article | Tan Liwen
Following Amazon (Amazon) and Apple (Apple ), another major technology giant Google (Google ) is also increasing its investment in sports.
According to overseas media The Athletic, Google is negotiating with Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur on the naming rights of its new stadium. It is reported that Tottenham hopes to obtain a huge contract of 25 million pounds (about 199 million yuan) per year, with a total value of about 375 million pounds. According to The Athletic, negotiations between the two sides are currently going well. Another meaning of "the negotiations went smoothly" is that this contract of about £25 million per year is not much different from Google's psychological expectations. Perhaps there is no need to wait too long, the name of "Google Stadium" will replace Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and become a new landscape in North London.
Coincidentally, when the technology giant Google negotiated with Tottenham, it revealed that Amazon was interested in competing for the new cycle of NBA copyright. In addition, Apple previously named the NFL Super Bowl midfield show, the situation of "three-legged" is quite prototype.
Google increases sports sponsorship spending
According to the information of the sports business, Google has recently been increasing its investment in sports marketing and has successively launched or deepened cooperation with FIBA , MLB and McLaren F1 teams.
In March 2022, McLaren announced a years-long partnership with tech giant Google. In this collaboration, Google will work with McLaren’s Formula One team and its gear in the off-road electric SUV series Extreme E. Android and Google Chrome brands will appear on the hood and wheel covers of MCL36 F1 Racing , as well as the helmets and racing suits of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricardo .
In September 2022, Google became the first global partner of women's basketball in the history of FIBA, and also became the global partner of Women's Basketball World Cup . Through the collaboration between FIBA, Google and ESPN, the six games of this Women's Basketball World Cup were exclusively broadcasted in the United States through ESPN2 and ESPNU, becoming the most live-streamed women's basketball World Cup games in the United States in history.
Recently, Google Cloud, a cloud service under Google, renewed its contract with MLB and expanded its strategic partnership to continue to innovate MLB's media products and user experience. Among them, MLB will choose Google Cloud as its strategic cloud provider on MLB.TV and other media platforms to accelerate its global content distribution efforts, which will help provide a more real-time and personalized experience for baseball fans around the world. A series of actions of
show that Google is continuing to increase investment in sports marketing. Compared to being named to Tottenham at home, Google has previously reached a strategic cooperation in . can be regarded as a common sports marketing method for resource replacement. Google mainly provides its advanced technology.
There is no doubt that Tottenham’s home naming rights are not simply a resource replacement that can promote cooperation. Looking at the global sports industry, most of the stadium naming contracts are real "cash transactions". For example, Emirates Airlines' 100 million pounds in 2015, and Crypto.com replaced Staples as the new title provider for the Lakers home court. Therefore, Google's spending a lot of money to win the naming rights can also be regarded as its biggest move in the field of sports marketing so far.
Amazon is interested in competing for NBA broadcasting rights
Google is not the only one who intends to increase investment in the sports field. On October 10, local time, according to frontofficesports, Amazon is interested in competing for a new round of NBA copyrights. If technology giant Amazon enters strongly, the NBA's next copyright contract is expected to exceed $100 billion.
At present, Amazon already has the copyright of NFL.In March 2021, the NFL signed new broadcast contracts with Amazon, CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox and NBC, covering the 2023-2033 seasons. According to multiple US media reports, the total amount of this new broadcast contract in the NFL reached US$113 billion.
After winning the NFL broadcast rights, Amazon monopolized the game on Thursday, paying the NFL about $1 billion a year. Starting from September 15, 2022, NFL fans who want to enjoy the game on Thursday must log in to Amazon's Prime Video streaming service to watch the live broadcast through "Thursday Football Night".
This is the first time that the streaming service has obtained exclusive season live rights for the NFL game. According to Nelson data, about 13 million people watched the first regular season game of "Thursday Rugby Night". The cooperation case between
and the NFL has also become an important bargaining weight in negotiations between Amazon and the NBA. As we all know, streaming is one of the mainstream ways to watch sports events at present. The current NBA streaming service is mainly NBA's League Pass.
But the NBA's own streaming service is still pale in comparison with Amazon's own Prime Video streaming service. Therefore, cooperating with streaming giants to expand the influence of the event and viewing data has become an important consideration for the NBA's next broadcast contract.
For Amazon, the platform needs more high-quality events to enrich its own streaming content matrix. In addition to the NFL, the NBA is obviously the most suitable event at the moment. If Amazon and the NBA successfully join hands, it may follow the NFL's "Thursday Football Night", which will create an exclusive broadcast channel for streaming platforms to increase copyright revenue in the new cycle.
NBA's current broadcast rights contract with ESPN/ABC and TNT will expire in 2024. The NBA hopes that the new contract can greatly increase the amount. Currently, the NBA's 9-year broadcast contract is worth US$24 billion, but the NBA hopes that the total value of the future contract will reach US$50-75 billion. If Amazon joins, the NBA hopes to receive a broadcast contract of 100 billion yuan.
NBA President Xiao Hua has been looking for ways to attract new partners and young fans' attention. Given the size of the global NBA market today, Amazon may be one of the most suitable new partners for the NBA.
Apple is not willing to lag behind
As the company with the highest market value in the world, Apple is not willing to lag behind in the face of Google and Amazon's continuous investment in the sports field.
Recently, the latest news about Apple's move in sports is undoubtedly to replace Pepsi as the new NFL Super Bowl midfield show sponsor. On September 23, the NFL officially announced a years-long partnership with Apple's Apple Music, which will provide a $50 million annual fee for the Super Bowl midfield show.
Shortly after the official announcement of this news, the well-known American music star Rihanna "promoted himself" on social media and became a guest in the 2023 Super Bowl midfield show. This will also be Rihanna's first live performance in five years.
In addition to naming the Super Bowl midfield show, Apple has also dabbled in the live event. At Apple's launch conference in March this year, Apple announced a partnership with MLB, so that fans can watch two MLB events through the Apple TV+ streaming service during the regular season. As part of the collaboration, Apple and MLB will also provide fans with enhanced versions of league and team coverage.
In addition, the copyright of MLS is also acquired by Apple. In June this year, Apple reached a 10-year long-term cooperation with MLS, and will exclusively broadcast MLS competitions worldwide starting from 2023. According to overseas media reports, the total value of the 10-year contract reached US$2.5 billion.
Entering 2022, Apple has increased its investment in the field of sports resources, not only spending a lot of money to win the title of the Super Bowl midfield show, but also reached broadcast cooperation with MLB and MLS, making efforts in both sports marketing and sports content, which not only gained massive exposure but also enriched the content matrix.
Apple, Google, and Amazon?
Overall, Apple, Google and Amazon are all increasing their investment in the sports field, and there is a vague situation where technology giants are in a three-legged state. In the view of the sports business, technology giants represented by Apple, Google and Amazon frequently take action against sports, on the one hand, based on their strong corporate strength, as the saying goes, "wealthy and willful."
Apple, Google and Amazon are all veritable Silicon Valley giants, and the financial reports of each company highlight their excellent profitability.
According to Apple's fiscal 2022 Q3 financial report, Apple's net profit was US$19.442 billion, and cash flow was nearly US$23 billion; Google's parent company Alphabet showed that the company's net profit in the second quarter was US$16.002 billion, and its net cash was US$19.422 billion; Amazon's operating cash flow in Q2 2022 Q2 was US$35.6 billion.
A series of numbers reflect the excellent money-making ability of the "three giants in technology". As we all know, sponsorship seats for top sports events are very expensive, and perhaps not all companies can easily afford sponsorship fees. But for Apple, Google and Amazon, this sponsorship fee is just a piece of cake, which explains why Apple can pay $50 million a year to sponsor the NFL Super Bowl midfield show.
This does not count the broadcast rights that require more money to purchase. As mentioned above, Amazon paid $1 billion to the NFL every year and Apple and MLS reached a 10-year broadcast contract of $2.5 billion. These require the copyright buyer to have sufficient profitability to maintain such a large investment every year.
Not only that, Apple, which has huge cash flow, is also "buy, buy, buy". It is reported that Apple plans to spend billions of dollars to purchase sports copyrights in the next four years to fill in sports content in the Apple ecosystem. Thanks to the company's own strong profitability, technology giants have recently become the protagonists of sports sponsorship and broadcast copyright news.
On the other hand, technology giants also need to use sports to provide impetus for corporate development. According to previous marketing thinking, the most technological innovation project in sports should be F1. For the audience, it is easy to have strong connections between technology brands and hardcore movements. For example, Amazon AWS cloud service has been one of F1's official cloud services since 2018.
But with the development of the times, the technological giants are not only trying to demonstrate the strength of science and technology, but also using sports as a new driving force for corporate growth, to meet the needs of users, tell corporate stories and even shape the brand image through sports.
Therefore, in recent years, we can see more and more technology brands sponsor different types of events and teams, changing the "hard core" brand image in the minds of users in the past. As an important part of daily life scenarios, sports have long been integrated into every household.
By cooperating with major competitions and clubs, technology giants can quickly cultivate cognitive inertia among their audiences. Technology giants want to use sports as a carrier to tell more stories to different audiences, thus providing more motivation for corporate development.
Another important reason is that sports are also an important driving force for sustainable development. Sustainable development is a consensus of the times, and technology companies need sports to endorse their corporate development . With the help of technological innovation, technology companies can demonstrate their social responsibilities to a certain extent in the process of sports marketing and achieve an improvement in reputation and popularity.
Note: The pictures used in this article are from the Internet
