Cycling sponsorship: The short answer

Here’s a recent email exchange with a guy in the ad network business who’s involved with a pro cycling team. Let’s call him Markus. After offering me an opportunity to work with said team, which I couldn’t accept due to other commitments, he sent me this email:

velonews.com does all of [inaccurately low]/mo for uniques
cyclingnews.com : [inaccurately low]/mo for uniques

[An SEO-driven link farm he owns] is on a run rate of 25,000-30,000/day or 750,000-900,000 per month in uniques. tells you how small cycling is. [inaccurately low] uniques per day.

yahoo does 200,000,000 million plus uniques per month; MSN: 100+mm/mo/ CNN: 20m; ESPN: 15mm; NY Times.com : 12mm.

cycling is a non factor for sure in online traffic. how do you sell that to sponsors?

Knowing Markus, I can tell you that he’s expressing his disdain for the cycling industry more than he’s asking a question.

My response

Your numbers are way off but I don’t dispute that cycling sites are nonfactors in the global online advertising market compared to Yahoo, MSN, NYTimes, etc. Everybody knows that, so I’m not sure why it matters. But since you asked…

The question you’re really posing is, “Why does any company do any form of marketing other than direct response?” Or even more generally, “Why does anyone do anything that can’t be tracked precisely to making more money?”

But not everyone has that view of the world. [A bike shop owned by his friend] is a nonfactor in global retail compared to Wal-Mart. So why doesn’t [a high end bike company] flip their business model and go down-market to pump cheap bikes through Wal-Mart? I’m sure there are many reasons but I think the biggest is that they didn’t make high end bikes, they wouldn’t be [a high end bike company]. And they like being [a high end bike company]. What’s wrong with that?

Some companies want to reach as many people as possible and don’t care too much about how they do it. [Markus' ad network's clients] are examples of that approach. Others are content to reach fewer people if they can do it in a way such as associating their brand with something those people care about, like cycling. One approach isn’t necessarily better than the other, they’re just different.

So the short answer answer the question…

You sell cycling to sponsors who want it because it reaches a niche audience.

At least, that’s what I’d do.

[Markus' team] sold such sponsorships, you’re (Markus) perhaps in a better position to know than I am. I suppose you could also sell it to sponsors where the person in charge happens to love the sport, or to companies that don’t really care because you’re not asking for a lot of money.

This of course a pretty general answer. You could also check out:
http://www.kadisco.com/2009/05/team-will-be-better-off-financially-without-astana/#the-marketing-stuff
http://www.kadisco.com/2009/06/print-advertising-as-sponsorship/
http://www.kadisco.com/2009/09/debunking-traditional-sponsorship-evaluation/

Fin.

Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that. And it’s worth noting that Markus is referring to domestic sponsorships, not European. What do you think? Also, his number of 200 trillion uniques/month for Yahoo is pretty impressive!