As this season's NBA Eastern and Western Conference finals are in full swing, statistics from the well-known sports consulting company IEG show that the NBA regular season sponsorship revenue for the 2020/21 season has reached an unprecedented US$1.46 billion, a year-on-year incr

Sports Big Business Issue 2582, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform

article | Liu Menglong

Sports Big Business reporter

Just as this season NBA the East and West Finals are on fire As the battle rages on, statistics from IEG, a well-known sports consulting company, show that: NBA regular season sponsorship revenue in the 2020/21 season reached an unprecedented US$1.46 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6%. Even compared with the US$1.2 billion in the 2018/19 season before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, it still hit a record high.

According to official NBA data, the total number of live viewers in the NBA playoffs this season has exceeded the 1 million mark. Although this number is good enough compared to the centralized resumption of play in Orlando last season, it is still not comparable to that before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic. But as the saying goes, when the east is not bright, the west is bright. Although the new crown epidemic has significantly reduced the NBA's game day income, the 13 new sponsorship contracts signed during the regular season this season have made the NBA's sponsorship income hit a new high.

Among them, technology companies represented by Microsoft have contributed a lot. It is reported that technology companies provide the NBA with a total annual sponsorship fee of US$115 million, the highest among all industries. In recent years, technology brands have shown an upward trend in sports marketing, making them expected to become a force that cannot be ignored in the field of sports marketing in the future.

Microsoft and Motorola lead US technology companies in sponsoring the NBA

Although affected by the new crown epidemic, the NBA regular season started later than previous seasons this season, and the regular season schedule was also reduced to 72 games, but this did not affect the NBA league and its affiliates Thirty teams generated a new sponsorship revenue of US$1.46 billion in the 2020/21 season.

As a sports consulting company that has long-term tracked the sponsorship expenditures of American professional leagues including the NFL and NBA, IEG is also quite authoritative because its founder is George Pine, the former NASCAR CEO who is widely respected in the industry.

According to IEG research, new league-level sponsorship contracts are the main driver of NBA revenue growth. Since the 2017/18 season, sponsorship spending at the NBA league level has increased by nearly 50%, and the growth rate during the same period is second only to and Major League Soccer (MLS).

Harden wearing a Motorola logo jersey

and technology companies represented by Microsoft have become a force that cannot be ignored. IEG data shows that technology companies will provide approximately US$115 million in sponsorship fees to the NBA every year, the highest among all industries. In addition to the technology industry, other industries with annual sponsorships exceeding US$100 million include lottery, gaming, telecommunications and banking.

In addition to the contributions from sponsors in various industries, from the NBA's own perspective, the introduction of jersey advertising is also one of the important reasons for the surge in sponsorship fees. Since the addition of jersey advertising in the 2016-2017 season, the total sponsorship revenue of the NBA and 30 teams An increase of nearly 70%. For this season alone, the total number of NBA teams with jersey advertisements reaches 27. Among them, Motorola, a global leader in chip manufacturing and electronic communications, is the most willing to spend large amounts of money. It is reported that the company has jersey advertising contracts with the Brooklyn Nets, Milwaukee Bucks and Indiana Pacers.

Motorola sponsors the Brooklyn Nets

Peter Raz, global managing director of IEG, even bluntly stated that some teams with high commercial value can earn more than 15 million US dollars in revenue from jersey advertising every year, which has even exceeded other teams. Arena title sponsorship fee.

Among the major sponsors of the NBA league, brands such as insurance, retail, and alcohol manufacturing are the most active, with each category having more than 70 separate transactions.Among them, companies represented by the well-known American insurance company State Farm (State Farm), the largest American brewer Anheuser-Busch ( Anheuser-Busch ) and the American wireless communication giant Verizon (Verizon) are involved in the most cooperation projects, and they all have At least 20 NBA teams have signed various sponsorship agreements. Last season alone, Verizon announced as many as 12 new NBA partnership agreements.

Verizon sponsors the title of the Phoenix Suns Training Center

Peter Raz said in an interview with CNBC, "Now the NBA's sponsorship revenue is infinitely close to the NFL's peak sponsorship revenue of US$1.62 billion last season. The huge appeal of stars. , the high quality of the game and the value of various potential sponsorship assets will help the NBA league’s sponsorship revenue continue to grow.”

Alipay, TikTok, and vivo represent Chinese technology companies at the European Cup

In recent years, technology companies have accumulated points. The number of cases of joining the field of sports marketing is increasing. On the premise of investing time, money and energy in the sports industry, in exchange for the improvement of brand awareness. Among them, the American technology giant Microsoft mentioned above is the most representative.

In April 2020, Microsoft reached a cooperation agreement with the NBA. Starting from the 2020/21 season, Microsoft will officially become the official artificial intelligence partner of the NBA, WNBA and US National Basketball Team , as well as the official cloud service and laptop partner. In addition, the two parties will work together to create a new groundbreaking D2C platform on Microsoft Azure, using machine learning and artificial intelligence technology to provide a new generation of personalized game broadcasts and other content services, and integrate many NBA products and services.

Before cooperating with the NBA, Microsoft signed a multi-year sponsorship agreement with NFL as early as 2013 at a high price of US$400 million over five years. Then in 2015, he signed a four-year, US$30 million cooperation agreement with La Liga giants Real Madrid. Even after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Microsoft has reached multiple cooperation with ONE Championship and La Liga.

Microsoft Surface becomes NFL tablet computer supplier

Looking at the domestic market, there are only a handful of cases where technology companies have invested in the field of sports marketing. In 2015, domestic e-commerce giant Alibaba actively deployed the sports industry by establishing Ali Sports, sponsoring the FIFA Club World Cup, and investing in the Chinese Super League Guangzhou Evergrande Club.

For the 2018 World Cup in Russia, a technology company called Diandian Yijing VR (Virtual Reality) appeared on the list of sponsors of as many as seven Chinese-funded companies. It ranks among the Asian regional sponsors of the Russian World Cup with a cost of US$20 million (approximately 128 million yuan). But it is regrettable that sponsoring the World Cup did not make the company a household name, and the brand failed to rise.

In the 2020 European Cup, where the fierce competition is currently underway, three Chinese-funded technology companies have also appeared. As an important measure to lay out mobile payment in the European region, Alibaba provides simple, safe and fast online payment solutions for this European Cup e-commerce through its Alipay, Ant Chain, Wanlihui and other products. According to the agreement, Alipay’s cooperation with UEFA will continue until 2022.

As a popular star product of the artificial intelligence technology giant ByteDance , the Douyin short video international version of TikTok has amazed the world since its launch in 2017. As of 2020, TikTok has exceeded 1 billion users worldwide, covering more than 150 countries and regions, and is the most downloaded App in the world. It is worth mentioning that the cooperation with UEFA is also TikTok’s first foray into the field of football marketing.(Extended reading: Sponsoring the European Cup, UFC, TikTok adding sports after the ban is lifted)

As a global giant in the field of smartphones, vivo, in line with its positioning as a "technology company with smart terminals and smart services as its core", announced that it will cooperate with UEFA in Cooperate in the 2020 and 2024 European Cups. It is also worth mentioning that vivo will become the first sponsor of the opening and closing ceremonies of the European Cup in its 61-year history.

On June 29, according to data from the Alibaba auction website, Zhejiang Dongyang Dongke Digital Technology Co., Ltd. won 218 million shares of Zhejiang Guangsha for about 548 million yuan, with a premium rate of 6.2%. After the auction is completed, the largest shareholder and actual controller of the CBA team Zhejiang Guangsha Holdings will also change.

In the post-epidemic era, the original sponsorship pattern in the sports marketing market will inevitably be reshuffled. According to current trends, technology companies will become a new force that cannot be underestimated in the field of sports marketing. Chinese-funded technology companies are actively participating in this, which will become a phenomenon that people like to see.

Note: The pictures used in this article come from the Internet