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SPORTING INSIGHT
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With the 2020 sports calendar effectively ripped up, what does this mean for sports brands and sports licensing? Simon Gresswell of sports licensing consultancy SGLP shares his view.
in the game? Inset: After a 100-day hiatus, live football returned in mid-June, albeit without the fans in the stadiums. Right: Simon Gresswell, founder of sports licensing consultancy, SGLP. Below: Liverpool is among the football club’s which has produced collections for fans during lockdown.
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s I write in mid-June, the key words are adaptability and creativity, in terms of how live sports are re-starting and rekindling their physical relationships with the fans. On a social-distancing level - it’s going to be a while before we can all squeeze into bars and stadia to see our teams perform, but a variety of low and hi-tech solutions to playing ‘BCD’ (behind closed doors) are being used already abroad and here, especially by football clubs. The promise of cardboard cut-outs at the Amex (Brighton) and a crowd mosaic at Molyneux (Wolves) have been mooted, which might well translate into licensable products in the future, but hopefully not so at FC Seoul in South Korea, where club officials had to apologise to the authorities when some of their inflatable spectators, were actually found to be sex dolls disguised in club merchandise. On a retail level – the high street has of course been squeezed very hard this year, once again, but with non-essential retailers just re-opening, the appetite for fashion and sports/lifestyle has clearly not waned, judging by the queues outside Nike Town, Primark, Zara and Sports Direct reported in key cities across England on June 15 (the first day of re-opening for many). Beyond bricks and mortar, lockdown has meant
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LICENSING SOURCE BOOK EUROPE 2020
almost business as usual and some growth in sports ecommerce. As expected, the three x face mask pack has become as ubiquitous as the superhero’s three-pair pack of pants of yesteryear. Some clubs and their product partners have smartly promoted collections using fans’ ‘narrative’, such as Liverpool’s ‘YNWA’ and Man City’s ‘We’re Not Really Here’ ranges, both of which taking on added significance as salutes to key workers and football-starved fans, respectively. On an experiential level – drive-in big screens in football club car parks in Denmark and the ‘artificial crowd noise’ being used with the return of the Premier League, have become options for fans. The mixing processes of the artificial crowd noise alone (from past matches, EA’s FIFA and reaction noises for pens, fouls and VARs) might inspire other audio options and in-game/app features in the digital space of sport. On a broadcast level – it’s great that Sky and the Premier League will make 25 of the remaining games free to air, with four more on the BBC for the first time since 1992 and shows sound, strategic thinking after the 100-day hiatus from live football. I hope it was also part inspired by the Cricket World Cup and Sky’s extension of its rights to C4 for the final in 2019, again demonstrating how sports can inspire each other.