We do a lot with sports marketing.
We love it. I think it's always been a really
big part of our media strategy
in the six years that I've been working there.
We buy a lot of sports.
We find a lot of our audiences sports and we
love the sports,
engaged audiences in general. So we've been a
national sponsor with the NHL for about 5 years now.
I think we're going on to
and love that partnership, love the team there,
love the opportunity to reach a really focused target audience
on something that's passionate
to fans and that in a way to connect in
a different way.
And then just this March when the season opener we
finished an opportunity to launch a 10 year premier sponsorship
deal with the Boston Red Sox.
So we're the shirt jersey patch sponsor with them and
we have a ton of presence within the stadium with
them in Fenway Park.
So we have a 10 year deal with them and
an opportunity to captivate about
24,000,000 person audience. It's new markets for us.
So that's really been a fun place for us to
think about sweepstakes,
QR code opportunities, different digital experiences that we can send
out through
all of the digital partner platforms that we have with
the Red Sox and Major League Baseball.
So it's been fun to get kind of creative and
think of different ways to
collect data from people and model them as we drive
them through these digital quizzes or sweepstakes and then ultimately
get them to give us an opportunity to reach back
and connect with them via,
you know, an e-mail or a
a phone number or something like that.
So it's been really fun to sort of push the
normal ways of,
you know, lead form fills and and get into something
that's more creative.
We think there's a lot of way to reach these
new sports audiences that we have
through digital platforms. We certainly have a lot of opportunity
in the linear space
and I'll just specifically with the NHL with a national
presence,
we have the digital dashers there.
We have in a lot of the opportunities in the
games and in the rinks.
And so we've done a lot with the NHL and
their social channels to bring in real player content,
create unique content in different digital formats,
whether it's streaming and video.
We had a lot of fun this year with some
of our campaigns and we wanted a YouTube award for
some of the work that we did about sort of
you know, knowing the channel,
knowing how to engage with the customers
and really use that opportunity for that footprint.
It's a great opportunity when you have this many digital
customers to reach,
to be really targeted and be really focused.
So we've done a lot of cool creative stuff with
them and also just maximizing that database that these partners
have for sports.
I think it's hard because a lot of us just
get in there and start putting logos in TV spots
and linear and then we say well we're on everybody's
getting the eyeballs but how do you really maximize their
social channels,
their fan base in a digital way is is been,
is been a really huge opportunity for us and we're
having a lot of fun with it.
I think there's for us there isn't that much difference
between the linear and the streaming opportunity because most of
the the bigger opportunities that we take in linear or
temple. And again we've always had a heavy sports temple
strategy because we love live sports.
We know people watch them together it's it's a part
of our brand live mutual the teams that take care
of each other.
So we're always going to keep a very consistent opportunity
space there with the linear
in the big temples with sports.
But streaming I think it's going to be a huge
opportunity for us there and you know we're we're seeing
Amazon we saw what they did this year with the
NFL. We're going to see a lot with we're hearing
a lot with different partners between Netflix and all the
and the other integrated channels next year that are really
going to start to take over these unique sports properties.
And totally threw my husband off this year that we
had to finally get a smart TV or he wouldn't
be able to watch Thursday Night Football and and figure
all that out. But it's just been,
it's growing. I think a lot of us are going
to see it.
I think it's really exciting because traditionally some of these
more streaming channels were more around entertainment and now they're
moving sports there,
which seems to me for us sports was really sort
of the king of linear lately.
So it's been fun to sort of figure out how
we can shift in the multiple audiences in the multiple
types of content.
But as long you know they're very integrated for us
and as long as we're making sure that they're staying
connected so we can follow the the work that we're
doing and follow the customer.
And I think there's a lot of partners and platforms
out there that are getting really smart about connecting the
linear and streaming for all of us advertisers.
So just a ton of opportunity.
I think it's really exciting.