Rookie & The Vet: Less is More in Sponsorships

Rich Franklin: Foreign m.

Nick Lawson: Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Inches Podcast, a podcast that looks at sports sponsorship, events, sponsorship and how digital is affecting the industry. I'm your co host, Nick Lawson, co founder of a company called Squad. We're helping sports teams and events connect fans to sponsors digitally through digital activations. As always with me here, Rich Franklin, the VP of corporate partnerships for the Oakview Group, Acusha Arena, AHL Coachella Valley Firebirds, and the NBA G League, Coachella Valley Lakers. Um, Rich, today's episode is a great one. I, I feel like I've been saying this last couple episodes, we're not quite to episode 300 on the inches, but we're up there on the two hundreds. Um, and it's getting to the place where I can't guarantee that we've never covered this subject, but I think it's an important one. It's one of those, like, evergreen ones within partnerships. It's one that I see sometimes a lot of properties getting wrong, uh, when they think about, uh, selling their partnership. So today's episode is the less is more episode within sponsorship. So I guess I'll kick it right over to you to get started. When you, when you think about less is more in partnerships, what does that kind of mean for you as you're selling, as you're activating for uh, your inventory? What, what, how does that kind of stand out for you when you think about it in a partnership perspective?

Rich Franklin: Sure. Well, I, I think one of the common mistakes that we make in, in sports and event sponsorship sales is assuming that having more inventory available to sell automatically creates more, more revenue commensurate with the number of opportunities that you have. So when you, when you look at this, it sort of seems logical at first glance because if you have more signs, more digital impressions, more sponsored features, more social posts, more, more, more that should equal more money. But the reality is that I think a lot of organizations will end up creating the, the sponsorship equivalent of inflation. And not to get too economics on you here, but basically what happens is the more inventory you create, the less valuable each asset becomes. So I think that it's something that, that you need to take a look at. I know we're taking a look at this right now because we're rolling out this new, um, this new inventory and this new sponsorship opportunity with the Coachella Valley Lakers, NBA, uh, G League team. Um, we are definitely taking a less is more approach to this. Sometimes that does create some hard discussions, some hard, um, I don't want to say draw a line in the sand. But, you know, we're definitely taking an approach of fewer assets at higher value will get us to where we want and need to be. So I think it's something that, you know, if you've been in this business for, for any amount of time, you know, you recognize this situation where by adding more and more assets, are you devaluating the decreasing the value, uh, of every asset that you have available.

Nick Lawson: And I think we, I mean, we have, this is, has happened in sports, I mean, since the 80s, 90s, right when our stadium started becoming. Every wall is a canvas or an opportunity to put something on for a sponsorship to sell. Or let's add this, you know, this extra scoreboard piece here, or let's add these ribbon boards. I think we have gone through this in sports to where we've added so much inventory, uh, to that. I think the awesome thing is as you're starting a new team, uh, and selling sponsorship for a new team, Rich, you have the ability to think through, you know, hey, can we actually take a less is more approach? So I have kind of two questions for you. The first one is if you're a team that has a lot of inventory, how do you go about the process of kind of implementing that less is more approach? Uh, when you just have so much stuff in your, in your stadium to go sell?

Rich Franklin: I, I think the first thing that you, that you have to remind yourself and then, and then there's a practical approach to how you do this. But I think the first thing that you have to remind yourself is that sponsors don't buy inventory, they buy outcomes.

Nick Lawson: Yep.

Rich Franklin: And so I think the first thing that you need to do is remind yourself that while all the impressions are great and the multiple signage locations are wonderful, at the end of the day, nobody wakes up wanting, uh, 12 rotations on your, uh, LED ribbon board, two, uh, social media posts and, and three commercials in your, in your streaming game. They want brand awareness, they want leads, they want to acquire customers, they want to engage with, um, employees. They want community goodwill. There's all these different things is what they actually want. So I think that when we are talking to our partners, we gotta first remember what it is that they really want. I, I think that it's a twofold thing. Number one, it's, it's remembering what it is that sponsors are really buying. And remember, resisting the urge to solve your more revenue inventory solely through the more adding more inventory solution.

Nick Lawson: Yeah, I'm thinking back to when I sold sponsorship for minor league baseball. There was. They extended the Signage in the, in the left field. And I, I clearly remember, you know, we tried to sell it to sponsors and sponsors wouldn't want to buy it because it wasn't kind of like center field. So, so they felt like it was out of the way. But also I had a sales manager that gave a mandate, we have to go sell this because we built it. Right. Uh, but it didn't fit the brand's goal. Right. The brand wanted to be visible and obviously the only time you would actually be able to see it is very specific places within the stadium or if somebody fouled it off left, right, then you'd be able to see that. So is that place of. I totally agree with you. Think about what is the sponsors goal and does this inventory fit it? I guess then let's say we do have an overly, you know, we have too many assets right now as a team. Do we start like consolidating assets? Do we start cutting certain assets to kind of bring that down or. Well, like what's the, what's the process for saying hey, we're already, I mean we already have so many. Right. How do we then kind of categorize or bring down those products that we're selling so that they make more sense?

Rich Franklin: Well, I think it's a twofold. I think it's number one. Are we, are we needing to reduce the amount of stuff that's out there? Because, and we'll talk about that in just a second why you want to do that. But the second thing is, are we getting really truly the value of, of these premier inventory? Uh, premier items of inventory. Um, so let me talk to the first thing part of it first. You know, it used to be. Well, let's forget about what it used to be. Let's talk about what it is now. Okay. Today a lot of times you'll walk into a game, into an arena and everything, and I'm not talking just about the walls, everything is sponsored. Uh, the starting lineup I'm going to go through, you know, like for uh, for a hockey game. Uh, uh, the starting lineup is sponsored. The power play is sponsored. The penalty kill is sponsored. The goal celebration is sponsored. Uh, the T shirt toss is sponsored. The dance cam, the kiss cam. Those both sponsored. The instant replay is sponsored. Uh, the, the uh, post game traffic update is sponsored. The weather report, uh, is sponsored. The team app is sponsored. The wi fi is sponsored. And the parking is sponsored. And those are just off the top of my head.

Nick Lawson: Yep.

Rich Franklin: Uh, at some point you've got so much clutter going on that fans are going to stop noticing. It's like I'm just getting overwhelmed here with, with, with um, all the different sponsorship elements that are, that are going on and the sponsor messaging becomes background noise. So the irony here is that a lot of times by having all these additional assets, your sponsors are paying more but actually receiving less attention. And if I'm a sponsor, I mean, I don't want to be 1 of 50 or 1 of 75. I would rather pay a premium to be one of a few where I'm really going to get noticed. So that's the, that's kind of the first half of. And, and by the way, we'll, we'll talk about this more in a minute. Um, and, and you know, I know that digital is your world. Digital inventory has made this situation frankly even worse in some cases because you, you went to a, basically a situation with digital where you have unlimited inventory. Uh, you can do an infinite number of social posts, emails, ads on the app, ah, you know, digital signs or whatever. Um, so I think that that part of it is, as I say, looking at this from a inventory clutter, uh, side and then picking out the pieces of inventory that are really the best elements and saying, are we really getting top dollar for these very, very high, um, scarce items that we have available? So for example, uh, if you've got a premium club, uh, there's, there's one sponsor per club for your naming rights, there's one partner for jersey patches, there's one partner founding partnerships, maybe three or four, um, you know, signature features. The, the, the reason why assets like these command premium prices is because they are scarce. There is one, maybe two available at most. But you know, you gotta, you gotta find that balance between having enough inventory without having too much inventory. And then the flip side of that on the revenue side is are we pricing our premium inventory like premium inventory? And so it's kind of finding that, that, that, that yin and yang, that sweet spot. But I think overall you're better off having fewer items, fewer assets and pricing them uh, strongly than having dozens, hundreds of items and giving them away for cheap.

Nick Lawson: And I think, you know, one piece you brought up is you just named off all of those items that we sell, which are also all of the touch points that fancy and you know, Mr. Beast calls it the purple cow within YouTube of, hey, if you saw a thousand cows, you'd probably all think they would look the same, but if you saw a purple one, it would stand out and you'd immediately, you know, remember the Purple Cow. I think intentionality is really important there too. And we have a lot of conversations with this on, uh, with brands we work with, of, hey, you don't have to sponsor everything. If you do sponsor one thing, make sure that you are front and center intentional about what you're doing. Make sure that the fans going to remember. And you know, I bring that up because one of the best game recap sponsorships I have ever seen came from a minor league. And I, I want to say what's rich? What's the league underneath? Whl?

Rich Franklin: Um, uh, well, you've got like your bchl. Yeah, Tier one. Your Alberta Junior Hockey League.

Nick Lawson: Yeah, it was one of, it was one of those leagues. And I, uh, forget how it popped up on my Twitter, but what they did was the game recap was sponsor was a local bar and instead of just putting their bar logo in the corner, they apparently have this chalkboard, um, there that's like famous. If you go in, it's where usually the drinks are written. And what they did was, is the team reached out to the bar and told them the end score and then the bar would go, write up the score on this chalkboard, take a picture and then send it back to the team. And that's what the team posted. That is a piece of inventory that's going to stand out rather than just doing a different logo in the corner, you know, every single game because it's going to stand out. It's unique to the bar. It's very intentional about what it's doing. Um, the messaging was like, hey, come see this, come see the chalkboard and buy, you know, you get a, buy one, get one free beverage. All that intentionality is so key within that, um, piece to it of, you know, the less is more is also if you are going to own something, make sure your, your brand is actually owning it and not just being that logo up there. Um, and if you do reduce things, it's not just necessarily reducing the amount of stuff you're selling, but really focusing on the ones that you're going to be really, really intentional with the brand to say we're going to do a game recap because it makes total sense toward this brand. Otherwise, you know, why should I, why should I just put another logo? Because, um, I think the average NBA team has 90 brand partners. And how can we as a fan decide who to listen to if we are just bombarded with advertising on that?

Rich Franklin: Yeah, um, I, I think part of it too, Nick, is, is. And I kind of touched on this a minute ago is when you understand what sponsors really want. And, and a lot of times it's like you got to just sit down and ask them. Um, they want successful outcomes, they want hospitality, they want community involvement, they want to feel special. Uh, and noticed they don't want an extra 30 seconds of rotation on the LED. Okay. Again, they're looking for outcomes. And so if you approach your sponsor relationships, instead of asking what inventory can we sell but rather asking what outcomes are we looking to create? It will help you, I think, winnow down some of those cluttering assets that you have. Because, you know, if, if that list that I just read through, if that's what you're trying to, to deliver for your partner, you're going to be better off putting a package together that, yeah, it includes some, some signage, but it also includes, you know, a, ah, VIP experience, some exclusive content, maybe a community activation and some sort of employee engagement. That's going to be a much more effective and valuable package for that sponsor than a package that has four social media posts, 20 LED rotations and two sponsored emails. You know, I mean, it's, it's again, putting the result first, Asking your partner, what does success look like? Knowing what the desired outcome is and then working it backwards. And I think when you do it that way, you'll see that a lot of the stuff that you've included in the packages and sometimes, you know, it's, it's, it's the equivalent of like spring cleaning. You know, everybody here, here's a great example that I've got a laugh and I don't think my wife listens to this podcast, but, uh, so I'm not, I'm not in trouble here yet, but let's find out. I think just about everybody has that drawer and that drawer. You know what I'm talking about? The junk drawer.

Nick Lawson: Yep.

Rich Franklin: It's like the drawer that's got the scissors and the scotch tape and the different sized little round, uh, batteries, plus the double A's, plus the AAA's, plus like some string or a ribbon that came off of a, uh, you know, uh, a gift that you got. It's like, oh, I want to hang on to that. Uh, a couple of notepads, a bunch of pens, some promotional sunglasses. Can you sense where I'm going with this, Nick? I am, I am mentally going through my junk drawer in my kitchen. Okay. Every now and again you got to say to yourself, why do I have all this crap? Yep. Is it because I actually want it and need it or is it because it's just sort of accumulated. So I go through it and, like, I think the last time I did this was maybe a couple of months ago, something like that. I threw out, like, uh, I think two or three junky little promo tchotchkes that. That, you know, I had. I, you know, I. I took the golf tees out of there that, you know, had been in my pocket, and I didn't just throw them in there, and I actually put them, you know, in my golf cart. You know, I. I took, uh, all the. The loose batteries that. I have no idea if these will work or not, but I at least consolidated them into one spot, you know, put them in a. In a.

Nick Lawson: And.

Rich Franklin: And everything so they're not all rattling around in there. So I think what you got to do is take a look at your inventory. Like, you take a look at the junk drawer, ah, in your kitchen or wherever it is that you have that, and say, how much of this is really useful and how much of this is just crap that's accumulated that I need to get rid of?

Nick Lawson: And that's on the inventory side. I'm intrigued on the other side of this, because this kind of comes back to what you're doing with your Coachella, uh, Valley Lakers of. In what you alluded to kind of in the first part of this, which is being very thoughtful about how many partners. Because, again, as I mentioned, you know, average NBA team has 90, 90, uh, brand sponsors. How do you go about, as a team, auditing and looking at. If you have too many brand sponsors, um, and potentially going through and as you kind of just mentioned, tossing out. Right, Tossing some stuff out of your. Out of your sponsorship drawer to say, hey, look, this is. This partnership, you know, doesn't make a ton of sense, not only for the value that we're potentially creating for them, but also maybe for our game day. I mean, well, this. This seems like. I mean, the. The less is more is. Is kind of the goal, but it seems like, hey, we're taking away inventory and. And now potentially taking away, you know, brand partners. Obviously, at the end, I think there's this piece of like, hey, here's how you actually get more from the current partners that you have because you are more intentional. But with that being said, how does a team go about going through and saying, hey, look, we have 45 brand partners. And I, you know, I. I feel like it's a little bit too much to actually get the results that we need for our. For our partners.

Rich Franklin: Nick, sometimes that involves making some really really tough decisions. And sometimes that involves, um, taking a hard look at your partner roster and saying, is the juice worth the squeeze? Um, you know, I think every team, every salesperson, every event, whatever, every league, whatever, everybody, if you sat right down and took a look at your roster of partners, there's a few that you'd like to fire, quite honestly. Um, and, and you know, that's, that's maybe a bit of a oversimplification and a little bit of a brutal way of putting it, but the reality is that just like the junk in your junk drawer, there are some partners that you've had over the years that maybe they're like legacy partners, they've been there forever, um, that at some point you got to say, is this person sitting on a piece of inventory, that they've had it at this same rate for the last five years in a row? And I know that I can get double that from somebody else or, or triple that. It's a hard thing to do. I mean, it's, it's part of really sitting down and evaluating your partners and your partnerships and the assets that they have and say, uh, you know, do we have too much junk here? And, and I'm not saying, you know, be just brutally, you know, that's it, you're gone, you're out. But I think everybody, if you were given the opportunity to let a couple of these partners go, would, would strongly consider it, you know, and just as I say, think, think of it from the standpoint of are they getting the value? Are we getting the value? Is this really a good fit? Um, or is this a situation where maybe they're not happy with you, you're not happy with them, and, and somebody just needs to be the first to initiate the breakup. So it's, it's a hard conversation to have again because, you know, in, in some cases you're talking about long time, long term partnerships. But I think that you, it's something that you need to do is, is to take a hard look at it. When do you do that? Uh, well, sometimes, you know, uh, you just have to do it as part of a, a regular purging of your, of your, um, of your, uh, accounts. Um, you know, sometimes you need to, you know, sometimes you got a new, some new leadership coming in or new ownership, and maybe that's the time that you do it. Um, and don't get me wrong, I mean, you never ever want to just say out and out, you know what? You're not worth it anymore. Goodbye. I mean, at least I Can't do that. I'm. I'm not that kind of person. You know, believe it or not, I. I actually had a conversation with. With a co worker, and we were talking about a particular partner, um, and that's actually a partner prospect. It's not. They're not even a partner, but they're. They haven't even signed the deal yet. They're already a pain in the ass. And it's like we're kind of looking at each other going, now, before we signed this thing, are we really sure? Do we really want to do this? And, you know, we're. We're still kind of working that out. Uh, but anyway, so when do you do it? I think you always kind of have to be in that analysis mode where you're saying, whether it's an asset or a partner, am I getting the most out of it? Is the juice worth the squeeze? You know, uh, and just sort of be on a. On an ongoing basis. But as I said, I think it's something that we all have to do at some point, uh, in our existence, whether it's on an annual or biannual or whatever it is, off season, however it is that you want to do it.

Nick Lawson: And, I mean, I'm getting some deja vu here toward the pandemic, because one thing that you and I talked about a lot during the pandemic, when we talked about, hey, how do we get these partners back? Um, there were some brands that used the pandemic to get out of partnerships that they no longer wanted to be in. Right. And obviously not the same scenario and, you know, for the majority of it. But I would imagine if you went to a brand partner who obviously, you know, it was a struggle, you didn't really feel like they. They felt like they were getting what they needed from the partnership. If you open that conversation, I would bet that there's just a certain percentage who are kind of looking for the way out of it. Right. Um, now, I got to imagine you also have to look at your books and your revenue to make sure that, you know, a third of your revenue is not walking out the door with that without actually really analyzing and saying, hey, this partner is a really big problem for us internally, but can we. Can we shift this into something to get them to buy more, uh, and to be able to fit their needs more? But, yeah, it's. It's one of those things to where I would imagine if you looked through your partners, you would understand that you probably spend a lot of time with partners that maybe aren't spending a lot. And, uh, that's where the conversation where, well, you sit down and you say, hey is, you know, I want to have a conversation with you as our partner. Do you feel like you're getting what you need? Awesome. Let's bluntly have this conversation. Do you think we should keep doing this? Right. I don't want to be the line item on your ad expense, um, for something that you don't really feel like is beneficial. Now, again, that conversation probably goes one of two ways. One way is. No, no, no. I think we're almost there. We just need to make one tweak. Okay, great. Will that increase spend? Yeah, we would be interested in increasing spending. Uh, awesome. The other way is they, you know, they walk away. They just say, yeah, this is not worth it.

Rich Franklin: But I mean, getting back to kind of the. The. The, you know, the main thrust of it all here, which is, you know, less is more. I. I think that that applies whether you're talking inventory, and that applies whether you're talking numbers of partners.

Nick Lawson: Yep.

Rich Franklin: You know, I. I think that fewer partners. Fewer. Fewer contracts to sign, fewer for bigger money. Uh, you know, that's the ideal. Um, now, not everybody can do that. I mean, if you're, uh, you know, junior B hockey versus the NFL. Yeah, sure. You know, easy for you guys to say. I mean, we're here just. Just trying to eke out a living. Right. But I. I just think that it's. It's important as you are doing this to keep this in mind. And, and here's the. You know, if you want to put this on the, uh, uh, little teaser when you post this on LinkedIn, here it is. The goal. You got to remember that the goal isn't to maximize the inventory that you're selling. The goal is to maximize the success of your partners. And every time you create and add additional assets, ask yourself this question. Does this make our sponsors more successful, or are we simply creating more stuff to sell? And I think that if you. If you look at it through that lens, are we doing this because we want to add more stuff for more revenue, or is it making. Truly making our partners more successful? And. And that you understand that your goal isn't to sell more, More. More assets. Ah, you can. You can generate more revenue from fewer assets, and if they're the right assets, priced rightly as well. So. And that's how you get to sponsor success. And when you get to sponsor success, that's how you get the partners that say, yeah, I like this. What else you got, you know, and then, and then, you know, in a perfect world, you got like one partner that helps you get to, to your goals. Never going to happen, obviously, but just remember that just, you know, this is Econ 101. When supply is unlimited, value tends to disappear and the price goes down.

Nick Lawson: Yep.

Rich Franklin: Okay, so, you know, not to be the econ nerd, uh, podcast here, but, you know, more supply means depressed prices, means lower value, lesser supply means higher prices. Higher value, that's where you want to be, or at least that's the direction that you want to be pointing to. I'm not saying you can do it over, you know, over the course of one off season, but just think of it, Think of it as econ. If there's, if there's a whole bunch of apples in that bin, uh, or in the marketplace, guess what? The price of apples goes down because there's a ton of them. If there's only a few apples, they're high quality apples, by golly. You know, they're, they're gonna be, they're gonna be higher, um, priced because there's fewer of them, there's scarcity. So it's maybe a little bit of an oversimplification. And there's probably, uh, former econ majors that are rolling their eyes as I'm saying this. But again, the bottom line is the goal is not to maximize the number of assets that you're selling and the amount of inventory that you're selling. It's to maximize sponsor success.

Nick Lawson: Yeah, and you alluded to this earlier, but also I think it's important to say, make sure you also have a good product. Ah, make sure that you have a good product. Your game experience is great. Right. Make sure that the inventory you are selling actually works. I mean, it's not just like, hey, let's cut this stuff down, it's make sure. The thing that you're cutting it down to are the things that help you stand out. Because obviously the core of it is make sure your product is actually desirable as you start to do that. But I, I totally agree with you, Rich. I think the intriguing thing is every, a lot of brands, not every brand, but a lot of most of brands want to be involved in sports. Therefore there's just a lot of places where we say, oh, you know, like right now, you know, Lashify and, uh, Sephora are getting heavy into sports spend. And now it's like, oh, that's the next thing. Let's go get into those categories. Right. Just because an industry jumps into the Space doesn't mean that you should just jump over just to pull them into your, you know, your partnership portfolio. It's really understanding. Like you said, do they make, do they fit what we're trying to do and then can we actually help them reach their goals? Um, but also a lot of teams that probably are listening to this probably should filter it down a little bit, right? Should actually do some weeding of their partners, go through and actually audit and get down. I guess my, my kind of last question here for you is like, God, this, this is probably just very team to team specific, but I'm asking anyways, is there a magic number in your mind for partners? Um, uh, of a, of a, of a team. Um, and obviously maybe it's a sliding scale of NFL versus minor league hockey, but is there kind of that magic number to where it's like, hey, we really can generate more revenue with, you know, less partners to kind of manage, but is there that sweet spot that, that you, that you're thinking of? This is a really good spot for a team to be in.

Rich Franklin: I, I, I, you, you correctly predicted what my answer was going to be.

Nick Lawson: Yeah.

Rich Franklin: And that is, it depends. Um, I think it depends on your sport. I think it depends on the fan base and what is their overall level of acceptance of, of sponsorship within the sport. You know, with certain sports, like soccer, uh, sorry, football, since we're coming up on the World cup, uh, you know, there's, there's more acceptance, I think nascar, uh, we talked about nascar. Was it last week or two weeks ago? Um, is there a, is there a magic number? No, but I think you'll know when you've got the right number versus too many. And I, and I think that the, the takeaway here should be it's better to have too few than too many.

Nick Lawson: Yep, Yep. Last, last question. How do you increase your sales goal every year if you have less inventory and less clients?

Rich Franklin: Well, that's, uh, that's a really good question. That's, that's part of, of continually renew, uh, reviewing what it is that you have available and asking yourself, am I getting the best possible, uh, revenue for this particular asset? Um, you know, do I need to? And that's not necessarily meaning that, that it's the wrong partner. It's just, is the partner, that I have the right partner at the right price? So I think that, you know, it's, it's part of whether you're doing it on a, on a, every week, every month basis. If you're doing it just in your off season, whatever it may be. Uh, I think the answer to that question is, you know, you just have to take a look at, you know, what's your sport, what's your inventory level? Um, you know, how much is, is that sweet spot so that your partners aren't in a, in a, in a cluttered environment. Um, you know, and then just saying to yourself, could, could we do better? You know, is, is this a good number? Is this a bad number? Is this, uh, all things considered, um, you know, the right number for this particular piece of inventory. So again, I mean, it's, it's hard. I can take a look at it from, from, from a, from a hockey standpoint. And I'm m. And I'm starting to become. This is my first time, uh, in basketball, in pro basketball. So I'm getting a feel for, you know, what that number is going to be. You know, I can tell you that our approach, basketball versus hockey, Basketball, there's simply less inventory available. It's a smaller court. It's not like hockey where you can have dasher boards all over the place. And, and you know, so we're definitely determining what's the right number for, for basketball. In, in the process of rolling out our Lakers, G League packages, we took a lot of. Look at a lot of different teams. G League teams, NBA teams. Our, our kind of rule of thumb is we will um, if we're on the fence, we'll, we'll go a little more conservative on the number of assets. We've definitely gone conservative on the number of partners. I'm only going to have for NBA Gene League, about one third the number of partners that I have for AHL hockey. And that's by design. So, um, and that's not to say I think we've done a really good job with our hockey inventory and in managing, uh, our hockey sponsorships. I think we've got pretty much the right number. I'm happy with where we are. I think that everybody's, uh, you know, getting a, a good amount of exposure and, and seems to be happy with everything. You never assume, of course, you've got to ask those questions and you never want to take anybody for granted, but uh, just the nature of basketball versus versus hockey with on court versus on ice logos, the size of the playing surface, you know, the fact that hockey has these dasher boards all the way around it, things like that, uh, we're definitely leaning more conservative on, on basketball in terms of numbers of assets and numbers of partners.

Nick Lawson: Well, I gotta, I have to imagine I'm always very intrigued on quick serve restaurants to where you can have a Whopper and then have onion rings and barbecue sauce and then they come out with a western Whopper and people are like, oh, this is brand new thing. All they really did was take the onion rings they're already making and take the barbecue sauce that they already had for the chicken nuggets and put it on a burger. So the amount of lift it took was almost nothing. But now they're putting in front of the customer as this is a brand new thing that you're really going to love. Um, but on the back end, I didn't have to do too much work. I got to imagine that's also like the, the incremental revenue is not necessarily coming out with an entirely new menu item. It's saying, hey, what do we have? How can we kind of, you know, transform this to fit what our customer wants or our sponsors, but also make sure that it's not something that's going to like totally upend or you know, we're not building an entirely new wall, um, to be able to put stuff on. It's purely just, we already have these assets, let's rework them so that they fit. And then obviously that's probably where your incremental revenue is going to come from, uh, to be able to increase that. But yeah, it's one of those things where I struggle asking that question as the listeners heard because it's.

Rich Franklin: It.

Nick Lawson: I'm sure a lot of our listeners are thinking like, man, well then what's the right number? It's, it's really just going to depend on your city. It's going to depend on what brands are in your market, how much money is in your market. Right. Some markets can't just do two sponsors because there might not just be enough money in that market to where the customer can actually spend enough to where you're actually going to be able to hit meaningful revenue numbers. So, um, it, it's going to depend but I think to really wrap this up, Rich, I think last piece is, it sounds like, sit down, look through your inventory. Have we over built our inventory? Maybe let's pull some stuff back. Is, are these pieces actually bringing sponsor value? And then on the brand side sitting down and saying, okay, we have a lot of partners, are they all really getting the value? Um, and then doing that as an audit every year, every two years, whatever it might be, to be able to kind of clean that out, um, to be able to get to this place of less is more in sponsorship Yep, exactly right. Awesome. Ah, well, thanks for diving in, Rich. Really appreciate, uh, that, um, if there's the best way to get a hold of you. What's the best way to do that?

Rich Franklin: Well, if you are connecting, uh, with, uh, with the show on LinkedIn, I'm also on LinkedIn, so you can connect with me. Their name again is Rich Franklin, Vice

Nick Lawson: president of corporate partnerships for the Oakview

Rich Franklin: Group, Acrisure Arena, Coachella Valley Firebirds hockey team, and Coachella Valley Lakers G League. NBA. G League basketball team. So feel free to connect with m me on LinkedIn or if you'd like to send me an email. My email address is rfranklinkviewgroup.com and I'm Nick Lawson.

Nick Lawson: Uh, also connect with me on LinkedIn. Nick Lawson, CEO at Squad. As always, we'll throw this out to our listeners. Um, if anybody has any comments, questions, concerns within sponsorship, please send us our way. We love diving into those, but thanks so much, everybody, for tuning in this week. And remember, keep pushing those limits within sports partnerships. Sam.