Take Five: our hot take on the latest topics!

Our Take Five this week: Social Media is dead

WOMEN'S FOOTBALL, A STORY OF SPECTACULAR AND RECENT GROWTH

Take Five: our hot take on the latest topics!

Our Take Five this week: Is Rafa Nadal the GOAT?

Here are the most important sports events not to be missed this summer, selected by The Consultancy Group.

Find out if VAR (Video Assistance Referee) is killing the essence of the game. An article by Anthony Schaub and Alessandro Di Benedetto at The Consultancy Group

The NFL's Superbowl has always been the pinnacle of sport and entertainment in the US. With the price tag of a commercial spot floating around the humongous valuation of $5.6 million, companies investing in these spots need to create a real emotion to the viewers, or at least a great buzz (did you say viral?). Here is our top 5 of the 54th edition of the Superbowl.

eSports puts brands in front of an audience that is becoming notoriously difficult to reach. The viewers of eSports’ content are less likely to consume traditional media. They grew up watching YouTube and getting content on demand. For them, heading to popular video game streaming site Twitch to watch a match is traditional.

ESports exploded in 2010. Good players started posting their gaming sessions on global online platforms such as Youtube and Dailymotion, but they lacked the capacity to live stream interact directly with the gaming community. This led to a simple yet remarkable solution that changed the industry forever: Twitch.

Unless you were living under a rock these last few months, you learned that a formerly unknown 16-year-old video game player from Pennsylvania named Kyle Giersdorf, aka Bugha, was the first-ever winner of the Fortnite World Cup, earning USD 3,025,900 in prize money. As a comparison, Novak Djokovic’s prize money for winning Wimbledon this year was USD 2,983,748. Yes, you read right, Nole won less money than Bugha.

When speaking about sports teams, which come to mind first? It depends where you’re from, but an average sports fan will always give you a few team names like the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Yankees, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and so on. The most popular teams are also some of the most valuable in terms of net worth.

From a purely ROI perspective, an important factor to take into account is that women control about 80% of consumer purchases. This fast-growing female economy means that women have increased financial stability and great buying power. Propagating the excuse that sports sponsorships are only market-driven in order to justify the lack of support for women’s teams will no longer cut it.

The past few years, we’ve witnessed a major shift in public perception of women’s sports, despite a severe lack of funding among most of the teams. Sponsorship deals have been on the rise, which indicates that the situation is changing and will continue to do so in the coming years. But many have asked the legitimate question: are women’s sports worth the sponsoring investments?

Betting on sports is a global phenomenon. The year 2018 was a landmark year for gambling in the United States due to the fact that the government repealed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), which made it possible for individual states to decide whether to legalize sports betting. Seven states launched regulated sports betting, and more are likely to follow in 2019, especially when they see the results of their neighbors.

First, let’s get back to the basics. The Super Bowl is the most widely viewed event in the world each year, even higher than the Olympics Games. In 2018, some 114 million Americans, approximatively 1/3 of the country’s population, watched the Super Bowl on TV. The location changes every year, but the event is always held on the first weekend of February and has been running for over 53 years.

It’s December 26th, you’re relaxing at home, doing your best to digest last night’s Christmas feast. You’re in the mood for something entertaining, and as a sports lover, you turn on the TV, because you know something is on, something like the British Boxing Day tradition of a full day of Premier League games, starting from noon. What is Boxing Day?

Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, Halloween, these celebrations create sales peaks around the world. Naively, we might say these peaks are simply due to the celebrations themselves, but let’s face it; there is a well-developed marketing strategy behind each and every one, and we are not just saying this because we are a marketing consultancy firm.

Over the top (OTT), media services provider Netflix is by far the biggest name in the streaming world. They have paved the way for a new generation of movies and series, burying the “Blockbuster model” (DVD and VHS renting service) once and for all.

There is one athlete in particular who is taking the lead by far in my opinion. He has ruled tennis the world over for the last two decades. He is none other than Roger Federer. I will not dare to present the prestigious list of trophies that "King Roger" has won, although I would wager that he goes down as one of the greatest sportsmen in history.