The week before the Super Bowl in early February, the NFL Players Association and its partners in the OneTeam Collective incubator program hosted an educational panel of athletes and licensees who spoke about celebrity participation in licensing, endorsements, and other forms of partnership. The event was part of OneTeam Collective’s second annual Pitch Day, where candidates for the program made their case to potential investors. While the panelists’ comments focused only on athletes’ business activities, the insights are relevant to all facets of celebrity licensing.
Some of the key takeaways:
- Celebrities want their role to go beyond window dressing. “We don’t just want to take pictures,” stressed Meghan Klingenberg, a soccer player on the U.S. Women’s National Team who is interested in becoming an investor. “We’ll do that, of course, but we want to do more, and we can add real value.”
- A celebrity tie-in has benefits not just in reaching consumers but in targeting trade partners as well, something that is especially important for entrepreneurs. “Just having an athlete involved can open doors for you,” said Golden Tate, an NFL player currently with the Detroit Lions. The athlete’s presence alone can cause potential partners to at least pick up the phone and perhaps start a meaningful conversation.
- Celebrities can bring valuable authenticity to a product. Milan Mehta, a business development executive at Intel Sports Group, a new division that is developing technology to enhance both athletes’ and fans’ experiences, pointed out that athletes’ involvement in a video game ensures an accurate field’s-eye view that many engineers can only guess at.
- Celebrities’ passion and perfectionism can make a product better. For StatMuse, having the participation of athletes is a prerequisite, since it is an AI-driven voice-activated sports database for which favorite players deliver the information in their own voices. “Their passion and their need to excel added a lot to the product,” said founder Eli Dawson. “They’re competitors. They want to overachieve and read the phrases just right.” StatMuse has recorded with 25 athletes to date and has worked with two athlete-advisors, one from the NFL and one from the NBA.
- Celebrities’ impact is greater, not surprisingly, when they truly believe in a company rather than being in it for the money alone. So says Tate, who has been involved with Game Breakers soft-shell helmets, which offer better head protection for athletes of all ages, and the Rep the Squad jersey rental service, which gives a cost-effective option to fans who follow a number of teams and want to show their pride for all.
The panel was moderated by Becca Roux, executive director of the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association, one of the founding members, along with the NFLPA and other organizations, of REP Worldwide, a brand management agency representing women’s pro athletes.
We will post a more detailed article in the coming weeks about Pitch Day and the role of incubator programs such as OneTeam Collective in licensing. In the meantime, please note that RaugustReports will not publish on Monday, February 19, due to the U.S. President’s Day holiday. On Tuesday, February 20, watch for Raugust Communications’ monthly e-newsletter, focusing on social shopping and preschool toys; if you are not yet a subscriber, you can sign up here. And finally, we hope to see as many of you as possible at New York Toy Fair, where Karen Raugust and Ira Mayer will be overseeing a Licensing Content Connection session called “Are You Ready for Licensing?” on Sunday, February 18.
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