Latest news with #OnTheRecord
Campaign ME
18 hours ago
- Business
- Campaign ME
Podcast: Spiro's Virginia Ocampo: ‘Move from planned events to strategic experiences'
On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East's On The Record podcast, Virginia Ocampo, the Director of Global Strategy at Spiro, discusses how to build meaningful, experiential strategies, ensuring cultural relevance, brand safety and consistency in global brand positioning while leaning into data analytics and AI-led consumer behaviour insights. Beginning the conversation, Ocampo said, 'Artificial intelligence and LLMs are just tools that permit us to derive insights from raw data. Those insights then inform a strategy that guides the direction of specific brand experiences. We don't jump into tactics, because tactics without strategy are an expensive noise. That's why we always take the route of data, insights, strategy and then look into the creative direction of that experience. What this ensures is that connections – between brands and consumers – will have a higher impact.' Ocampo also breaks the myth that it's hard to prove return-on-investment (ROI) within experiential marketing while discussing ways to quantify the effectiveness of experiential marketing on long-term brand equity. 'We need to stop viewing experiential as a cost and start viewing it as a strategic investment into brand equity. For this, we need the right metrics to have a measurable experience – in a way that speaks to impact. This goes beyond return-on-investment (ROI) to include what is the return on the objectives, on the experience and on the community that impacts your brand on that activation,' Ocampo said. She added, 'The time has to move away from planning events to designing experiences. If you could forget about everything you know about events, do it, and then take this new approach. It's time to rethink how we design experiences. We have the tools, strategies and frameworks that can guide this process to create impactful experiences,' Calling for a strategic approach to experiential marketing, Ocampo says that it's time for brands to define clear key performance indicators (KPIs) and clear objectives, without which any efforts put into it are wasted. 'We have tools such as the Gravity Index, which breaks down seven drivers in audiences that helps brands be more accurate in the design of their experiences. This definitely results in higher impact and engagement with your audience,' Ocampo explained. She also goes on to explain the need for marketers to embrace training programmes and cross-disciplinary workshops to ensure that brands develop effective experiential strategists within their teams. Spiro recently conducted several such workshops for brands and partners in the Middle East. 'Even if brands have been in the market for 30 years, it's never too late to assess where they are it in terms of their portfolio of events; the way they communicate; and the consistency of their messaging, especially in big industries where they have different business units that have different audiences and require curated messages for each audience,' she added. For more insights from a very intriguing conversation, watch the full video above. CREDITS: Guest: Virginia Ocampo, the Director of Global Strategy, Spiro Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group Studio: Ahmed Abdelwahab, Studio Manager, Motivate Media Group Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
CNBC
5 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Sport: Why one prominent investor thinks team valuations are way too high
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. It took nine months, but I finally found a high-profile investor who says professional sports team valuations are too high. This week's "On The Record" guest is Gerry Cardinale , the founder of RedBird Capital Partners. RedBird is a private equity firm that focuses on media and sports investments. RedBird has been the controlling owner of AC Milan, the Italian professional football (soccer) club, since 2022. It's also an investor in Skydance Media and one of the driving forces behind Skydance's still-pending merger with Paramount Global. Cardinale says he's "pencils down" on all major U.S. sports team acquisitions right now as valuations soar. "If you're a student of history, you know that always going up is not is not a great arbiter for making an investment," said Cardinale. "There needs to be some normalization in what I see as a bit of an asset bubble." Since we started this newsletter in September, I've spoken with many people who have touted the benefits of sports team ownership. They've pointed out investing in a franchise tends to be recession proof. The assets are scarce and appeal to rich people's vanity – a constant in all macroeconomic environments. The values are largely tied to media rights deals, which keep going up and up , at least for the big U.S. sports. The influx of private equity owners has added potential bidders, which boosts prices. The private equity firm Arctos Partners created an index with the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan that tracks team transactions over the past 60 years. The results are clear: team valuations have risen for six decades in a row, including a stunning jump in recent years. The phrase "up and to the right" has never been more accurate. Arctos is one of the firms that's now allowed to buy a piece of a National Football League team – a rule that changed last year. Arctos quickly acquired a 10% stake in the Buffalo Bills. Ares Management, another authorized PE firm, has bought a 10% stake in the Miami Dolphins. RedBird isn't on the NFL's list of accepted private equity limited owners, but Cardinale told me he's uninterested in buying a minority stake in any major U.S. team right now. "I don't think that's a great investment," Cardinale said. "I want to have an involvement, a partnership, in the actual governance, in the underwriting of the business plan." A 10% ownership stake gives firms little control over day-to-day team operations. Minority investments come with no voting rights. Cardinale told me one of the major red flags for team ownership is a lack of generally accepted equity research for the asset class. Almost all sports teams aren't publicly traded. That has limited the insight into cash flow projections for how they'll perform. He noted Forbes Magazine and CNBC Sport's team valuations (led by our Michael Ozanian ) are the primary way investors research valuations given the lack of options. Cardinale says he's more interested in being the majority owner of a U.S. sports team one day – just not at today's prices. "I don't like the entry prices right now, because the underlying business plans are not there to really pay for it, and it relies on a certain assumption on media rights trajectory," he said. Cardinale noted that while NBA and NFL media rights have soared for decades, the question will become "the slope of the curve" for future deals. The NFL can opt out of its current media rights deal after the 2029-30 season. The NBA has its TV deal locked up until the end of the 2036-37 season. He predicted we'll see rights payments fall for sports with lower ratings – though perhaps not Major League Baseball. Cardinale is invested in New England Sports Network (NESN), which carries local Boston Red Sox games, through RedBird's minority stake in Fenway Sports Group. RedBird is also a minority owner in the YES Network, which owns the New York Yankees' local rights. That puts Cardinale in an unusually strong position to help dictate the future of local MLB rights. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has been vocal about his desire to take back local rights from regional sports networks in 2028 to sell a new nationalized product. Manfred will need buy-in from the big-market clubs like the Red Sox and the Yankees, whose RSNs bring in tens of millions more in annual revenue than those of smaller markets. Cardinale said one idea being discussed is to form a new company that could own local rights and negotiate with distributors. "The challenge baseball always has is there's a subtle tension between the big markets and the small markets. They both need each other," Cardinale said. "I think that baseball will do very well having groups like the YES Network and NESN – the Yankees, the Red Sox – and there are others like the Cubs and LA [Dodgers] anchor what ultimately will be a centralized media company." At this point, Cardinale's idea is hypothetical. MLB has talked to many people about different plans for regional games, according to people familiar with the league's conversations. A company that controls media but grants different amounts of equity in the venture to clubs isn't part of the league's current thinking, the people said. Still, Cardinale points out that teams should think of themselves as their own live entertainment entities and that there would be clear value in a company that could see distribution rights to all games at a national level. An MLB spokesperson declined to comment. On the record With RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale ... I spoke with Cardinale about several of RedBird's investments, including the UFL – that's the name of the combined USFL-XFL spring football league, which came together last year. I gave Cardinale an impassioned plea for the UFL to rebrand itself as an NFL developmental league that could service players such as Trey Lance , a quarterback who desperately needs live reps but can't get them because there's no forum for him to play what essentially should be minor-league football. The NBA has the G League, and the MLB and NHL have minor league affiliated clubs that offer the ability to develop talent for major league teams. The NFL doesn't have this same system, and the UFL could be that … Watch the entire interview here . Or listen to it here and follow the CNBC Sport podcast if you prefer the audio version. And if you go the audio route, a bonus: I also discuss the week's biggest sports and media news including my thoughts on Cardinale's interview with my colleague Lillian Rizzo . CNBC Sport highlight reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: One of those stories I talked about with Lillian was her report that high school sports at PBS stations are at risk with potential federal funding cuts. You can read that story right here. It's been a rough go recently for apparel companies, but the Swiss brand On is slowly gaining market share at the expense of Nike and Adidas, reports CNBC's Merritt Enright . CNBC contributor Karen Finerman joined "Fast Money" to talk about her investment, alongside Alibaba founder Jack Ma and supermodel Karlie Kloss , in the WNBA's New York Liberty, valuing the team at about $450 million. A CNBC Sport exclusive: Private equity firm Valeas Capital has acquired a majority stake in TicketManager, a company that specializes in managing corporate ticket sales, for $110 million. Have you heard of Hyrox? It's a series of fitness races that are drawing hundreds of thousands of athletes — both professional and amateur — and also more than $100 million in revenue. CNBC's Brandon Gomez has the details. The big number: 7.05 million A mammoth ratings number for Sunday's Indianapolis 500 is a clear win for Fox. The broadcast network took the TV rights from NBC beginning this year. Last year's race on NBC drew 5.02 million viewers. This year's race had the biggest TV audience for the event in 17 years. Quote of the week "It would be extremely prejudicial to Disney for Connolly to breach the contract which he negotiated just a few months ago and switch teams when Disney is working on a new licensing deal with the company that is trying to poach him." – Disney has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against YouTube for poaching veteran ESPN executive Justin Connolly . YouTube is making Connolly the steamer's global head of media and sports. Disney claims YouTube knew Connolly was under contract but offered a job to him anyway and "induced Connolly to breach the Employment Agreement," at a time when Connolly was working on a new licensing agreement between Disney and YouTube. "Connolly has intimate knowledge of Disney's other distribution deals, the financial details concerning Disney's content being licensed to YouTube, and Disney's negotiation strategies, both in general and in particular with respect to YouTube," the lawsuit claims. I'm going to crowdsource this one – what's the best sports/athlete analogy for this? I'm thinking of an athlete on one team who is traded mid-season to an arch rival to work for the other team. The one that came to mind will be a winner with my younger audience – the Chicago Cubs trading Lou Brock to the St. Louis Cardinals in June 1964. Around the league WNBA players want to get paid more, and that quest will be driven by additional revenue coming into the league. A key component of that will be advertising. The WNBA has struck a deal with Nielsen to measure its television viewership across traditional TV and streaming – the largest commercial measurement deal Nielsen has ever struck with a women's sports league, Axios's Sara Fischer reports . The College Football Playoff needs to figure out its next iteration, which could include moving to a 16-team field. ESPN has more details on the latest thinking about different big-time college football programs. One of 54 T206 Honus Wagner cards is currently up for auction, but you're going to need to pay at least $3.2 million, Sportico reports . The 1909 American Tobacco Company T206 is the gold standard for baseball card collectors. The last T206 Wagner up for auction sold in 2022 for $7.25 million by Goldin Auctions.
CNBC
22-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC Sport: Sports world waits for historic NCAA settlement ushering in new era of athlete pay
The sports world is waiting on a finalized settlement for , the landmark resolution that will define new rules allowing universities to directly pay their athletes. The final OK from Judge Claudia Ann Wilken could happen as soon as this week. Assuming the settlement is approved, several important things will change – perhaps the two biggest being: 1) It will create a revenue-sharing model that will allow schools to directly pay certain student-athletes – initially about $20 million per year. 2) About $2.8 billion will be allocated to former Division I college athletes who played from 2016 to 2024. (For athletes that graduated in 2015, I feel your pain.) There are a number of outstanding issues that will need to be taken care of in the coming months. One is oversight of the new system. As ESPN reported this week, the NCAA will no longer be responsible for ensuring payment rules are followed. Instead, a new enforcement committee – the College Sports Commission – will be in charge of doling out punishments for rule-breakers. You can almost be certain that plenty of schools will look for loopholes or push the limits of what's allowed as they try to compete. This new House settlement won't stop name, image and likeness collectives, though some will be shut down. This is already happening. But mid-market Division I schools will need every dollar they can get. It's a topic I discussed with former ESPN senior NBA insider and current St. Bonaventure University men's basketball General Manager Adrian Wojnarowski – this week's On The Record guest. "We've got to be able to get high-major players for mid-major money in the Atlantic 10," Woj told me. "You need high major players to win in our league. I feel like we've got several of them in this recruiting class, but it is a constant challenge for schools." There are so many interesting threads to pull on as college athletes move from amateurism to professionalism. How the money is allotted to the biggest sports at the biggest sports schools – versus smaller sports and schools – will certainly be a theme for years. I'm very worried about how March Madness may lose its magic, as I wrote about last month. To me, that event – enormously important to both men's and women's college basketball and their media partners – stands out among all other big-money tournaments because it's the only one where you can have true David vs. Goliath stories, with small schools beating the mighty on the biggest stage. Woj told me he agrees that the days of major March Madness upsets may be going away. All four No. 1 seeds made the NCAA Final Four this year. "It does take away the magic," Woj said. "What you're seeing right now is the Power Four conferences (the Big Ten, the Big 12, the ACC, and the SEC) are really dictating the rules, the landscape. You're seeing with this House settlement. It's the Power Four leagues deciding the rules and how this is going to go, and all of that, literally, all of it is to benefit them." If there are any surprises from Judge Wilken, I'll write more about it next week. The CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media, delivered weekly to your inbox. Subscribe here to get access today. One other subject I wanted to touch on briefly – YouTube released its weekly top podcast list for the first time. Perusing the top shows, I was struck by something — not a lot of sports! It's the polar opposite of traditional TV, where sports (particularly the NFL) dominate the ratings. NBC's "Sunday Night Football" finished the 2024-25 TV season, which concluded yesterday, as primetime's No. 1 show for its 14th consecutive year. This was quite evident at last week's advertising upfronts, where sports programming frequently led media companies' presentations. A few interesting takeaways: 1) People still want to watch non-sports content, but they've moved away from the traditional TV ecosystem. 2) Sports may be too immediate for the on-demand podcast world. It's basically the inverse of why sports dominate in a live TV setting. Sports are immediate, but they're also fleeting. There's not a lot of value in listening to a three-day old sports podcast, but there's plenty of value for a time-delayed comedy, true-crime or idea-based political podcast. 3) Of the sports content that did make the Top 50 ("The Pat McAfee Show," "Club Shay Shay"), the shows tend to be broader in focus than just sports. McAfee is willing to go in many different directions. "Club Shay Shay," a weekly podcast hosted by former Denver Broncos star Shannon Sharpe, is a standard interview show, even if many of the guests are third point is particularly salient to ESPN, which will need to start programming for a streaming world outside of traditional TV with the launch of its $29.99 all-access service this fall. It will be interesting to see if ESPN invests in broader content that is sports-adjacent to keep people subscribing to the service. That would be a change for a network that's recently moved away from polarizing political topics to emphasize its focus on sports. With St. Bonaventure University men's basketball general manager and former ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski ...
Campaign ME
19-05-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
Podcast: Property Finder CMO on purpose, performance, brand and business priorities
On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East's On The Record podcast, Sevgi Gur, Chief Marketing Officer, Property Finder discusses the balance between long-term brand health and short-term sales; the growing role of AI-driven data analytics and insights on predictive marketing; as well as the ethical considerations around trust, transparency, privacy and personalisation that need to be prioritised within marketing strategies. Beginning the conversation with the brand versus performance debate and the ideal framework to fuel both, Gur says, 'When we begin the discussion on brand and performance, there's this assumption that there's no brand in performance. However, the conversation needs to start with the need for investment in brand and investment in performance – both of which are part of the holistic strategy.' 'Marketing is an investment into business growth. To ensure this, the starting point should be a clear understanding of the business strategy and the growth model of the company. Then, from there the ideal framework would be based around the brand development model. Depending on the maturity of the brand, marketers will have to decide whether they need to invest more into brand equity – for example, if the brand is new to the market or is entering a new region, it's a no brainer that the business needs to invest in upper-funnel brand awareness, without which you cannot drive performance,' Gur added. For a brand such as PropertyFinder, which has already reached 99 per cent brand awareness within the market by investing in brand, the strategy then shifts to maintaining that brand equity within the market, which in turn drives user acquisition and engagement. Gur said, 'We're extremely clear about the role of each investment and the metrics that we can drive. Generally, with brand investment, you can expect more upper funnel metrics to move – sessions, downloads, direct traffic – but also, I'm a big fan of measuring the heart of the brand; so, we also measure brand health, consideration, loyalty and more.' Through the conversation, Gur also delves into: used cases of artificial intelligence and large-language models within marketing; how to build trust within the brand and within the industry; strategies that CMOs can put into place to effectively align marketing initiatives with cross-functional business priorities, especially by breaking siloes and working better with their product, sales and finance teams. For more insights from a very intriguing conversation, watch the full video above. CREDITS: Guest: Sevgi Gur, Chief Marketing Officer, Property Finder Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group Studio: Ahmed Abdelwahab, Studio Manager, Motivate Media Group Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
Campaign ME
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Campaign ME
Podcast: DCT Abu Dhabi's Emma Campbell reveals key destination marketing insights
On the latest episode of Campaign Middle East's On The Record podcast, Emma Campbell, Director of Sector Marketing, Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), discusses changing trends within travel marketing and destination marketing; why marketers should move from using AI to understanding how consumers use AI; and the need to move past transactional relationships with agencies to meaningful partnerships that benefit the industry, the UAE and the Middle East region. Campbell begins the discussion sharing key insights from Experience Abu Dhabi's recent Kids Recommended initiative, part of the entity's summer campaign brought to life in partnership with Ogilvy. The research commissioned by Experience Abu Dhabi, the destination brand of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), polled more than 7,000 children aged 5 to 12 – and their parents – from across nine countries, including France, Italy, Germany, China, UK, US, and India, as well as UAE and Saudi Arabia. It revealed that 90 per cent of children worldwide want holiday activities that helps them make new friends; 95 per cent of kids want to try activities they can tell their friends about; and 91 per cent are inspired by what their friends have done. 'I've always said that as a marketer, we have to be the voice of the consumer,' Campbell said. 'And to be that voice, I need to deeply understand who the consumer is. Now, what we see in Abu Dhabi, particularly over the summer season is that families are our audiences. Also, quite often, we've seen that the kids are the ones influencing the decisions. So, we decided that instead of conducting research with parents, let's just do some research with kids; let's hear what the kids want and what's the perfect holiday in the kids mind; let's validate whether our destination is, indeed, perfect for kids.' The campaign included seven-day itineraries, ideated and designed by children and for children, which translated into an experiential film. Children were vocal about how they'd like to spend their holidays, whether that's at water parks, zoos, wildlife safaris, desert discoveries and five-star hotels or time spent enjoying experiences such as kayaking, climbing, trying new food and watching live events such as Formula 1. 'An interesting insight was the importance of human connection. In a world where everyone's nervous about losing their children to screen time, gaming and online worlds, what we actually heard from the mouths of children is that they love to have fun with their family on holiday; they love to make new friends; and they love to come back and talk to their friends about these trips. I thought that was really heart warming,' Campbell added. How destination marketers ought to use AI The conversation also touches upon the need to go beyond marketers 'using AI' for copy, creative and speed-to-market, and move more toward understanding how consumers use AI, so that AI is giving them the correct responses that marketers want them to have. This means going beyond targeting consumers to learning how to 'talk to AI' and 'teach AI' where to pick up credible information from. Campbell said, 'I think marketers have been very focused on how to use AI, and have often lost sight of how their consumers are using AI. For me, that's the really fascinating piece. What we're hearing is that in the travel and tourism industry is that AI is being used by up to 40 per cent of travellers to plan their itineraries.' 'Also, what we're seeing is that while AI is creating these itineraries, they're pulling all this information from the destination websites. So, what we need to take into consideration is that the content we're creating for our website, which has to be authentic and needs human intervention, is not just living on our website but is also showing up in other places. And that's exciting because that's what we want – dissemination of content en masse – so that it is at the fingertips of people planning their trips,' she added. From transactions to partnerships The podcast discussion also delved into the need for the brand and marketing industry to build better partnerships and meaningful relationships that mutually benefit brands as well as the agencies serving them. Campbell, who has worked across multiple markets such as the UK, Australia, Fiji and the UAE, said, 'The principles of working with an agency must stem from a true partnership, and has to be set up as a functional partnership.' When asked what that means or looks like, she responded, 'For us working in destination marketing, we know that the agency working with us doesn't need to only understand the brand, it needs to understand the destination. This means making the effort to really immersing the agency into the product and setting up the agency relationship in a way that truly feels like a partnership.' Taking an example, Campbell added, 'We onboarded Ogilvy as our consumer PR agency 12 months ago, and the relationship has worked really well because they're sitting with us in our offices on a day-to-day basis; they have team members embedded in our task forces; they're with us on every project that we're working on; and they behave as an extension of our team. As such, we treat them with a huge amount of respect and trust to deliver excellent work for us. So, when we work on something like the Kids Recommended initiative – which is quite different from anything we've done before – there's this inherent layer of trust that we can work through it together and make something excellent happen because we understand each other.' For more such insights from a very intriguing conversation, watch the full video above. CREDITS: Guest: Emma Campbell, Director of Sector Marketing, Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi) Host: Anup Oommen, Editor, Campaign Middle East Production: Surajit Dutta, Content Production Manager, Motivate Media Group Videography: Mark Mathew, Creative Content Producer, Motivate Media Group Studio: Ahmed Abdelwahab, Studio Manager, Motivate Media Group Editing: John Melencion, Content Producer, Motivate Media Group
