The Inches: A Podcast About Sports Sponsorship

The episode contains several actionable insights about sponsorship timing (fiscal year cycles, deadline creation, sales cycle duration, expectation management, relationship building), but these are distributed across 37 minutes with considerable conversational padding, repetition, and throat-clearing. The core ideas - understand buyer budget cycles, don't quit early on deals, create deadlines to force decisions, manage partner expectations on activation timelines, prioritize existing partners - are valuable but not particularly novel or dense per minute.

“understand your, the people who you're selling to, what are their budgets and, or what are their budget seasons and cycles and when do they make those decisions so that you can get in front of them earlier rather than later”

“companies buy when their timing is right. When budgets either become open or are about to close”

The episode applies the well-worn concept of 'timing is everything' to sponsorship sales without much fresh perspective. The frameworks discussed - understanding budget cycles, creating deadlines, managing expectations, prioritizing existing customers over new ones - are standard sales advice recycled for the sponsorship context. The specific anecdote about the June 30th fiscal year deadline is concrete but illustrative rather than revelatory.

“companies buy when the timing is right, not necessarily when our timing is right”

“anybody can sell something to somebody once. It's when you sell it to them the second time and you get that renewal that you know that you've really done your job”

Rich Franklin is the VP of Corporate Partnerships for Oakview Group managing multiple sports properties (Acrisure Arena, Coachella Valley Firebirds, Lakers), making him a genuine operator with real sponsorship responsibility at scale. Nick Lawson is a founder of Squad running an actual activation business. Both have skin in the game and speak from direct experience, not theory. However, neither is a marquee name or exceptional seniority that would elevate the episode significantly.

“Rich Franklin, the VP of corporate partnerships for the Oakview Group, Acrisure Arena, Coachella Valley Firebirds, and Coachella Valley Lakers”

“Nick Lawson, co founder of a company called Squad. We're helping sports teams and events connect fans to sponsors digitally through digital activations”

The episode relies heavily on generalized advice with limited concrete data or named examples. Rich's anecdote about the June 30th fiscal year deadline and the QR code execution miss are specific, but most claims lack numbers, timelines, or dollar figures. The mention of '99% of colleges' having July 1 budget resets is unsourced; the '3 months average' for campaign effectiveness is anecdotal from Squad. No named brand examples, metrics, or case studies are provided to ground claims.

“On the flip side of that, you do have to, to your point, you have to create urgency. You know, it's, it's, you could have the best campaign in the world, but if you're not creating that urgency to have that pull factor to pull them in. A lot of times we do this with pricing”

“from our standpoint, it's an average of three months before a campaign really, really takes hold and really starts driving numbers, uh, is what we've seen”

The hosts ask reasonable follow-up questions and build on each other's points naturally, but there is minimal pushback, challenge, or genuine disagreement. The conversation stays in comfortable agreement territory throughout. Questions are mostly open-ended invitations for the guest to expand rather than sharp probes. Nick occasionally adds context from his experience at Squad, but neither host tests assumptions or asks difficult 'why' questions that might deepen the analysis.

“So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Rich, but kind of to get this started, is crucial for you to understand your, the people who you're selling to”

“I can't tell you how much a QR code, not going onto a scoreboard when there was an expectation of it and then not really having a make good for it has eroded the brand's trust”