The NFL’s Miami Dolphins aims to be the number one American football franchise for international fan engagement by building on its brand fame worldwide, the ascendancy of its social media offering, Miami’s status as a destination point for international visitors and the event roster of Hard Rock Stadium.
Speaking to Sports Sponsorship Insider at the inaugural SportBusiness Summit in Miami in September, Ari Mark, senior director, corporate partnerships for the Dolphins, said that there was a growth opportunity for NFL franchises from international fans and partners that has not yet been fully exploited by the clubs.
Although NFL rules limit partner activations outside the franchise’s local marketing territory, Mark said the Dolphins wants to draw an increasing number of sponsor brands from overseas markets.
International brands
The Dolphins’ current sponsorship roster of around 100 brands includes just three from outside the US, one of which is the North American division of Korean carmaker Hyundai.
The carmaker is also in the final year of its four-year deal as the NFL’s Official Automotive Sponsor and last month signed as the Presenting Sponsor of NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football Kickoff’, which attracts the NFL’s largest broadcast audience each week.
For the Dolphins, Hyundai is one of 12 ‘Entitlement Partners’, a category that includes top-tier stadium Cornerstone Partners, like the telco Verizon and the University of Miami Health System.
Entitlement Partners are associated with areas of the stadium, including luxury clubs and hospitality suites. In Hyundai’s case, the brand is Naming Partner of the Hyundai Club, which offers premium seats between the 30-yard lines and access to a private air-conditioned club.
According to industry experts, Entitlement Partners at the Dolphins pay seven-figure fees in dollars per year.
Less conventionally, the Dolphins signed two deals with international companies relatively new to the US market in the form of two France-based companies: the technology brand Atos and the music streaming brand Deezer.
The Atos deal is a business-to-business play with Entitlement Partner inventory shared with technology giant Dell EMC in the form of the ‘Atos Club presented by Dell EMC’ – a series of four-person boxes located behind the end zone at one end of the field.
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The Deezer partnership is a standard Club Partner category deal in which sponsors typically pay between the low-to-high six figures per year, with a few exceptions paying over $1m (€852,000) per year, according to industry experts.
Valued in the mid-six-figure dollars per year, the two-year Deezer deal for the 2017 and 2018 seasons is less valuable than the Atos partnership, but more indicative of how the Dolphins may work in future with international brands.
For Deezer, the rights include LED perimeter advertising at the level between the lower- and upper-tier seats at Hard Rock Stadium [only NFL side-line partners can advertise at pitch level], branding on four big screens recently installed at Hard Rock stadium, as well as advertising on Stadiavision – the in-stadium television service that broadcasts on stadium concourses and hospitality areas.
Deezer also gets activation rights in the plaza gangways and rights to offer Dolphins fans the opportunity to participate in sweepstakes to win VIP experiences at Hard Rock Stadium.
Digital first
Deezer’s deal with the Dolphins was based on a desire to get closer to the NFL, the relevance of the team’s location and the iconic nature of the Dolphins brand.
Deezer also said it was impressed by how the Dolphins integrated their respective digital assets and platforms. The partnership gives fans access to a channel showcasing the team’s official playlists and features gameday and warm-up playlists.
The landing page is unique to Deezer within the Miamidolphins.com website but is similar in presentation to channels on the websites of Premier League club Manchester United and LaLiga’s FC Barcelona, which each agreed multi-year partnerships with Deezer in 2016.
The objective in all cases is to generate more downloads of the free Deezer app from customers using mobile devices or on the web and to grow market share versus competitors like Spotify and Apple Music.
Mark says that the franchise’s content creation work on its digital and social platforms is a differentiator for the club than can help it both locally and internationally.
“We focus on digital and in-house content creation which has led us to be number one for video views in the NFL,’ he said. “What we’re able to do is create content that engages all types of fans, whether they like X’s and O’s or off-field stories and getting to know the players, their lifestyles and their interests.
“A significant amount of our video views and social engagement comes from outside of the US. It’s a way for people to interact with the team when they aren’t able to buy tickets or travel to a game.
The digital play may also stimulate greater demand for tickets from overseas fans,” he said.
“Miami is a huge travel destination and we get a lot of people who are willing to check out our games and events as part of their itinerary when they’re in town. We have focused nearly all of our marketing efforts on digital content and social media. We used to advertise through radio spots, billboards and television commercials that said ‘call this number to buy tickets for these upcoming games.’
“What we realised is that this wasn’t growing our brand or our fan base. That was a very transactional way of looking at things and frankly, we couldn’t really track it. Now, we have over a dozen unique, original content streams that appeal to fans of all nature and we use those platforms to both grow the brand and drive revenue.“
Video views; Miami Dolphins versus NFL average
- Miami Dolphins: 419 million views
- NFL Average: 135 million views
International engagement* across social media channels (Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Youtube)
• US: 10 million
• Mexico: 4 million
• Brazil: 1.8 million
• UK: 1.2 million
• Germany: 0.5 million
• India: 0.4 million
*Number of people reached in the market through social media
Source: Miami Dolphins
Hard Rock Stadium
Mark said that international brands are also attracted by the multi-event capability of Hard Rock Stadium. The franchise and stadium owner Stephen Ross has helped fund a $500m renovation of the facility and has invested a further $100m in the International Champions Cup, the pre-season competition for elite European clubs, that ensures the best pre-season matches come to the venue.
Outside the 10 Dolphins games played at Hard Rock Stadium, last year the venue hosted the El Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid – one of the highest-grossing sports events in North American history – and this year Manchester United and Barcelona played at the venue to a full house.
The stadium is also used for international soccer friendlies between teams from South America and is being retrofitted to accommodate the Miami Open tennis tournament, known as the ‘fifth grand slam’. The Super Bowl will be hosted at Hard Rock Stadium in 2020, with Miami one of five warm winter venues being considered by the NFL to host the Super Bowl on rotation from 2025.
Mark said that international brands are also attracted by the Hard Rock Stadium’s place at the intersection of sports, music and culture in Miami.
“For us, strategy means doing things differently than everyone else,” says Mark. “There are other NFL clubs that have beautiful stadiums or success on the field. But part of what makes us different is the market that we’re in, the melting pot that is South Florida, and how we leverage those attributes.
“When I engage in partnership discussions, I’m not only doing so as an NFL club, but also as Hard Rock Stadium across our diverse set of events. It’s a different fan that comes to see a Taylor Swift show or a Colombia v Venezuela soccer game or the Miami Dolphins. We are a global entertainment destination that reaches a lot of different people and our partners love that.”