It is no secret that marketing budgets are being squeezed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and it will certainly come as no surprise that spending on sports sponsorship is being more scrutinised than ever before. What is perhaps less understood, particularly in this age of fragmented media and splintered attention spans, is how professionals in sport can achieve real bang for their marketing buck.

For the past decade, SportsPro’s 50 Most Marketable (50MM) platform had always endeavoured to do just that, namely by identifying which athletes offered the best value for money and possessed the greatest potential to become breakthrough endorsers over the coming three-year period. But, in retrospect, focusing on sportsmen and women alone only offered a limited view of where value lies in sports marketing.

It is for that reason that, this year, SportsPro’s global 50MM rankings have been expanded for the first time to include separate top 50 lists for brands and properties – including leagues, teams, governing bodies and major events – as well as athletes.

With the help of three leading data and measurement companies – Nielsen, Hookit and SponsorPulse – the collective intention was to paint the clearest and most complete picture yet of where value lies in sports marketing. And with the aforementioned belt-tightening in mind, the goal was also to enable sports marketers to make sponsorship decisions more quickly and intelligently than ever through the application of in-depth data analysis, advanced social media monitoring, and real-world consumer insights.

In a marked departure for the World’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes – the composition of which has typically come down to informed guesswork – this year’s list has been powered exclusively and entirely by Nielsen, whose Influencer Selection and Measurement Framework draws on vast amounts of social media data to objectively and accurately monitor campaign effectiveness and help sponsors maximise their impact.

Designed to produce a final Athlete Influencer Score for easily comparing athletes across all types of sports and geographies, the framework incorporates a range of performance and sponsorship-related KPIs, such as social following, content engagement, fanbase growth over time, media value, and the performance of branded versus organic content. All told, the Instagram accounts for over 6,000 athletes from 21 sports were tracked over the last 12 months.

This year’s list of the World’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes is powered exclusively and entirely by Nielsen

While the methodology has changed this year, the result is no less fascinating. At the top of the pile sit some of the most established names in sport who need no introduction, but there are numerous others further down whose inclusion is based on the fact that their social media following is surging in line with their competitive career trajectory. As in past years, the final ranking is therefore an eclectic mix of true greats and unheralded stars, not to mention a worthy conversation piece for those who felt compelled, in years gone by, to question SportsPro’s traditional methodology.

For the inaugural list of the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands, meanwhile, spontech specialist Hookit has put its SportGraph and computer vision technology to work on tracking the social activity of every major professional athlete, team and league on the planet. Its aim was to determine which brands invested in sports sponsorship receive the most value from their various partnerships, as well as those individuals and entities with whom they hold no formal ties but who inadvertently promote them.

All social and digital posts from athletes, teams and leagues between 1st August 2019 and 1st August 2020 were examined for their quality of brand promotion. Over 25,000 sports organisations and athletes posted during this period, promoting more than 7,000 brands across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, VK, Weibo and YouTube.

Hookit, whose proprietary methodology powers the inaugural list of the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands, tracks promotion quality and value across all the major social media platforms

Again, the names at the top of the brands list, which is set to be released in full on Monday 5th October, require no introduction. What is perhaps most telling is that the top 50 brands collectively received over US$3 billion in sponsorship value through social promotion – equivalent to 49 per cent of the total value generated for brands across all sports during the tracked time period.

Finally, to arrive at the first-ever list of the World’s 50 Most Marketable Properties – which will be released on Monday 12th October – SponsorPulse surveyed the perception of consumers across 18 of the largest markets worldwide to determine people’s behaviours and emotions towards the leading leagues, teams, governing bodies and major events, weighting their responses according to population size.

More than 250,000 people between the ages of 13 and 64 influenced the list, which saw a total of 185 global sports properties measured and assigned an Opportunity Score – one universal currency that allows sponsorship decision-makers to instantly compare properties based on seven key metrics: engagement, intensity, momentum, passion, excitement, purchase consideration, and favourability.

Like the athletes and brands lists, SponsorPulse’s top 50 reveals many fascinating insights, providing a clear picture of which sports properties have the most potential to make an impact and achieve cut-through in the hearts and minds of consumers.

Soccer properties feature heavily in the World’s 50 Most Marketable Properties powered by SponsorPulse, which is due for release on Monday 12th October

Some of the outcomes are as expected, such as the fact that soccer, the world’s most popular sport, accounts for seven of the top ten and 13 of the top 20 properties in the ranking. Yet others are more surprising. Who could have predicted, for example, that League of Legends, a relatively young, albeit hugely popular video game title, would come in ahead some of sport’s biggest and best-loved properties, including the likes of Formula One, the National Football League, and all four tennis Grand Slams?

In any case, it is hoped that this year’s expanded 50MM rankings will serve as an informative reference point for sports professionals across the board. With access to richer data sets and deeper insights than ever before, the job of optimising marketing spend and maximising return on investment in these most uncertain of times might, just might, have got that little bit easier.

To view and download the full lists, head over to SportsPro’s dedicated 50MM content hub, and don’t forget to join in the conversation using the hashtag #SP50MM.