Helping brands to partner with athletes in their influencer marketing and sponsorship marketing campaigns

We have a multinational and multicultural team here at OpenSponsorship, where different perspectives combine to share the same vision, and different skills combine to create the most efficient, effective and hassle free sports marketing platform. But what exactly could this magnificent, multitalented mix bring to a U.S. based company with a focus on international business?

A LOT!

Cultural differences and market knowledge

Sport is a global industry; millions of people from every corner of the globe either spectate or participate in some way. That being said, not all sports translate overseas with quite the same level of success and popularity: every country has its “predilection” sport. For instance, the U.S. has American Football. Brazil and England have soccer. New Zealand; Rugby. France and China; Basketball. The list goes on-and-on.

Just like having their “own” sport, every country has different commonly-accepted ways of interacting with each other: different customs, different ways of conducting business, different cultures and different points of view.

Simply put, people from different countries are subject to like and accept completely different things.

Companies with international experience are able to keep the impact of these differences superficial by adapting to - and embracing - these cultural differences in their strategy. This often leads to success in that specific market.

Handshake and bow: Barrack Obama and Japan's emperor Akihito

Some things, however, are just universally accepted and welcomed. Sport is one of those things. No matter which continent your feet may fall on, you’ll be able to see people playing sports. That being said, the type of sport is certainly going to be different depending on where you are and who you see, but the point is that sports bring us together. Unless we're supporting opposing sides of course!

International experiences

In a truly global industry like sports, first-hand international experience can be very valuable. In fact, as the world wide web connected continents together to form the global marketplace we live in today, there are few industries that wouldn't benefit from the experience and expertise of an eclectic mix of nationalities.

Obviously, for a company with a mission as ambitious as ours, having this kind of experience helps to develop our platform and reach out to athletes and brands abroad.

Common knowledge about a country is crucial to understand the market, its business habits and the most effective modes of communicating. It is critical to adapt to and appreciate these three aforementioned factors when doing sales.

Shibuya station rooftop soccer field

Global companies and cultural differences

Global brands have very specific product ranges for each country - tailoring their offerings in accordance with native market tastes - to help them cut their operating costs and better manage their product surplus levels. This helps to drive down expenses, by limiting the number of total potential sales. However the company might also be slashing away at their chances of growth. For that they need to fully understand the market.

Another obvious observation would be that a lot of people around the world are not able to buy the products they want from their favourite brands. Simply because those specific products are not available for purchase in their country. As a result, those customers will simply seek a substitute and make-do should they not accept paying extortionate shipping costs.

Global brands could surely afford to drip some extra gear into new markets for testing through their well-oiled logistic machines. But they often neglect small opportunities because they assume there is too much risk - and not enough payoff - involved. Some companies, however, have thrown caution to the wind and started sowing their seeds further afield in order to meet the demand, regardless of its size.

For instance, Nike recently began testing the demand for American Football in Europe by offering American Football fan products on Nike.com, with more and more products seeming to appear as time goes by.

Randall's Island Park

Global companies like Nike - with their vast financial resources and strong reputation - have the luxury of being able to take advantage of opportunities as soon as they emerge. But what about smaller companies with stringent budgets?

More about OpenSponsorship's mission

At OpenSponsorship we connect athletes and brands from all over the world on one unique platform to make sports marketing easy, effective and affordable for everyone. Think Match.com for sports marketing (without the creepy messages!).

We strive to get as many brands, teams and athletes to join our platform as possible, with the ultimate aim of creating a truly global and interactive marketplace where athletes can connect with companies that fit and vice versa.

It's an ambitious mission, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If you're a company looking to build your brand, Opensponsorship can help! With 2,000+ athletes available on our site, ranging from local hotshots to global superstars such as Russell Westbrook, you could give people around the world a good glimpse of what you do.

Sports marketing has evolved to a whole new level, where intimate details of athlete's lives, feelings, and opinions are easily shared with the whole world. Especially through social media. This has become a great way for athletes to endorse products and expose companies to their thousands of engaged and interested followers. 

Whether your agency represents a Silicon Valley startup or a new or established brand, you are faced with an age-old problem: how do you market a brand?

Even more difficult, how do you so creatively, affordably, and effectively ? Most agencies, both B2B and B2C, follow five steps:

1. Branding (messaging, logos)
2. PR (blogging, events)
3. Social Media (content, contests)
4. Interactive (web, SEO, apps)
5. Media (broadcasts, online displays).

Built on years of practice, these methods are important for establishing any brand. However, a new avenue has taken hold of the industry, becoming essential for brands both large and small: influencer marketing.

Appointing a brand ambassador, tapping a social influencer, or securing a celebrity endorsement earns your brand a stamp of approval from a voice your consumers trust and admire. When a brand puts a celebrity behind its product, they average 3x the ROI than without (Click to Tweet). 

That said, brands that are not Fortune 500 companies tend to steer clear of these type of endorsements. We often hear, “It’s too risky,” “We can’t justify the cost,” or “We’re just not ready.”

This is what OpenSponsorship—a marketplace for sports sponsorship—was built to solve. We work directly with agencies of all sizes to procure talent for their brands that suits their needs, their scale, and their budget. 

We make it fast.

We’re not talking about a multi-year contract that takes weeks of negotiation and piles of legal paperwork to finalize. Agencies send us RFPs for all types of brands with as little as a 24-hour turn-around. Imagine that.

We make it targeted. 

Our proprietary in-house tools allow us to sort and identify the optimal talent for your brand based on sport, gender, location, interest, fan analytics, ranking, keywords, and more. Using strategic and tactical data, we pair your brands with the right professional athlete. It’s not a shot in the dark, but an alignment that’s optimized to win.

We make it integrated. 

OpenSponsorship’s comprehensive tools can be used as a package to make a full-service system for sourcing, managing, and tracking sponsorship from start to finish. Or each tool can be utilized in isolation to improve the performance of a single aspect of the sponsorship process.