Sports marketing in the Middle East has grown into a blend of ambitious vision, substantial financial investment, economic diversification in action, and strategic partnerships.
Having become the home of global sporting events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix, the FIFA World Cup, the Dakar Rally, several golf championships, and most recently the Esports World Cup, the region has witnessed the rise of state-of-the-art infrastructure, sports influencers, brand-building collaborations, sponsorship deals, naming rights, merchandising, intellectual property (IP), media and broadcast tie-ups, record viewership numbers, and die-hard sports fan community bases.
Campaign Middle East had the opportunity to discuss the effectiveness of sports marketing, evolving strategies, consumer behaviour and more with Matt McKie, the Director of Marketing at Manchester United, ahead of his highly anticipated keynote at the Athar – Saudi Festival of Creativity, which will be held on 5 and 6 November at the Crowne Plaza, RDC, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
‘Unlock significant revenue streams’
McKie has previously worked with EA Sports, Nike, the International Olympic Committee, and now leads the marketing division at Manchester United, which was recently named the most valuable football club in May 2024, with an estimated value of $6.2bn.
In conversation with Campaign Middle East about how he has seen sports marketing evolve over the past few years, McKie said, “Following the globalisation of the media industry, mostly driven by the continued acceleration of digital media platforms, sports marketing has become increasingly more global in nature. This has created huge opportunity as sports properties that have typically been rooted in their local culture are now able to reach and attract audiences from around the world, and connected to that, it has created new revenue opportunities. With this comes new challenges as marketers need to now understand the unique cultural and consumer landscape across continents and create new strategies to reach them.”
He added, “The emergence of new tools such as augmented and virtual reality will allow sports marketers to connect with these expanded audiences and will transform the industry in unimaginable ways. These technologies will give us the ability to immerse millions around the world in experiences that are typically only accessible to the very few – like attending a match day, meeting an athlete or experiencing historic sporting moments without ever leaving their home or city. The sports marketers that adopt these tools first, and spend time understanding how to best apply them, will not only be able to drive engagement that previously wasn’t possible, but they will also unlock significant new revenue streams.”
Fan advisory panels and fan-centric sports marketing teams
In the current world, pampered with shorter, more consumable, snack-bite content, attention spans have become increasingly fleeting. It has become imperative to capture attention in a crowded and competitive market. Talking to McKie about attention and the challenge of converting a casual viewer into a die-hard fan, we paraphrased Eminem’s famous lyrics into a question: “How would you capture it, or would you let it slip?”
McKie responded, “Marketers can sometimes slip into a space where they stop focusing on their audience, and instead focus on optimising content to drive the highest reach based on the algorithms of each social channel, or by leveraging the latest trending topic. Yes, this can drive some short-term impact, but the path to capturing attention and creating advocacy is to truly understand your audience, which can be challenging in sports as fan sentiment changes very quickly.”
He added, “As such, I’m a big believer in creating fan advisory panels that represent a diverse mix of your audience base, as it’s the best path to understanding your fans on an ongoing basis, and it enables teams to remain agile in how to meet their needs. This will lead to the creation of fan-centric content, that regardless of the functionality of the most recent trending social platform, will find and capture the attention of your fanbase.”
That said, it’s equally important that this fan-centric content is delivered to fans in a way that they like and on a channel that they prefer being on. Many marketers and sports superfans alike have previously opined that sports-led entertainment is the prime reason that linear television and direct-to-consumer broadcasts are still alive.
Yet, with viewers increasingly spending much of their time on social media channels such as TikTok and Instagram, we asked McKie whether the time has come for sports marketers to tweak their strategies in line with constantly evolving consumer habits and leverage channels and platforms that fans already love, or to choose integrated and omnichannel approaches instead.
“The answer here again is to be fan-centric as a marketing team, leading to the creation of complementary strategies that fully meet the needs of a diverse audience,” McKie said.
“For example, as we think about the popular media narrative that traditional broadcast is in decline at the expense of digital platforms, the data within sports tells us that audience needs are broadening, with fans seeking new ways to engage in the events that they love. This is proven out in the success of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where broadcast partners leveraged multiple channels across linear and digital platforms to create a tapestry of unique content – from long-form to short-form, from athlete-focused to event-orientated, from fun to factual – that ultimately enriched the overall audience experience,” he explained.
The data from the Olympic Games backed this response. In Europe, the average linear television audiences on Eurosport and free-to-air channels were double the figures for the previous games and saw more than 7 billion minutes streamed on-demand – which is seven times what was achieved during Tokyo 2020.
Social platforms saw similar growth, with NBC Sports reporting 2.8 billion social impressions throughout the games, which amounted to a 178 per cent increase compared with Tokyo 2020.
“What we’re experiencing is a continued explosion in audience needs, and more opportunities for marketers to meet those needs, which if understood, resourced and executed correctly can unlock huge engagement growth for sports marketers,” McKie said.
Sports marketing tips – Culture, behaviours, beliefs and social context
However, in a region as vast and diverse as the Middle East, painting marketing strategies with a broad brush won’t do. Seasoned marketers have realised that strategies that work in the UAE don’t work in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have vastly different demographics with varying likes, values, and preferences between nations.
Commenting on the nuances of marketing the same ‘product’ across different markets, McKie advised, “There are some very basic fundamentals related to developing a product and an associated marketing plan across continents and countries, such as ensuring there is no content that could be perceived as inflammatory to local cultures, and that global creative works and can be further adapted for local audiences. Once this baseline is covered, the bigger question can be addressed, which is: what content can be included in a product or campaign that will unlock and grow regional audiences?”
“A good example from my career was our desire to grow EA Sports FIFA into more casual football markets such as the United States, where football is more niche and therefore the market has lower knowledge of the leagues, the teams, the tactics, the athletes, and the language of the sport. Rather than change the fundamentals of the product and marketing itself, which might be alienating to more established markets, we decided that a supplementary game mode was needed that could appeal to and educate more casual fans in that region,” he added.
The answer was a story mode – which came to be known as ‘The Journey’ – a cinematic experience that guided gamers through a narrative where gamers took control of a player in the English Premier League.
“This was ultimately a more accessible entry point to the sport and to EA Sports FIFA, where players were able to learn as they progressed. The marketing for this product was also localised heavily, where we created regional versions of key campaign assets with local athletes and celebrities added to it. Only a handful of global stars, such as Lionel Messi, featured in every version,” McKie explained.
This doesn’t mean that a marketing campaign must be complex in order to be effective. Quite often, a seemingly simple idea – executed to perfection – can have a much better impact on brand building and sales.
We asked McKie to expand on this thought, using the example of an athlete marketing campaign for apparel collections, including customised football boots that he oversaw at Nike, which included the likes of Harry Kane, Jadon Sancho, Phil Foden and Raheem Sterling.
“When the product reached the customer, on the surface it appeared simple, but it was the result of years of understanding the essence of the athlete. This included ethnographic research, where we worked to understand and interpret the culture, behaviours, beliefs and social context of each player,” McKie said.
“The impact of this was twofold: we created product and campaigns that truly represented the athlete in a way other products did not, and therefore they would provide deep endorsement beyond any contractual commitment,” he added.
“This would result in fans of these players having higher levels of advocacy for the Nike brand, and there was also a direct revenue impact from the products sold when they landed in retail.”
Before we concluded the conversation, we discussed another key trend revolutionising participation, viewership, sponsorships, partnerships, and fan bases: the rampant rise of female sports marketing.
“Sports marketers are now understanding the enormous societal and commercial benefit of inspiring young girls to consume and participate in sport. Insight shows that 65 per cent of girls drop out of sport by age 16, which is twice the rate of young boys dropping out – and the sad reality is 80 per cent of girls believe they don’t belong in sports due to lack of role models, among other factors,” McKie said.
“Brands and marketers have a responsibility to address this as there are incredible female athletes, who have unbelievable stories, that can change the trajectory of women’s sport participation – if we can just get more eyeballs on them,” he added.
Equally, marketers are also starting to understand that if they support growing participation rates, there is a huge potential upside in all aspects of the commercial model – from women buying more sports equipment and increasing viewership of women’s sport in the short-term, which ultimately drives up broadcast and sponsorship revenues in the longer term.
“Challenges remain, such as lower immediate return on investment compared with those typically seen in men’s sport, but cost of entry is far lower and with experts predicting annual growth rates of 15 per cent to 30 per cent for elite women’s sport. Marketers that switch on to the long-term potential of women’s sport will be rewarded with positive brand and revenue impacts,” McKie concluded.
Matt McKie will present a keynote on ‘Best Practices in Sports Marketing’ at the upcoming Athar – Saudi Festival of Creativity in Riyadh on Tuesday, 5 November, 2024. To watch him speak, get your tickets to the Athar Festival today.
