Latest / Talk Commerce / How OpenSponsorship is Transforming the Future of Athletic Partnerships with CEO Ishveen Jolly
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:02.242) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Ishvim Jali. She is an influence marketer. Ishvim, go ahead, introduce yourself, tell us your day-to-day role and something exciting you have going in business this year. Ishveen Jolly (00:16.539) Yeah, thanks for having me on, Brent. My name is Ishfin. I am the CEO and co-founder of Open Sponsorship. We are the largest marketplace, essentially connecting brands to predominantly athletes, hence sponsorship, for kind of deals. It could be appearances, it could be photo shoots, but predominantly it's like social media-esque, influencer marketing-esque stuff. And it's all been fun, the whole journey, which I'm sure we'll get into. But this year, particularly, we've actually extended Beyond the Athletes. A request from our brands was like, hey, can you help us find financial influencers and doctors and nurses and foodies and all of these other categories? So that's quite fun to see that intersection of sports but plus others. So I'd say growing our client base and helping them do new types of deals is exceptionally fun right now. Brent Peterson (01:10.082) That's awesome. Thank you for that. before we get started and, and, we can talk a lot about athletes and, and I, I love that topic of, sort of that athletic entrepreneur as well. Cause there's sort of entrepreneurs because you know, they have to get a sponsors. But anyways, before we get into that, you have volunteered to be part of the free joke project. And I'm just going to tell you a joke and you just give me a rating eight through 13. So here we go. My friends love scaring the crap out of me. With friends like that, who needs enemas? Ishveen Jolly (01:43.911) I'd say it's a 10. Brent Peterson (01:49.07) All right, that's perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Ishvim. Okay, so tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into what you're doing now, and sponsorships and helping athletes get sponsorships. Ishveen Jolly (02:02.18) Yeah, so I fell into sponsorship actually. I was an athlete kind of growing up myself. I played a lot of sports, loved what it did for me personally, for society and all of that. I realized I wanted to work in the sports sphere. Found this job in sponsorship, fell in love with sponsorship as a form of marketing. But then a few years into that career, I realized that deal making was very difficult. You kind of mentioned yourself like... entrepreneurs need sponsorship and sponsorship generally, whatever it may be, has a connotation of being difficult. And so kind of woke up and said, why is there not an Airbnb of our industry? It was in 2016, so that was very 2015 of me being like, why is there not an Airbnb for this industry? But set out to create it. And I kind of love what we do. Obviously the rise of influencer marketing has been really interesting. It's gone from being something that didn't exist, multi-billion dollar industry now. And actually a lot of influence is skew female, just the nature of like fashion and beauty and everything that started. So I think we also love the angle that like, if you want to influence the male consumer, there's not many other places to go other than sports. And we love operating in that space. Brent Peterson (03:19.958) That's great. you found a challenge? You mentioned females, but have you found a challenging for males, especially, let's just say track athletes or the one that are doing the different professional track events to get them engaged in being an influencer and getting a sponsorship? Or is it sort of the other way around where the major athletes get a sponsorship because they're doing so well? Ishveen Jolly (03:45.659) Yeah, it's an interesting question. I'd say like when I used to be a traditional sports agent, of course it was like the biggest name was getting the deals. Interestingly now, it's all about the quality of the content that can be produced and ROI. And oftentimes, so I just came back from NBA All-Star weekend in San Francisco and a lot of the NBA players are too expensive and often they're not natural content creators. They're not entrepreneurs in that respect. And so it's quite hard to get them to do like these UGC posts that they're shooting at home. Obviously, if they turn up for a shoot it's different. So we find that sometimes the individual athlete, because they have to be a personality, they're actually more entrepreneurial. They're sometimes better at doing these deals and producing great content. So I'd say less to date is it about the name versus like the quality of their feeds? Not always, but often. Brent Peterson (04:44.396) And you give them some coaching on what they should put into their feet? I'm assuming that you have some coaching to help them. I go back to thinking about your typical athlete that maybe they're not super social and especially individual athletes that are just in it for the sport, but they know that they need to make a living. Ishveen Jolly (05:03.364) Yeah, it's a good question actually. We haven't touched that as much, mostly because we're like the matchmaker. So our job is to like help you be the authentic, but it is interesting to think that like we've touched upon it and then we've not thought it made commercial sense, but with AI today, it might be an interesting like parlay for us. So we do give them, we give them a lot of notes on how to try and make the deal successful. Like once they do get a deal from us, like the creative brief and the shooting and like we try and get them to do the best that they can. Um, and that's like a big part of our success, which is like, Hey, we understand you're not an influencer. don't do this day in day out. So here's a script, but try and do it this way. Make sure you smile, make sure the logo is visible, et cetera, et cetera. Brent Peterson (05:50.382) Yeah, that's good. I follow Lucy Charles-Barkley, who's a triathlete. And I know that she does a lot of content that is engaging and especially my daughter, who's also a triathlete, likes to follow that type of content. that the type of, I suppose you have a wide range of athlete types where they wouldn't just be in one category. What is the burgeoning category that you see right now for athletics? Ishveen Jolly (06:14.918) Yeah, exactly to that point, actually. So we have over 19,000 athletes and influencers on the platform. Um, last year we did 50 point, like 6 % of our deals were female. That was the first year it crossed over 50. Um, and that's the value of those increased tremendously. And so I'd say the female athlete is definitely having a big rise because of what you're saying. They produce again, naturally they produce a bit more interesting content. We're also seeing a lot of love for the outdoor sports. like hunting, fishing, snowboarding, because again, like the content's really interesting. They're already like kind of cameraman, but it's seasonal. So obviously we just came off NFL season. So we did a lot with NFL players in season. And there's obviously a difference between volume of deals and value. So, you know, we might do loads of college athletes, but then one NFL deal is equivalent to basically all of those. Brent Peterson (07:15.04) Yeah, I can imagine that the type of athlete you have as well would also kind of dictate the type of sponsor. So tell me about how the sponsorship connecting with the athletes work. You have sponsors that also participate in the marketplace that then you help put those two together, right? That's kind of the model. Ishveen Jolly (07:36.175) Yeah. So we essentially say we have like five aspects to kind of how we work. So the first, obviously the most important is the match. Like who do you even work with? But then the second is like contract negotiation. We manage that with payments. Third is deal management. Like what is, are you doing a story? Are you doing a real? Because obviously like what you ask them to do is going to dictate the success. Fourth is ROI tracking. Super important. And then fifth is like amplification. Like how do you use this deal further, further. So when a brand first signs on, I'd say there's kind of two things that we do really well. One is we have amazing social listening. So like if you're a pet food company, can see, show me all the athletes who have talked about dogs or posted content about dogs who have over 8 % engagement rate and costs less than $500. So we have amazing data to help you figure out like who is the perfect person for you. And then we'll also go off any wishlist you have or whatever else. So I'd say like, With every marketplace, like it's great to say big numbers, like we have 19,000 athletes, but ultimately you probably only want to work with one to 10. So who are the best one to 10 for you? And I'm kind of used data to pack that up. Brent Peterson (08:45.484) Yeah, that's very interesting. So I would imagine also then there's two aspects to it. There's the sort of semi-pro athlete or amateur athletes that have a big following that would also want a sponsorship. But then there's the really successful athletes that have no clue what they're doing, right? That you need to get them connected. So do you have athletes that have a big following but no sponsorships or want to get sponsorships? And then the other side would be... Athletes that have no sponsorships that should have a sponsorship because they're so good at what they do Ishveen Jolly (09:19.064) Yeah, I'd say, so most of our bigger athletes have signed up through their agents. So we work with most of the top agencies in the world, and helping them and then say that what's interesting is, a lot of people say, well, they must be really expensive, but apart from that top, like couple of percent, it's like Serena Williams is one of our investors. Now she obviously has a lot of sponsors and she's a big name, so she's covered, but once you drop below that, like top two to 5%. A lot of these bigger athletes, they might have a Nike deal or an Adidas deal or they might have a car deal, but they don't have a lot of the other categories filled up. We do a lot with maybe it's like nutrients and supplements or maybe it's like fashion or whatever else, jewelry. And the drop off in price is quite hefty. So it's on their agent, but their agent is often very busy executing on the Nike deal or doing other things. So I'd say that's where we really step in to help out is like that non top 5 % who have a very good value for what you can get. Still really decent names, but they haven't got all their categories filled out. Brent Peterson (10:31.094) I think in some of your notes, you had social media selling and the ability to kind of help the athlete move into those areas. Would they just be the person that's talking about the brand and then using the social media sales platform like TikTok Shop or anything like that to then sell? Or how does that work in terms of getting them to sell actually sell something for the brand. And you did mention ROI earlier. So I'm assuming most brands are looking to get an ROI from the athletes. Ishveen Jolly (11:07.77) Yeah, I think there's like a few different ways of thinking about sales at the moment. like, of course, I think like TikTok is doing really, really well in terms of like the sharp and getting the influencers on board. I'd say that's like more of a micro strategy. Then you've got like the athletes own organic post and what comes of that. We find that is like a bit hit and miss, like sometimes it can produce, sometimes it can't. Where I think we find the most success is... These are athletes, like being able to say like an NFL player uses your product and be able to show that image is really powerful. Even if people don't follow that NFL player, like it carries gravitas, that is sponsorship. And so the most effective way that we have found of driving sales is by using that content, the name image, like this content that they produced, even if it was one post, will sign up that you have the rights to use it for like 12 months. And being able to put that in your email marketing, your MMS, your PR, your website, your Amazon page, everywhere across the board in your paid ads. And that has been killer because you're basically getting the cost of a full year's endorsement deal for one social media post. It's pretty amazing. Brent Peterson (12:20.942) You mentioned earlier now that you're also splitting away from just athletics. You're doing other type of sponsorship. Tell us a little bit about how you're branching out at a new places. Ishveen Jolly (12:32.046) Yeah, I mean, we just kind of listen to our clients and, you know, we love athletes. That's kind of our bread and butter is what we really believe in. But, you know, when the brand says to you, okay, but we also want other categories, it's hard for them to have multi places to go to manage different programs, especially if the activity you're doing is the same, the outcome is the same. And we have a really good relationship. essentially through listening to them, we realized that there were some like core categories. that I think fashion is very beauty with the original influencer categories. So they're very well baked out. There's lots of agencies or platforms servicing that. But places we found a lot of success, especially because we do a lot with CPG food, because obviously athletes, healthy body, watch what you eat kind of thing. But like foodie influencers, recipe influencers, people who talk about food a lot, very interesting. Another one coming back to sales is there's like a whole category of influencers who like drive sales to Target or Costco, or they're reviewing new products on shelves. So that's really interesting as well. Third is, as I mentioned, like these like other health and wellness, like nutrition, nutritionists, practitioners, nurses, firefighters. So love that. Another category that I've really enjoyed working with recently is like financial influencers. Again, like athletes often. are a good source for a lot of finance companies because athletes make a lot of money and have reported to lose a lot of money and all of that stuff. And then they invest, but they're very young. So it's kind of, it's a very organic story, but on the back of that, there are also financial influencers. So basically what I'd say is like, there are categories for each one. They don't warrant their own agency or platform. So I feel like we're kind of like scooping them all up. Brent Peterson (14:22.166) And if you talk about new categories, what sort of base would you look for an influencer to have? How many followers and things like that? Ishveen Jolly (14:32.28) Yeah, it's a question. I'd say like around 10,000 is the minimum to be interesting for a brand to like work with in the athlete world. go lower because obviously not all athletes have social and they might be an athlete. There might be a triathlon, Olympian, whatever else, but if there are like an influencer, then the minimum 10,000 and usually that's for like a product only deal. about 20 % of the deals we do are product only. We'll gift you product in exchange for a social media post, to get paid. probably in that 50K range. Brent Peterson (15:05.845) Yeah, so that's interesting. So I'm in the tech space and I don't know how the tech, I'm sure there's tech influencers and it would be harder I suppose to give somebody a product unless it's a product you just want them to use like a SaaS product. Do you have that in the same in the fintech space, there's probably restrictions on what they can get for products, right? Ishveen Jolly (15:34.242) Yeah, think, well then obviously you've got, yeah, it depends. Like we've worked with like, crypto websites and stuff where you get credit on the account. So like one of our clients is Western Union. Technically, if they wanted to, they could pay you in like Western Union finance money, but that's the same as cash. So it wouldn't really matter, but like, obviously like crypto is quite interesting. So I think there are ways to give you value and kind within product, for sure. Brent Peterson (16:04.578) Yeah, that's interesting. All right. So we do have a few minutes left and we could keep going because now you got my head spinning. as they close out the podcast, I do give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they want. Ishvim, what would you like to plug today? Ishveen Jolly (16:21.47) yeah, I would definitely just say influence and marketing, the ability, I think, to get people to talk about your brand, review your brand, create content for you, and then for you to repurpose that, especially if they're athletes, but as I said, our other categories as well, it's really powerful. It's great ROI. I think it's really good for like internal, like people at companies, like we've, we did a Draymond Green deal once with Glassdoor. And it had amazing engagement. And that's because everyone at Glassdoor was like, wow, Draymond Green, know, big NBA player from the Bay area knows who we are. And so I think there's like some like real big benefits of working with, I would say athletes, but influences generally. So give it a chance, reach out to us and give us a go. Brent Peterson (17:06.284) and tell us where do they find you? Ishveen Jolly (17:08.674) Yeah, opensponsorship.com is our website and you can, you know, get in touch with me, Ishvina, at opensponsorship.com. Brent Peterson (17:15.31) That's awesome. Ishvin Jolly, thank you so much for being here today. Ishveen Jolly (17:18.896) Thanks, Brent.