https://www.premierholding.org/blogs/news/116277315-sponsored-athlete-program

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Dan Kennison

facebook: @triPremierBike
http://www.PremierBike.com
http://www.PositionOneSports.com

I have sponsored several age group athletes... most notably Ben Collins.

I have also sponsored Ben Hoffman, Brian Fleischmann, Scott Rigsby, Peter Kotland, Herb Spicer, Greg Taylor, and Harriet Anderson.

Does Herb Spicer race anymore? I haven't seen his name in the results for a couple of years.

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Team Zoot So Cal

I haven't seen him for quite a long time.

There are many ambassador programs beyond just discounts on gels/nutrition. there are several brands with ambassador programs with discounts on shoes, clothing, etc. Outside of that, depending on where you live, there may be opportunities with local businesses or bike shops. I've had support from a local shop for 10 years (some freebies, and substantial discounts on pretty much anything), but that has evolved, because they can see the ROI based on what is referred back to them, and the support returned (events, clinics, etc.)...

Where most athletes fail, especially AG athletes, but some elites too, is at the ROI piece. the athlete thinks what's in it for me? The sponsor rarely cares about the cool things you can do... what they generally want to know is the exposure you can give them (to key audiences for their brand), that you're not a douche, and what value you can generate for them (either in terms of business, or in coming in and doing promo work, or clinics, etc.). Most ambassador programs give discounted stuff, and freebies based on sales through discount codes.

I'm glad you pointed this out. I think it would be interesting to get more involved on the business end of the sponsorship and see what works in the sense of athlete. Obviously winning races shows products work. Social media influencers. But how do you measure the ROI if it is something other than a discount code or referral? I would imagine many people buy products because they see someone else using it without any documentation of why they went with that product.

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USAT Level II- Ironman U Certified Coach

So many people looking for sponsorship are looking to GET something from their sponsor. Fair enough.
However, very few of those people have a list of what they can GIVE to the sponsor.

There are industry sponsors on various levels, from cheap to free stuff at your LBS, to cash from them for achieving goals or whatever.
There are nepotism type sponsors where your dad owns a company and to help you out, plus get tax benefits, he sponsors you. In that case, there's very little requirement for performance. Daddy's just giving you a handout, the cheapest way possible. Hopefully someone sees your cool jersey and goes to dads company to buy something. Neither of you will ever know if this happens.

If you want proper sponsorship, you have to spend the time coming up with a decent marketing plan, and tailor it to every single prospective sponsor. You will have to know a lot about their business and show how sponsoring you will pay dividends to them.

Back in the day I was a pro skier. When I was instructing, there was "pro-deal". depending on what level you were at, you got cheap or free gear. The insinuation was that students would see what you skied on and buy that brand. I never went with the company that gave the best deal, I skied on the skis I liked and took their deal. I was a pretty good salesman as I really did love the brand and the skis I skied on. When I was competing, I'd get a discount buying stuff at the local ski shop. I'd also get discount vouchers to hand out to people and when they were redeemed, I'd get a few $ as well. It wasn't much but as I was pro in high school, I didn't need much money and just being able to say I was sponsored was enough to meet chicks and that was actually my real goal.

When you approach a sponsor, make sure you're clear how you can benefit the sponsor, and give them a number of different ways you can get paid (ie the voucher scheme works well?). If you're good enough to win events, offering to do motivational speeches can be a payback thing. Or you can offer coaching/advice to cyclists in their company? You could go for a Saturday ride with employees. You could offer to teach non-cyclists at the company how to ride (even in their parking lot) There are endless possibilities for how you can benefit the company, so you can benefit from them.

And get used to rejection! Lots of people will be really enthusiastic, right up until they have to sign a cheque :-(

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

If you work a full time job and have the finances to travel for races, why would you need to sell your dignity to get a couple of free/discounted gels (or any other products)? You literally have to put yourself out there promoting a product that you may not 100% believe in just to get it at a 25% discount. You're bound to want to try another gel (product) one time or another, and you're bound to find another one that's better than the current "company" that sponsers you. Then you would have to get on instagram/facebook/twitter and lie to all your followers about how good your sponser's gels are, when in fact, you prefer something completely different now.

I think there are ways to do sponsorship without selling your soul but the reality is triathlon is an incredibly small sport. I always think back to someone posting in winter about the size of the triathlon and bike business on an annual basis. Someone said the tri bike business was less than <$10,000,000 in revenue. You think about that for a second. If it is that small how much can they really afford to pay in sponsorship to:

Frodeno
Brownlee
TO
Hoffman
Murray
Mola
Gomez
Butterfield
Van Lierde
Pete Jacobs
Rapp
Starky
Lange
Gambles
Hanson
Russell
Liefermann
Shoemaker
Baucco
Dye
Beals
Chrabot
Brandon
Jesse Thomas
Big Sexy
TJ
McMahon
etc
etc
etc

I know a few names on that list are not paid anything then you think about the rest of the guys not even on the list. The reality is that triathlon will continue to be a labor of love for most and I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. I do try to caution people who are upcoming in the sport to reset their expectations. Do it for the love of sport.

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Potts is an etc.???

To the O.P. I agree with what others have said - Its all about what the sponsored athlete gives to the sponsor. My son has some of the best equipment money can buy and has not paid for any of it. I guess as his main sponsor I see a lot of value in the 2 of us traveling and racing together.

Complete nonsense. The dock on the pier in Kona has that much in retail bike value alone...and that's one race. Hell, Dimond pulls in 7 figures, per the discovery docs from Beam-gate.

Are you looking for new athletes to sponsor? Is there a form I can fill out?

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--Chris

Sorry. His little brother applied this year.

Was having this conversation the other day actually and how a sponsorship in the hands of someone like Gerlach can be more valuable than a sponsorship in the hands of Frodo/Browlee/Hoff. I would have said the same thing about Rapp a couple months ago but he sent that down the crapper real fast (from a brand perspective). Think about a guy like Gerlach and his relationships with "The People". He is constantly on here, active on social media, active in his community (Wisconsin World Championships?), approachable, etc etc and at the end of the day (sorry) he is cheaper to sponsor than Frodo, or Brownlee or Hoffman etc etc...Not everyone loves him, but to return on that spend is a lot better.

Sales and Promo's for the sake of sales and promos are horrible, but discount codes to track volume can be a wonderful thing. If I was a brand. I might offer a rebate or sale to anyone with a Gerlach promo code, that might be a discount on the product or (better) some add on product. eg "buy these wheels with the Gerlach promo code and we'll cover 4 wheel true's a year at your local vendor". or "buy this wet suit and we'll throw in $50 of equipment (pull buoy, goggle, whatever) for free" brand can track sale via Gerlach and determine if it's a good business arrangement and Gerlach can see how much business he drives and know what his value is.

Too many people out there who think they deserve sponsorship just for being "fast". At the end of the day the mass $ in triathlon is not at the tip of the sword, it's at the middle of the pack and having an ambassador/cheerleader/stump shouter standing on their soap box in transition inviting people to come over and char about how awesome their brand is more profitable to a majority of (smaller) brands/shops than their athlete winning Kona.

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Superfly Coaching
http://www.superflycoaching.com/eric

IL PIRATA VI GUARDA

I'd agree with that. I'd also add that there would be a tremendous amount of value in someone with product knowledge as deep as Carl's (Trek). TG has had a similar (but on a much smaller scale) level of engagement with his "Recovery Boots" thread.

My point with that whole ramble, and to your's as well, is you don't have to be a pro to provide value to a brand. You need to be engaged in the community around you, then you need to prove it.

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Superfly Coaching
http://www.superflycoaching.com/eric

IL PIRATA VI GUARDA

Not to mention if you change to one of those other companies annually. I think that is the biggest contributing factor for age group athletes and even some pros.

If you want to be sponsored or be a brand ambassador, find a company you really love and then work towards being an ambassador for them. People will stop believing you really quick. If you tell them X is best then next year tell them y and the year after tell them z.

It's why I don't care generally want pros are using. I'm much more likely to listen to a good age group athlete as generally what they are using they really like, vs getting paid.

The unfortunate reality is that most of the companies are just buying "likeness" and they have no desire to purchase quantifiable ROI IMHO. I am looking at an ad for HotShot on the right side of the page with Craig Alexander. The reality is the people in the position of marketing dollars DON'T LOVE THEIR JOBS. They just want to write a check to a big athlete, use their "likeness" and hope it translates into returns. I actually tell every company they work with they should instead be talking to ever coach that has 10+ athletes and then focus on 1-2 "likeness" athletes.

As for me, the reality is I am seen more of a liability. It actually amazes me how people like my attempt at being independent until I say something negative about a brand they have financial/emotional interest in. Then they don't like it so much and think it is BS. I think the fact that a company might like my current position but that position can change over time worries them.

I think the quintessential example of this is my stance with Cobb over the years. I road their saddles for about 5 years and they had no interest until another sponsor sent me to John Cobb to get fit. I had a chance to talk to John and I think he realized that my stance on things wasn't all that bad for their business. The reality is that for a product like saddles the most important feature of the company is their awesome customer service and return policy on something that is very individual. While they offer returns and returns are expensive, the reality is that I also know a Cobb saddle is going to work for nearly everyone. It makes it a no-brainer, authentic recommendation that I am happy to make.

Same goes for a wetsuit, my stance is always going to be first, "buy the wetsuit that fits". And the most important thing then becomes assessing whether it fits or not is offering a generous return policy. I am happy to talk about thinner arms etc which I think are important but I don't want anyone telling me to tout a feature that I personally don't believe in.

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Eh, yes and no. I would say there is a large (probably majority) of marketers who are old school, and are like you say. They buy TV and billboards and (in Triathlon case) magazine ads and they create complicated tracking metrics to 'prove' they work and sometimes they do....most times they don't (you ever seen an MMA/MMM report? barf). Then there is a new school (which is my profession) which looks at search (Google/Bing), Social (Facebook/Insta/Snap/Twitter), video (Youtube) and other display areas and they use much better data to 'prove' they work.

For example, if the people at Hot Shot are worth a sh!t I am sure they have Google Analytics (or similar) running on that ad and if/when you click on it they cookie you. Then they track you and see when/if you convert. Do you buy product now, do you sign up for email, do you go to the info page and spend 3 min reading about the product and what info can they pull from that experience. Then if you don't buy they are retargeting you across any channel they can get their hands on (I am guessing this is what Roka does this with display ads), they might feed you facebook ads, they might bid to the top position if you Google [how to cure dehydration], they might target you with a :15 video on Youtube, anything they can do to get back in front of you since you raised your hand and said 'i'm kinda interested in this product' by clicking on that ad. In the end, they hopefully have an idea of what the purchase journey is for their product, how long it takes, how many times they have to touch them before they convert, what channels convert best, what demographics convert best etc etc etc and the more they do this the better and better their data become and the cheaper and cheaper their advertising becomes.

Shameless Plug: Hot Shot - if you read that and have no idea what I am talking about....DM me and we can talk ;-)

When it comes to you as a liability, that's on you, but I would say as a general rule of thumb "compliment publicly, criticize privately".

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Superfly Coaching
http://www.superflycoaching.com/eric

IL PIRATA VI GUARDA

A little larger scale than age group tri sponsorship but might have some lessons. I have a friend who has a minor sponsorship deal with an Indycar team. I find it kind it fascinating so I have talked to him about it alot. His little sticker is not quite big enough to show up TV so he is not interested in that aspect of motor sports sponsorship but his package level gets him some things that are very useful to him for marketing his business. More relevant to this discussion, it is very clear that the team has a very well thought out and well structured plan for both how to attract sponsors at different levels but more importantly, very clear schedules of "what you as a sponsor get" at each level, right down to how often and how many times you get to chat with the driver each weekend. And the what you get piece does have real value for a decent range of businesses.

Basically my friend is ponying up cash so he can get 6 tickets to each race with a full weekend of access to the team hospitality tent/party which he can use to entertain customers. One interesting thing to me is that he did not chose his specific team to sponsor based on price or performance. He did his research and picked this team because one of the big lead sponsor is in the industry his company serves so he has access to additional prospects in the hospitality tent since the lead sponsor (who gets way more tickets . . .) is entertaining their customers whom my friends products are also relevant to. Basically, this particular team gave him the ability to leverage his sponsorship money.

He is a car race fan and has a blast going to all the races but it really is business.

I think the lesson is - if you want sponsors beyond just friends giving you small gifts, you have to have a product to sell your sponsors. Your product is both the attention you attract but also the people you attract and can speak to (or who your sponsor can speak to) and what you have to sell has to be way beyond just what happens on the race course. And just winning is not enough.

That is the exact model I am aware of what I am trying to avoid to some extent even though it is an standard more or less. My personal beef is the criticism is often more important than the compliments. If people never hear criticism they are misguided.

Examples of this just recently was in discussing latex tubes talking about the disadvantages as well as the advantages. Or in discussing the potential major downside of Morf bars.

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Where most athletes fail, especially AG athletes, but some elites too, is at the ROI piece. the athlete thinks what's in it for me? The sponsor rarely cares about the cool things you can do... what they generally want to know is the exposure you can give them (to key audiences for their brand), that you're not a douche, and what value you can generate for them (either in terms of business, or in coming in and doing promo work, or clinics, etc.). Most ambassador programs give discounted stuff, and freebies based on sales through discount codes.


They SAY these Age-Group Ambassador programs are the way to go - it's at the grass-roots. It's more genuine in terms of the pitch etc . . . In some cases it's trackable with codes etc . .

But most often these programs just start to become part of the massive and extended discount culture that infects ( and negatively impacts) the bike and the triathlon business. Pretty much ANY and ALL triathletes or cyclists in North America is eligible already, for a 10 - 15% discount off MSRP through membership in a club, association, being part of a team or entry into a race/event. I note that, that is for many retailers, their margin. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not against discounting, but the problem is that when hundreds of thousands of people are eligible for some form of discount it not only looses it's meaning, it impinges significantly on the profitability of the retailers. And people wonder why bricks & mortar bike and tri shops are struggling. the struggles are multi-reason, but you don't help yourself by giving automatically 2/3 or more of your customers a 10-15% discount on everything in the store right off the top!! many retailers seem to confuse value and discount!!

Another irritant is often, these athlete ambassadors, are not selling the brand and the value you know so that people buy at MSRP, but are selling people and telling them how to get a further discount!! Good grief!

I note that ll of this ferocious discounting going on for a socio-economic group, that could best be described as reasonably to very well off! Ironically, they are a socio-economic group that does buy based on value, but if all they have ever known about a business, is this discount culture - guess how they behave??

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

But its not about the critism. It's about the lack of history with you, and worrying that aspect of how you conduct conversations online may be negative for their brand.

The people allocating marketing dollars at most places aren't the same people who want to hear how to improve the product. At least at the level of employee you'd be talking to. Big picture, having someone who can articulate why you don't like a product would be great for the business. Siloed marketer is going to go, he's critiquing products left and right negatively do we really want someone who may do that to us publically.

I completely get where you're coming from. I just don't think in most cases the person you're taking to sees both sides of that.