PRIMER FOR SPORTS SELLERS - NHL lockout. Advertisers buy hockey because it's hockey. You may have found otherwise, but they DON'T say "give me a newscast while we wait for the NHL and the players to work things out".
Whether or not the NHL shall return this year is not the question. BEING READY when they are IS the matter at hand.
When advertisers don't redeploy their sports dollars during a lockout, what would you do to quickly maximize play by play hockey revenue as soon as the NHL and players agree?
Andy,
We had a similar problen a few years ago and we got our play-by-play guys to create a series of 'Fantasy Games' based on fantasy hockey league stats....and then we 'loaded' teams to feature the best players....you can create six super teams that and we have the announcers create the games...theatre of the mind stuff...very cool......
Hi Andy,
We've found that some clients are quite open to the idea of a contingent sale priced on a per game basis (since we don't know how many games will be in the schedule, if there is one), so that you can secure their piece of the limited play by play inventory as soon as a season is announced, without having to get hold of them first. This may be an especially wise path to follow with the Christmas holidays coming up, as a lot of decision makers may be away and hard to reach if and when a deal and a season is announced a couple of weeks from now, although let's hope it's sooner.
We carry the Red Wings and we carry the Tigers. Lots of excitement, early renewals and new sign-ups for the Tigers starting Mar 2013. Lots of disappointment with the NHL and Red Wings - to the point that should they come back at all this season selling anything other than the per game, as suggested by Roy, and giving a significant discount or number of value added spots - we will be hard pressed to do much with NHL sponsorships at all. On top of that, a beefed up season for the Red Wings will just complicate scheduling on the Tigers - which we have already sold. It will be hard for the NHL and the carrier stations to generate momentum for the season because the stand-off has gone so long. That said, the Red Wings coming back yet this season will be key to selling for 2013-14 so we certainly hope it happens.
We did convert some of the dollars to other programming earlier when the walk-out was initiated and for the die-hard hockey people we still will carry the post-season high school hockey playoffs in March.
Andy,
We pre-sold all of our NHL broadcast packages, which included certain features as well as an ad-package that ran during each game. With the delay of the season, we immediately approached our clients with our "NHL Lockout Package"!
What this means for the client is this:
-all in-game ads (number depending on the package invested in) now run from 3p-7p on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This schedule provides heavy, early-in-the-week frequency during the Afternoon Drive Show
-as soon as the season starts, we immediately move them into the game broadcasts
-if the season does not start, each client will have had a high-value ad-campaign that ran Mon.-Wed. each week for 7 months, plus a sports-sponsorship that ran daily during the same time period
I don't know if there is something here that directly answers your question, but hopefully some inspiration will be forthcoming!
Dear Andy,
Start a hockey talk show in the same time slot. Let the fans talk about hockey. But have your hosts load up extra mentions of the hockey sponsors.
Spike Santee
