Sports Innovation Lab Names Top 25 Most Innovative Sponsors in Sports for 2022

Available for download at mostinnovative.com, the new report uses a novel methodology to rank brands excelling at innovative sports sponsorship

BOSTON, Oct. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Sports Innovation Lab, a fan intelligence and market research company, announced today the public release of its inaugural Top 25 Most Innovative Sponsors in Sports report (#25Innovative). The announcement took place during their Most Innovative 2022 conference, a reimagined take on the traditional sports business conference hosted at VR World in New York City.

After identifying a need in the marketplace for a benchmark that eliminates subjectivity from the process of determining what makes a sponsor innovative, Sports Innovation Lab developed an algorithm-based report that uniquely ranks global brands according to how effectively they demonstrate their ability to win the future fan – the Fluid Fan™. Highlights from the report include:

• Red Bull took the No. 1 spot, demonstrating its continued commitment to utilizing its athletes, media house, and progressive activations to strengthen its relationship with fans.
• Nike, T-Mobile, Xbox, and AT&T rounded out the top 5, each scoring points for developing owned platforms that support and enhance their sponsorships, and utilizing emerging technology that gives them a direct line to valuable Fluid Fan communities.
• The methodology looked at three core metrics to score and ultimately rank brands:
• Community Strength – A statistical measure of how brands facilitate and grow their consumer communities, providing a channel to amplify, extend, and enhance sports activations.
• Brand Energy – A measure of fan conversation and interest in what a brand is doing in relation to sports over time. Brand Energy utilizes search, trend, and social data to plot a slope of interest.
• Emerging Tech – A statistical measure of how sponsors are integrating the technologies that Fluid Fans are leaning into, including Mixed Reality, NFTs, Sustainability Technology, and Data Collection.

 

“Team Xbox is extremely honored and humbled by this prestigious award from Sports Innovation Lab,” said Chris Munson, Sr. Global Xbox Sports Partnerships at Microsoft. “At Team Xbox, we take great pride in collaborating with amazing partners in the sports industry and, over the last year, we have been able to work together to deliver a creative and powerful POV in Sports. Power Your Dreams!”

Sports Innovation Lab believes the report can be a benchmark and organizing framework for how to explore innovative areas of commercial sponsorships, and allow brands to push properties and teams to integrate features of these metrics. The brands on this list cross categories and continents, but Sports Innovation Lab believes they should universally be focused on the same goal: Create sponsorships that acquire more Fluid Fans.

“As an athlete I was taught to understand the difference between pain and discomfort,” said Sports Innovation Lab Co-Founder and CEO Angela Ruggiero, a 4x Olympic medalist in ice hockey for Team USA. “Innovation in business happens when you lean into discomfort, try new things, and find the gains in your game. This report celebrates the brands who pushed through discomfort to try new things and engage the Fluid Fan.”

Most Innovative is Sports Innovation Lab’s platform dedicated to all things innovation, including its well-known Top 25 Most Innovative Teams In the World ranking, and its annual Most Innovative conference. Sports Innovation Lab defined the Fluid Fan in 2017 and has built the industry’s leading fan intelligence company, providing observational data on Fluid Fans with the tools and strategies needed to acquire them. To follow the conversation around the Top 25 Most Innovative Sponsors in Sports report on social media, follow @sportsilab, @angelaruggiero, and #25Innovative.

About Sports Innovation Lab Sports Innovation Lab is a fan intelligence and market research company that helps the world’s leading sports organizations acquire the fan of the future – the Fluid Fan™ – and maximize their value. We collect and analyze observational data on what fans buy, watch, and how they behave, then provide analysis and strategic interpretation of that data to world-class clients such as the NFL, NHL, FIFA, Google, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Visa, and Puma. Learn more at sportsilab.com.

Media Contact

Anthony Baldini, Sports Innovation Lab, 1 4085065975, [email protected]

 

SOURCE Sports Innovation Lab

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