk enough in sponsorship about creativity. You we don't approach it the way creatives at advertising agencies look at, you know, what are we doing here? What can we do that hasn't been done? Can we get a message out there that's

that's new and different and will just land with people in a different way than the cookie cutter stuff that's already out.

Steve (32:57.27)
So you just made a salient point of what's changed since when you and I first got in the industry as an example, till today. And that is in some ways, sports sponsorship again in some ways has become a commodity. And that commodity now has to be somehow you've got to extricate from the base and that base would have been years back, decades back, your front end.

Jim Andrews (33:13.594)
yeah.

Steve (33:26.646)
Let's get into sponsorship and we're going to be the official insurance company of that particular event or that lead. Whereas today what you just illustrated, which I find really interesting and accurate, and that is, if you haven't carved out some element of ownership, the ability to expect a consumer to have recall is almost delusional.

It's not going to happen too often when there are, I mean, and all we, any of us have to do is do it just from an anecdotal level. Watch an event that you enjoy. If you are one of the approximate 50 % that stayed for the commercial spots, I'm talking about legacy television right now. And we go to watch with a free to air or cable and, and, and come back five minutes later and tell us of the 10 ads that were just aired, 12 ads that just add, please try to list them that,

Jim Andrews (34:11.473)
You

Steve (34:26.03)
And that was five minutes after you just saw them. So you're spot on. And whether that's that halftime show sponsorship, as you said, whether it's a patch, which again, the scariest part for me of any patch deal gym is that at the end of the day, if I put Jim Andrews on the left sleeve, or I put Steve Feuerstein on the hat,

we're calling our family and friends and saying, isn't that wonderful? And all of our friends and family called us and said, hey Jim, that was fun. I saw you for four hours during the final round at the BMW. Great job. But for most people, they're watching the face of the athlete. They're watching the club swing. They're watching the trajectory of the ball. They're listening to the guidance of the announcer. They're watching the fan roar, the fan reaction. That patch.

Jim Andrews (35:01.745)
You

Steve (35:20.504)
has a time and place, but it is not directly correlated to simply when it was on air and when it was not on air. Hence, to your point, with all the new leagues, the thousands upon thousands of new athletes in NIL, and now high school, in 41 states I believe now, it's now legal to engage in NIL for high school athletes, and it will get younger, it will go younger.

So the question becomes, sponsorship without that identification that you just said.

How can it be effective today? Would you guide a brand to go into an event, league, team, association, venue, when they're one of many, and as we know, Caitlin Clark signed, when she signed to turn pro, she had already had 12 endorsement deals. From Gainsborough to Goldman Sachs.

to Gatorade, to Nike, to State Farm. I mean, she had monster brands, Bose, Buick, H &R Block. That's before she turned pro. And if I've got to compete against a Nike to try to gain share of mind through my creative, that's intimidating alone if it was just Nike.

Jim Andrews (36:49.745)
Sure, sure. also, mean, there's a lot of variables, you know, Steve, too. The category, what you're trying to do, what your specific objectives are. So it's not just a numbers game. So to answer the direct question, I would advise some brands to go into what might look like a crowded environment, again, if I thought they could do something with it, where it wouldn't matter.

Steve (37:03.854)
100%.

Jim Andrews (37:18.501)
Caitlin also had Hy-Vee grocery stores as a sponsor of hers. And yeah, are they ever gonna compete with Nike in terms of the marketing power? No, but can they still do something very effectively, especially because they were kind of expanding into the Indianapolis market and other parts of the Midwest, they're trying to grow here. Can they effectively use Caitlin Clark on a regional level to do some things for them? Absolutely.

So it's situational for sure.

Steve (37:49.647)
parenthetically by the way, and I'm glad you brought that up, because right after she did turn pro and a few months later when the creative did come out from about three specific brands, believe Gatorade, Nike, and one other, give me a moment, might have been State Farm. You know was scary, Jim? How much the creative looked identical. Where she was almost in uniform standing at half, it was, if you looked at the creative, you would have thought the same agency had produced it. Yeah. So, would you said something else which made me think?

Jim Andrews (38:06.609)
Yeah.

Steve (38:20.27)
I'm a lover. I don't eat them. I did as a kid. But not today. I hope they're not your client, but Pop-Tarts. But if they were, then I hope they'll appreciate the comment. I think it was one of the most effective experiential marketing, if you will, to me, what I'm going to call experiential marketing. That image of the large toaster with the

Jim Andrews (38:29.177)
sure, you know, they are not.

Jim Andrews (38:43.622)
Yeah?

Steve (38:49.27)
the animated human Pop-Tart going into the toaster and coming out as a massive Pop-Tart, which I think there's so much room to innovate on that and each year introduce a new element to that and have a great deal of fun doing it and get the stadium to all of sudden participate.

where all of sudden the entire stadium is pop-tarting it at that moment and enjoying it. And you've made one for the opposing team as well to enjoy. And the wrapping is of that particular team. It could be so much fun. But they worked. And my question to you as a core strategist that you are, so for all of our service-based businesses, for all those that don't have point of sale,

for all those where I can't drive you to dealership, for all those that I can't say to you at stadium, this is active for two hours, go to Chick-fil-A when you leave here, and for two hours you got a two for one offer. And we love this causation of you came to the event, you now purchased at our restaurant, and you walked away satisfied with an activation that we could calculate the direct effect.

from that particular game and audience. What do you do when you're in the financial services industry, you're in the insurance industry, you're in all of these industries, technology, chip manufacturers, Intel as a sponsor of the Olympics, when you can't necessarily physically engage your brand words visual at venue, or you can't activate a consumer to immediately enjoy.

that euphoria or activate upon their own, if you will, emotional high, leave venue and go do something with you. What's your guidance there?

Jim Andrews (40:42.225)
I think B2B sponsorships can be some of the most effective. We concentrate a lot on B2C because those are the ones we see and they're so visible. you talk about company, mentioned Intel, you talk about IBM, the ability to use a partnership with whether it's a golf tournament, a league, to say basically as just a brilliant case study and one that people are interested in to say, look,

We're trying to land a seven, eight figure engagement with your business. You wanna know what we do and how we do. We can sit here and do product demonstrations and you can come to our offices. But what if we take you to the US Open in New York and we take you behind the scenes, you meet with the CTO of the USTA who shows you everything that, IBM is running everything involved with this tournament from the website and the app to the deep.

operations that nobody except the real wants care about. And you can see our product in action. I mean, you know, that's that to me is a no brainer to use those kinds of organizations throughout sports and entertainment as product showcases in a B2B sense. We've seen so much success with that. And you mentioned before there's, you know, good old fashioned corporate hospitality exists for a reason.

And that's because it works. I mean, I can I can't share the data, but I have I have data from from clients going back decades to say, look, if I bring people out to a golf tournament, to a tennis tournament, whatever a suite, a skybox at a stadium, that's relationship building. You know, my salespeople are again, you can never draw the straight line, right? It's like, because we brought this guy to to the game, game seven of the

league championship series that they signed a six figure contract with us two months later. But we know it's a part of the relationship building. We can look at that and say it was a key link in the chain that eventually got us to either turning somebody from prospect to customer or keeping a customer and making them a better customer.

Steve (42:57.944)
So I'm with you all the way, but it begs the obvious follow-up, and that would be, why title sponsor? You can get all of that without dropping the biggest amount of coin on a sponsorship, whether it's your venue for SoFi or whether it's take the PGA tour and look at the number of service-based businesses, that if you're in it for VIP corporate hospitality, and I agree with every single thing you just said, but then I would say as a guide, as a consultant,

If that's the name of the game and it's about being effective on the VIP corporate hospitality, number one is you better sure learn how to differentiate yourself from every other bank that has the Chase suite, the city suite. mean, because I'm, and particularly if they're a high level exec, I mean, how, what are they getting Jim? Hundreds, everything. So they can't even remember, wait a minute, did I see, did I see Nadal, was that the city? Was that the US open or was that?

Jim Andrews (43:45.35)
they get invitations to everything. Yeah.

Steve (43:55.375)
I mean, they get lost in the number of events they attend from entertainment, you concert, you name it. the question then becomes, what justifies the expenditure on the title side that in some cases could be a 20 to one or a 10 to one from an alternative sponsor that gave you that same access that you could have negotiated access to that back room with the head of the USDA.

Jim Andrews (44:23.865)
Yeah, no, I think you're exactly right. Because if that's why you're buying the title sponsorship, you're wasting money. You don't have to spend that much. You're buying stuff that you don't need. I remember years ago, and it's been so many years, I think I can reveal who it was. It was Canon. Back when we had cameras and not phones, right, to take pictures. They were a longtime sponsor of the US Open and did a great job in terms of activating with the journalists, with the press on site.

Steve (44:28.974)
100%.

Jim Andrews (44:49.905)
who were obviously taking photographs, but also for them, the primary reason they were there was hospitality, was to take people to that tournament. And we spent a long time in the consulting engagement with them, because they were an official sponsor and they had the signage and everything. And we really kind of dug deep and said, do you need all, you can just buy tickets and bring people to the event. Do you have to be a sponsor?

You know and it came that they kept it I remember because they said they liked the fact that when they brought their guests to the event they weren't just we're just here with tickets like everybody else we're here you can see the cannon signage it gave the brand a little bit more cache for the again whether that cache was worth the multi-million dollars more that they were paying than just you know they're just buying some some hospitality that's that was debatable.

but they felt it was and they kept the partnership.

Steve (45:50.127)
What about exclusivity? feel that's a, for you is that a non-starter? If it's not exclusive, would you guide a client to avoid? Okay.

Jim Andrews (45:58.415)
No, no, not at all. Again, it's very situational. love, this is, I spend one class just in my Northwestern class talking about exclusivity and bringing guests in who have very different views. You do not have to be exclusive to make it work because sometimes, and I think, again, would you prefer to always have exclusivity, not have any of your competitors near you? Absolutely. But there are just cases where that's,

not going to be practical. know, a lot, especially with a lot of pro sports teams or the banking category, they slice that up. And, you know, I think that as long as we talked about ownership before, as long as you are getting something within your benefits package that is exclusive to you, that is going to meet the needs that you have and is going to allow you to activate against your target audience.

Is it great that one of your competitors is doing something for a different audience in the same arena or something like that? Again, in a perfect world, they wouldn't be there. But can you be effective? It's not even sharing the space, because you're not really. You're doing your own thing. They're doing their own thing. Yes, you're both the official partners of the Chicago Blackhawks or whoever it might be. But you're still able to do something with that. So I don't think exclusivity, it's certainly

It's not the be all and end all. It's a great thing to have if you can afford to have it.

Steve (47:31.875)
I appreciate that insight. know, it's interesting for years and years and years, sports marketers, they dug into the feedback that came out of IEG probably again 30 years ago, and it was a smart insight. I want to probe, not the veracity, I don't question that. I want to probe today how we attempt to make sense of this, because of course there's no singular number. But IEG, if I remember correctly,

Jim Andrews (47:49.137)
Sure.

Steve (48:00.441)
was the group that came out and said, hey listen, if you're gonna spend this amount of money on rights fees, thank you, you're gonna have to spend this X on activation. And I can tell you for some journeymen, we can still have a heck of a debate over what was that number and how do we make sense of the, and to me it's more conceptual. I don't wanna get, because we can debunk a number immediately.

Jim Andrews (48:04.426)
Sorry.

Steve (48:30.722)
Well, if I sponsor two athletes and one athlete cost me eight million a year to get involved with, and the other one cost me 500,000 to get engaged with with an endorsement deal, are you telling me that it's just automatically three X for each? I don't think that's the issue. I'm spending 30 million activation on one and 1.5 million on another. It's clear that that's not something that's meant to be a solid, stable, static number. So today, first and foremost, what was it back then in the glory days? And is it?

Jim Andrews (48:56.817)
Okay, well first I Have to clear up the misconception that we actually ever said it that way we never did we never said this is No, what we did

Steve (48:59.49)
Yeah, please, I yield.

Steve (49:04.27)
You never did? So for 30 something years, I've been saying, know, IEG said it was a 3X and we're like, no, can't be a 3X. Then it was a 1X. Dave Wharton in our company on CMO. Okay, so Dave Whom You Know.

Jim Andrews (49:15.973)
Yeah, and trust me, yeah, trust me, you're not the only one. You're not the only one. Everybody, IEG says you have to spend, and I think it was a lot, it was two to one, two and a half to one, but where that number, what it was based on, changed every year, is we did an annual survey of sponsors and we just asked, what is your average ratio of spend, how much do you spend? And we would publish this every January, and it would be, according to sponsor self-reporting,

They spend $1.70 on activation for every dollar they spend. And we would simply put that out there and say, this is what the industry average is. And it got turned and tweaked into, IEG says you have to spend $1.70 for every dollar, otherwise you're wasting your money and you're foolish. And we were like, I've spent decades saying that, no, that was an average. For some, that was too low.

Steve (49:57.998)
Ha

tremendous!

Jim Andrews (50:12.281)
If you're Coca-Cola and you're buying an Olympic sponsorship, if you spent two to one, you're not gonna do anything. If you're Coca-Cola, you need to spend four, five, six to one on activating that.

Steve (50:23.64)
Wait, let me unpack that for one moment, please. So in today's world, mean, Coke's been a sponsor, believe, since the 1926, 24, Olympics, yeah, it's 100 years they're coming up on. And so if we go back to the early 90s, mean, sponsorship packages back then for a global partner were somewhere between 20 and $30 million.

Jim Andrews (50:32.881)
The exit 24, 2428. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve (50:49.388)
Today, you're in the nine figures of sponsors, hundreds of millions of dollars. You're telling me that Coca-Cola will invest over a billion dollars today, and it's at six to one of their sponsorship on a global activation?

Jim Andrews (51:02.607)
Yeah, I mean, let's say four to one maybe now, but yeah, for globally activating that, absolutely, with all of the promotions, all of the advertising, everything that they do in 150 countries around the world, kind of have to, you know, to make that kind of global impact.

Steve (51:13.742)
tremendous.

Steve (51:19.246)
Because in the old days, what I used to bemoan was the fact that I was in other countries living overseas for 13 years. And I watched global sponsors, global partners, and they never came to the markets in which I was living, whether it was the Republic of China, whether it was Hong Kong, many, many, many, many markets where they had presence. But they just didn't have the understanding, the outside of their head office, nation state, and a few other core markets.

Jim Andrews (51:31.312)
Interesting.

Steve (51:45.791)
They really were so selective on their deployment of the five rings. And it was shocking to me how much they spent and how underutilized their sponsorship was at that level of a global property. That's fascinating, Jim. So you never had a truck in true number. It wasn't three to one or two to one. It was what was this average? I would say today there is no driving credence or no driving North Star for brands.

Jim Andrews (52:00.079)
Thank you.

Steve (52:13.974)
I don't think they even have it today. I don't think there's an industry standard that you and I can observe or talk about that says to a sponsorship manager or brand manager, marketing director, you've engaged this, you're spending X for this athlete team league association, stadium, venue, or an event. You really need to understand that the deployment of capital for activation is gonna be this way. We don't have to.

Jim Andrews (52:39.619)
Yeah, no, and that's probably a good thing that there isn't that because again, it's so varied. I mean, it could be 50 cents to one would make perfect sense for one brand and five to one would make perfect sense for another situation.

Steve (52:43.757)
situation.

Hmm. Yup.

Steve (52:51.662)
Biggest deficiency that we have today?

Jim Andrews (52:55.641)
I mean, I think it is the fact that we don't we don't put the proper resources around these sponsorships. think most sponsors today, they understand activation. know. So I think they are probably spending appropriately. But where they're not spending is on the stuff. Some of the stuff we've talked about that pre research to say, what should we be doing? Guide us into how we should be smartly selecting the properties that we're going to that we're going to partner with. And then on the back end,

You know, let's let's get rid of the term ROI because as you said, real ROI is really difficult and expensive to but even RLO. Brands are simply not putting enough into really figuring out what their what their return on ROI return on objectives is in these kinds of things. And that's that's been, you know, the case again. One of those things that I we kept saying 30 years ago, well, this will improve.

Well, you because we know we should be measuring and now we have so many more tools for doing it. the data is so much easier for us to get our hands on now than it was in the 1990s. But still, there's just not that commitment to saying we want to know exactly how these dollars are.

Steve (54:13.518)
100%.

I remember as we come to, I don't want to call it closure, our first conversation, exploration, cutoff time, if you will, you've been very generous with your time. know, McKinsey, if I remember correctly, it was about eight years ago, they came out with a study and said 50 % of brands in sponsorship don't even assess sponsorship, post-event sponsorship.

That's number one, right out of the get-go. There have been obviously Deloitte and others who have come out and said that if you would, even those that do, where we focus on at SportsBiz and one of our solutions, which is again, all software handed over to the client, some of us plug and play coming up and others are project-based SaaS. But it's all about, ultimately you did this, but I'm a huge proponent that in 2025 going into 2026,

Descriptive analytics, isolated is 20th century. And if you're just looking at a static number and someone's trying to tell you what, and let's go to your comment on return on objectives. You you got 2 million return on objectives. Sure, but what does that ultimately even mean? It means nothing.

Jim Andrews (55:31.505)
But yeah, exactly.

Steve (55:35.115)
If I don't understand, well, how does that compare to what you did last year or the year before? How does it compare to other properties that you sponsor? How does it compare against your cohorts of the same sponsorship property? How did Canon do versus your Buick sponsor? If I'm the title sponsor or if I'm a like-minded apples to apples sponsor, and there were 18 other visual brands in venue and participating for FC Cincinnati, I want to know if I'm...

Jim Andrews (55:41.584)
Exactly.

Steve (56:03.724)
First Bank and we have as well Heineken and others crest and many other Procter brands, Gillette. I want to understand if I'm one area of the benefit, how did I do in my duration of exposure, my impressions, how qualitatively well did I, but more importantly as well, what did I leave on the table? That if I tweak, I might be able to get a 5X, 10X betterment.

from where I was in year one to year two or year two to year three. It's fascinating, Jim. One just maybe will lead us to find another time down the line. The greatest disruption you see coming.

Jim Andrews (56:54.865)
You

Steve (56:55.298)
with the technologies that we're all floating in, with the technologies that are being promised or forecasted in the very near future, and we'll call that near future five to 10 years. What do you think will be the greatest disruption if you were heading up a brand today and you continue to do so? Where do you think...

some transformational element of this business is going to take place and you better be boned up to take advantage of it.

Jim Andrews (57:26.417)
Gosh, I'm hoping I'm qualified enough to answer that question. I feel like you're probably more than I am. I think, Stephen, it's too easy to say. It's obviously going to be AI related. I think that for me, where we've talked a lot about brands today, but there's so much that should be happening also on the property side, where looking at

Steve (57:52.877)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Andrews (57:55.953)
who our prospective partners are, how can those properties use? Because I don't think they've really even scratched the surface in terms of what can all of these new technologies do for us in terms of helping us not just sell better and prospect better, but build better partnerships together where we're really taking a very proactive role and saying, not just coming in with the standard, the pitch deck, right? And saying, these are the menu of benefits and maybe we're gonna sprinkle in a couple of

Steve (58:03.649)
Not at all.

Jim Andrews (58:25.635)
activation ideas for you based on things that other sponsors have done with us, but coming in and saying, here's a fully designed partnership that we've spent time and invested in because we really believe and we are now using technology to kind of prove to you, prove the case to you that being a partner of us is gonna move the needle.

You know, and again, that may not be so transformative. may not be the there's there's technology today that they could be using in order to do that better. They're just not. So I don't know if that's a perfect answer to your question. But to me, there's such there's there's a gap in. And in many other areas on the property side of really taking advantage of tools like that, of also just being able to.

Steve (59:17.678)
Hmm.

Jim Andrews (59:19.953)
You know, this has been a discussion now for at least 10 years. The data, the wealth of data that these teams and leagues have on their on their fans is so valuable to the partners. And yet it doesn't cross the bridge. It stays within the property and bits and pieces of it get out. But it's like, how can we kind of open that up? And yeah, there's proprietary issues and all that kind of stuff. But I'm paying you millions of dollars.

to access your fans who are my customers. You've got to share the stuff that's really going to allow me to do that because it's going to benefit you in the long run. I'm going to pay you for it. Number one, it's going to help with your fan engagement and help you sell more tickets and merchandise and all of that. And it's going to help me sell more cars or food products, pop tarts, whatever it is. So I think if we can get the.

the sports organizations, the properties and rights holders to really step up in terms of using and again, tools that are already available, let alone what's coming down the road five to 10 years. I think that would really just help take us kind of to the next level in this field.

Steve (01:00:36.596)
You know, I think that's even more salient than anything I could think of for today. I think you nailed it. And you've articulated it in other fora where, you know, if I'm a dealership and I'm Toyota and I have the now you, I'm paying you seven figures to be a part of your world and join your family. And I make up and I help pay your salaries and pay your athletes. And you're withholding from me the fact that there are core members of my target market who live

27 % of them 1.2 miles away from my dealership. And I don't even know that. It is so counterintuitive, and if you'll permit me, it's almost entering the theater of the absurd. Guarding data that those who have paid you for access into your world and you're shielding it from them, it's so counterintuitive because what's the end result?

Jim Andrews (01:01:34.225)
Friday. Yeah.

Steve (01:01:34.539)
All it's going to do is make that sponsor resign with you. And it's going to keep them part of the family because you're going to collaborate on whether it's intercollaboration with co-branded sponsorships with other sponsors, whether because now you recognize that driving folk to my dealership will be great for Amex.

And therefore we can do things together as part of the same brand. And you've educated us why we both think we should do that co-branded promotion. But for you, churn is the greatest bane of your existence. And if you want to lose me, but I know you have captive data, I think it's the greatest. And it's one of the, and I don't want to use such a superlative, but it is truly, in my opinion, quite insulting to a brand that has put forth so much money for so many years.

Jim Andrews (01:02:08.849)
He

Steve (01:02:22.316)
and you have the ability, forget technology. This is just, this is base kind of entry level info that I simply could attempt to do if I wanna canvas everyone entering the stadium, spend a bucket load of cash, do some type of sample size that I think is scientific. Okay, obviously in the day of facial recognition, we could if we get the rights and we get everyone entering the venue recognizes that their facial.

Jim Andrews (01:02:36.753)
Exactly.

Steve (01:02:51.704)
Their face is going to be on television and that's public property. Well, I've got cameras that are now providing to brands the ability to literally spec out every single human being in that venue. can match up with LinkedIn. Every single view, can match, literally get the full canvas on every profile of every person who has a LinkedIn profile or depending on access to other channels of information. But why do all of Why not just hand it over when you have that?

So I think that was a really beautiful, elegant answer. And I thank you for that. Jim, could go on for days with you. What a pleasure. And I hope we will do this again. I'm not saying that as a perfunctory statement. I really hope we'll continue our journey because I know for your world, I understand brand is one spoke on the wheel. You're involved in many areas of the industry and guiding and consulting with companies and.

Jim Andrews (01:03:24.849)
Yeah

Thank you guys.

Jim Andrews (01:03:34.032)
Yeah, no, I loved you.

Steve (01:03:48.876)
team owners and properties.

all aspects of how to just make this what we all want is a worthwhile spend that was optimized, maximized, and effectively measured so that that can be built upon so that everyone, it becomes a win-win and not a zero sum game, which so often it can be. So Jim Andrews, again, AMARC partnership strategies founder and CEO, formerly of many other looking, but primarily actually, IEG, went over with.

Jim Andrews (01:04:08.017)
Absolutely.

Jim Andrews (01:04:18.129)
Pretty much the only one, yeah.

Steve (01:04:20.086)
Yeah, yeah, because I realized you went over with the 12-year acquisition from WPP with Martin Sorrell and our former chairman of sports biz was a guy named Dave Moore who headed up one of Martin's big groups. So at the end of the day, it's so good to have you and we'll continue our journey together.

Jim Andrews (01:04:23.973)
Yeah. yeah.

Jim Andrews (01:04:37.371)
Great, Steve, it was a real pleasure. Enjoy the conversation.

Steve (01:04:40.919)
I'm gonna ask you to hold for one sec. Ryan's gonna pop back in.