Tommy Smith: Welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy podcast, produced by Ackerman Marketing and PR. I’m Tommy Smith, and we’re speaking with business leaders and great communicators over a glass of sweet tea. Today, I’ll be speaking with Ed Willett, the Vice President of Sponsorship at Topgolf Media. Ed, welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy.
Ed Willett: Thank you, Tommy. Good to be here.
Tommy Smith: I’m glad you’re here. So, we often like to kick off our podcast with thoughts about that cold beverage well-known in the South: sweet tea. It’s still really hot, so a lot of folks are still drinking it here. What are your thoughts on the classic drink?
Ed Willett: My favorite drink is iced tea. I drink iced tea all the time. I love homemade iced tea, and I love Arnold Palmer iced tea. And I got to play with Mr. Arnold Palmer at a pro-am at Bay Hill. So I have a favorite memory whenever I see the Arnold Palmer iced tea cans in a store.
Tommy Smith: Yeah, so tell me about that foursome.
Ed Willett: A foursome we had at Bay Hill was Mr. Arnold Palmer, Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania, myself, and Chris McWilton, who was at the time President of Mastercard, who was sponsoring the Bay Hill event. They still do. And I was working at ESPN at the time. So it was an honor and a privilege to play in that foursome and it was magical to play four hours with Mr. Palmer, and it was like playing with your buddies. It was really a lot of fun.
Tommy Smith: Yeah? Is there a specific moment on that round that you'll always remember?
Ed Willett: It was really more the overall, just the four hours that went by in about a second. You know, just talking to him about just life, just like, you know, when you play golf normally. You get to the first green and his caddy gives you an umbrella logo, Arnold Palmer logo, ball mark and pin. And I don’t think I’ve ever asked for an autograph from anyone, and at the end of the round, I asked him for an autograph. And it’s framed. Because I’m not really an autograph person, but that was just a special day. Really special person.
Tommy Smith: That’s awesome. Well, I’d say you’ve got to meet some other special folks. You’ve been in sports marketing for quite a while, in the advertising business. Talk a little bit about how that’s changed over the past couple decades, particularly sports advertising and in-person experience and kind of the intersection of all that.
Ed Willett: I guess it’s gotten bigger, I’d say. It’s gotten bigger. It used to be a little more intimate. I think it’s everything’s on a bigger scale. There's a lot of activations that are being done around big events. And I think it’s harder, harder to have that one-on-one kind of meet-and-greet that there used to be.
Tommy Smith: I guess how do you communicate the value of sponsorships differently now than you did, you know, a decade ago?
Ed Willett: Well, there's a lot more measurement. There's a lot more analytics that go along with it. I think back years ago, it was more of a gut feel. If a CEO felt he wanted to sponsor a golf tournament because it was in his hometown, they would do it. And now it’s a lot more analytics behind it, marketing objectives, a lot more measurement on our—the marketing objectives being met. So just overall a more analytical approach to sponsorship.
Tommy Smith: And are there other—aside from the analytical side, are there are there other intangibles that that play into sponsorships that have stayed the test of time?
Ed Willett: Yeah, I think one of the key things for any company is the ability to utilize sports to entertain their clients. So you'll see in any kind of sponsorship, there’s always an element of tickets or suites, especially in golf, where the presenting sponsor will take a lot of their clients to the event. And I know that's always been a big thing for any presenting sponsorship or signage in a stadium that comes with tickets. And you try to utilize those with your top clients to bring them there, spend time with them, and utilize it as an entertainment vehicle.
Ed Willett: I mean, every sponsorship has its own set of elements. Some people use the signage for, you know, getting their brand out in a marketplace. A lot of them will use—there might be an advertising element or media element and use those for brand messaging. So there's some consistent elements across the board. I’d say the bigger element now is activation, where brands want to be closely aligned with a sports property or team, but then do activations around that sponsorship. And that’s much bigger than it used to be.
Tommy Smith: Is there a particular brand that activation is primary to and you think they do a great job of?
Ed Willett: Yeah, I’d say American Express with the US Tennis Open has been a great example over the years. I remember years ago, you know, they were a sponsor of the event, they’d get signage. But now if you go to the US Open, the first thing you see when you walk in, you can give your American Express card and get a little transistor radio to hear the TV broadcast. And then if you go inside the activation area, American Express has a huge activation project going on inside where it’s interactive pictures, different events you can do around tennis. So it’s right when you walk in, throughout the whole experience, there's a strong activation element for American Express.
Tommy Smith: You’ve worked a long time in golf. Talk about that sport and advertising with golf over the years. What’s emerging now as a as a big trend and kind of how you think about advertising in golf particularly?
Ed Willett: Yeah, golf is one of the areas that’s always been a traditional sort of presenting sponsorship model, especially in a tournament sense. So there's a couple of elements. You have the tournaments where you have a presenting sponsorship like Mastercard presents the Bay Hill event. You also have advertising on with individual players, whether it’s on their clothes, their hats, their golf bags. Golf’s always been an interesting sport where they try to maximize individual athletes as well as tournaments.
Ed Willett: And it’s it’s kind of interesting, actually. When you watch a tournament, the top ten players will have several logos, and you might have a surprise person show up and really not have any if they're out of the top fifty or one hundred player. It’s very tough for them to get sponsorship deals. So a combination in golf is title sponsorship of a tournament, player sponsorship where they'll do events for you throughout the year, and then advertising on golf broadcast, which generally is an older audience, more upscale. So if you watch golf on television, you'll see, you know, retirement ads, financial ads, more upscale auto ads because the demos are generally a little bit older, more male-focused, and a little bit higher income.
Tommy Smith: Go behind the curtain a little bit. I’m an up-and-coming golfer, I’m making some progress, and then certain brands are starting to look at me. Tell me about that courting process for a emerging athlete that that’s going to be soon approached by advertisers. What’s that look like? Just a process.
Ed Willett: Oh sure, I can tell you exactly what happens. You have a lot of sports marketing agencies like Wasserman, Endeavor, the old IMG. There's a bunch of companies that have agent groups that are looking for the next up-and-coming player. So they're scouting the college ranks, they're scouting the lower tours looking for guys that and women that might be about to make a breakthrough.
Ed Willett: So you have them really keeping an eye on them, they try to sign them for representation. So a good player will hire an agent. So they don't really have to go out themselves and try to find sponsors. But the Wassermans of the world will then go after a club deal, try to sell your hat, your shirt, try to get you appearance fees, put together a whole plan around your brand, which is really you as a golfer.
Ed Willett: And within the women’s game, it’s very difficult because the viewership, you're not getting national television exposure. So it becomes even harder to get bigger dollars. Michelle Wie is probably the one player over the last ten years that from an endorsement standpoint has done really well and she won one major which really helped out. But for the guys, the club deals are harder to come by from the club manufacturers.
Ed Willett: And for brands, they're looking for someone that will embrace their brand. Like Jordan Spieth was probably the hottest golfer in the world five years ago and made a bunch of long-term brand deals. And the last couple years he hasn't played as well. So from a brand perspective, they kind of bet that he was going to be the next top five player for the next fifteen years. Like Under Armour, AT&T, and some others made big bets with him. And he struggled the last couple years. And you don't see him on TV as much.
Tommy Smith: So talk about some of the tradeoffs those players have to make when they consider brands coming to them. What are kind of decisions they get to make other than just general brand appeal and the dollars? What other factors go into that decision?
Ed Willett: Definitely scheduling, as the player schedules their year out, which tournaments they're going to play, which tournaments will bring the most exposure, appearance fees for their sponsors. So you have to schedule so many days, advertising shoots, how many days that’s going to be. Under Armour may demand so many days from Jordan Spieth on the shooting schedule. So really it’s about your schedule and which brands you want to identify with.
Ed Willett: You know, in basketball there's a big recruiting war going on among the sneaker brands. Puma and New Balance have jumped into NBA marketing. So guys coming out of the draft now have options between Nike, Adidas, Puma, New Balance. You know, dollars in basketball probably larger because you have eighty-two games, a lot of TV exposure, a lot of kids who emulate, want to buy those sneakers.
Ed Willett: So golf maybe a little less so on the sneaker front. Footjoy has always been a dominant brand, but now Rickie Fowler has really energized the Puma brand. So you get the right athlete at the right time. Puma’s really focused on young, sort of younger, I hate to use the word cooler, but sort of a cooler model. They signed Lexi Thompson on the women’s side, Rickie Fowler on the guys' side. You see a lot of kids at PGA events dressed in orange Puma, big orange hat like Rickie Fowler wears. So, you know, that’s kind of a breakthrough they were looking for. I think they got it. So sometimes you pick the right person at the right time and the right brand fit.
Tommy Smith: Well, it looks like college athletes may be making those decisions here soon. You saw where the state of California just signed a bill, the governor just signed a bill to allow for collegiate endorsements. I know you're not a college—your career’s not been in college, but opine on that a little bit if you will. I’m interested to hear your perspective on it.
Ed Willett: Yeah, I read that this morning. It’s been going on for a long time, this whole college athlete and revenue dilemma with the NCAA. Yeah, it’s tough because, you know, these athletes get a free education. There's not that many athletes that are going to be able to cash in on that other than the big-time stars who will get paid for their likeness. You know, you have tons of other athletes that aren't going to have a deal like that, guys like offensive linemen, swimmers, the basic student-athlete.
Ed Willett: I think there's, you know, you have the basic student-athlete and then you have, like, these huge football and basketball mega teams. They're driving all this revenue, the coaches, and coaches have TV deals. It does seem to me the players should share some of that on some of these mega teams. It just seems like a total misnomer that the broadcast networks or cable networks are paying tens of millions of dollars.
Ed Willett: So yeah, it’s a very it’s a tough one because I think some of these kids deserve it and it’s become like a minor league of professional sports for sure, especially in the basketball and football side.
Tommy Smith: It'll be interesting to see how the money flows through to other teams, yeah, within a within a single university. It'll be interesting to
Ed Willett: Yeah, like the baseball, lacrosse, women’s field hockey teams, do they all share in that? I mean, it’s a broken model. I don’t know what the solution would be, but some of these sports have become such huge money makers that, you know, it’s out of control. And, you know, the recruiting violations, it’s just such a big business.
Tommy Smith: Let’s talk about online gaming, because I know that’s close to your role now. It’s been a way for the fans to experience sports from the seat of the athlete in the past, and now it seems as if online sports gaming is drawing fans to new sports. I saw a survey not too long ago about something like 82% of Topgolf guests say that playing there influenced their decision to play golf. How do you think about this multi-dimensional fan engagement experience, kind of the convergence of sports and online gaming?
Ed Willett: Yeah, I can touch on on Topgolf for a minute. Topgolf has really increased so many things around the golf game. It’s brought new people to the game. It’s brought kids, it’s brought women, it’s brought it’s much more than golf. It’s really bringing people together in a shared event, which is great. But you do get to swing a golf club and it’s great for someone that hasn’t played the game to experience that fun, try to bring fun to the to golf. A lot of people feel like golf is not the most fun sport. If you do it at Topgolf, you'll have a lot of fun.
Ed Willett: From a gambling perspective, the business has changed so dramatically and so quickly. I remember I met with DraftKings probably, jeez, about five years ago, and it was such an early business model. And once legalization of of gambling has taken place in state after state, it has taken off. And no question it’s going to revolutionize how you watch the game, how you invest in games. You can almost gamble on every play.
Ed Willett: So fantasy sports has become, you know, a big part of the fan’s time, but betting on each play and betting on each week, being able to do it off your phone is certainly a game changer. Dangerous, my kids I’m worried about. I’ve talked to them about how easy it is to to gamble and spend money so quickly that hopefully they'll keep a clear head about it. But it’s become really easy to do. And you're just putting your credit card on these apps, it becomes pretty easy, pretty easy to lose money quick, I guess pretty easy to make money. I just tell them to keep a level head about it because it is and they're getting into every sport and it’s becoming really easy to do.
Tommy Smith: On golf, I’ve often I’ve also seen for years now this kind of trend of twelve-hole golf courses. Is that something you think is still rising or was that a brief fad? What what’s your take on those?
Ed Willett: Yeah, I don’t know if that’s taken hold. I think the USGA tried an initiative a few years ago about play nine, you know, don't worry about eighteen, play nine, make it quicker. Some golf people over the years have had, you know, bigger holes, make the hole bigger. I know music is becoming a part of golf where you know let people play golf and listen to music. Just, you know, just making the game more fun. And pace of play has been a big discussion over the last forever, really, but over the last couple years pace of play has become, you know, bigger and bigger like why should it take five hours to play a round of golf? I mean, let's go, you know.
Ed Willett: And some of the watching pros play as a result, like, you know, the pros take a ton of time, you know, do amateurs really have to do that? I went on a trip to Scotland for a week of golf and gosh, people there play eighteen holes of golf walking in three hours. Totally different experience than in the US, completely. You're playing three hours of golf, you’re you know, it doesn't take up the whole day, and it’s just a whole different mindset than over here where you're lining up putts and for an amateur player, it just takes too long.
Tommy Smith: Yeah, my real talent starts to show after about hole ten, so that’s why I like to play nine. You mentioned teaching your kids, but you're also teaching some other kids. You’ve started teaching some college students some wisdom. Tell me about that.
Ed Willett: Oh yeah, I got into guest lecturing over the years at different schools like Columbia and NYU with friends that had some courses they were teaching. And yeah, absolutely love it, super passionate. And then I started teaching some sport management classes at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. Dave Taromio runs an incredible program there. He's put together over the last seven, eight, nine years and I love it, I absolutely love it.
Ed Willett: To be able to work with kids that are passionate about the business, really interactive classroom, teach them about getting their first jobs in the industry, networking, interviewing, just really passing along knowledge that you develop over your career is super passion. I absolutely love it. And hope to continue as much as I can. I moved to Carlsbad and recently met with the San Diego State University group that’s in an MBA program just to kind of, again, just kind of guest lecture, network, maybe do a project with them. And I just, yeah, I love it, I love to help people that are passionate about the business, especially when they're getting their kind of first or second job in the industry. It’s just great.
Ed Willett: And it’s great to see different fields they want to get into. The group that I talked to at San Diego State had such a very interest: college athletics, some people are looking at e-sports, some people are looking at the gambling side, you know, the emerging growth of sports. Used to be a lot of people wanted to work at ESPN or the leagues, but it’s really changed. There's a lot of different paths you can take.
Tommy Smith: What was your first sports marketing job?
Ed Willett: Sports Illustrated. I was in advertising sales and found out that Sports Illustrated had an opening and I interviewed and I remember the first day I walked in and it was the first time I felt like a job wasn’t a job. It was like, "Wow, this is incredible." Like, you know, I can’t wait to read the next issue, I can’t wait to talk to the editors, I can’t wait to get the insight, I can’t...
Tommy Smith: That’s the good stuff there.
Ed Willett: Yeah, and back then, that was really a big big leader in the industry. You know, they were still the number one magazine and breaking news and had the best writers and photographers. That was pre-internet. So it was still, you know, amazing. And then my other sort of dream job was ESPN. Working there was, you know, totally incredible as well. So two kind of dream media jobs.
Tommy Smith: Well as Topgolf expands, we may have you back on and see how the digital front is kind of bringing more golf fans into the fold.
Ed Willett: Yeah, no Topgolf is just growing leaps and bounds. There's a lot of different sides of the business. The growth has been just astronomical. Great leadership, great company values, great company culture.
Tommy Smith: Yeah I saw where I think Topgolf has the the world’s largest digital golf audience with its acquisition a couple years ago of WGT. Is that still the case?
Ed Willett: Still the case and growing. And there's other things that are happening that will grow that further that we're going to announce probably in the next six months or so, some really big exciting projects that will generate a lot of interest within golf and without and outside golf.
Tommy Smith: Well Ed, I appreciate your time today. I’m looking forward to those announcements, whatever those are, but I sure do appreciate your mind and your take on the on the state of sports marketing.
Ed Willett: Thank you, Tommy. Thank you. I really enjoyed this.
Tommy Smith: All right. Thank you, Ed. Have a good one.
Ed Willett: You too. Take care. Bye-bye.
Tommy Smith: Well, that’s the future of cyber security. Thanks for listening to the podcast. To listen to more Sweet Tea and Strategy about communications and business strategy, visit https://www.google.com/search?q=thinkackerman.com. Thank you.