Sports licensing companies: should you talk to them or not? This is a nice question and thanks to God you have this doubt. Did you buy anything lately? A Tennis racket, an HD TV Screen or a Tumble Dryer? I imagine that if you are not an ex-tennis player or a consumer electronic’s expert you made some research on the net and then you asked someone.
In this field – Making an informed decision- just an exception is accepted. It applies to Italian politicians: if you are an Italian politician you can decide and do everything even if you don’t know anything…But if you are reading this page it is highly likely that you are not an Italian politician, whose reading capabilities I doubt anyway.
Having said that, asking someone for a review is fundamental because if it is easy to directly approach the source, it is even easier to get a biased answer.
An agency can give you an array of solutions – Beware of those agencies that have only their own products to sell though, especially if said products come with an exclusivity in their favor, because there is a good chance that they are paying a big sum to the Brands’ owners, so the Agency “must sell” in order to recoup this costs.
An agency can give you a tailor-made project choosing the Brand that suits you best.
This is why it is advisable to ask for some consultancy before starting your licensing project.
Some of the activities that a well-structured sports licensing agency will help you with are:
- The agency will select the right brands for you and will show you several alternatives underlying the pros and cons of each one
- The agency will help you to establish the right value to be given as minimum guaranteed
- The agency will support you in getting the best commercial deal
- The agency will help you to establish which marketing rights you need in order to carry out all the communication activities needed to push the project forward
- The agency could help, if required by you, to implement some of the promotional activities.
- The agency will help you in catching al the B2B opportunities
Need an example? You closed a licensing deal with a team that has several sponsors. You are producing a branded item and one of the other partners of the team will run a promotional operation. Your Item could be used as a prize: we will make sure that you know that there is such promotional activity and we will liaise with the other parties to give you the opportunity to supply the prizes.
Finally
If you are ill you go and see a doctor. If you need to resolve a legal issue you go and see a lawyer so it is only normal that, if you need to explore the licensing sector, after having looked on the net for a while, you go and see someone who knows what it is doing.
Choose an expert in the field you are interested in: no one knows everything.
Divide the Brands you are interested in and then go vertical. Entertainment can encompass, just to name a couple of categories, Music, Movies, Theater, Stand up Comedy and so on. Sport (which can be considered part of entertainment) can be divided in a myriad of categories. One for any and each sport, with agencies dealing with any of them.
An agency (Discover more about Sports Marketing Agency) knowing everything about swimming maybe doesn’t have any know-how about motorsport or sailing. So go for the expert in the sector you are interested in and you will be starting with the right foot. These sectors are very peculiar and only someone who has plenty of experience can help you in avoiding any mistake.
It is a sort of insurance on the success of the project: the more information you gather before you start, the better. Accountability is on the rise and playing safe is imperative.
In the meantime have a look at what we, at RTR Sports Marketing, have done within motorsport. Here is a selection of some projects we carried out with the like of Williams F1, Piaggio, Valentino Rossi, Marc Marquez, Jorge Lorenzo and MotoGP just to name a few.
If after that you’d like to talk about sports marketing, licensing and motorsport and licensing and MotoGP we are always available at info@rtrsports.com
