Formula One motorsport team Williams Martini Racing will use the recently launched platform Turnstile to value its sponsorship portfolio for existing and potential commercial partners.
Williams becomes the first Formula One team to sign on to the Turnstile platform, which was created by Australian sports and entertainment marketing company Gemba Group and launched earlier this year.
The platform takes a new approach to valuing sponsorships by going beyond exposure measurement and also incorporating the intellectual property value of sponsorship assets as well as the value of benefits like tickets, hospitality and inventory at market rates.
“We were really impressed when we saw how Formula One was using Turnstile to underpin more strategic discussions with existing and prospective partners," Williams Martini Racing head of commercial Richard Berry said.
"Williams Martini Racing is always working to ensure that we are providing our commercial partners with best practice and we saw the adoption of Turnstile as another proof point of this commitment.
Berry added that the Turnstile methodology will allow the team to have more holistic discussions with commercial partners by recognising the full extent of its value proposition.
He said the fans are now consuming the sport across a variety of mediums and Turnstile will be able to capture the full extent of its global audience.
"Finally, and most importantly, we are excited about working with Turnstile to understand, for the first time, the full global value of our intellectual property," Berry added.
Turnstile has F1 backing
The approach has been extensively tested with the Formula One administrative body and is attracting interest from leading global brands, clubs and sports bodies in the US, UK and Europe.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t see this become the standard way in how people analyse things inside a couple of years,” Murray Barnett, Formula One’s head of global sponsorship and commercial partners told AdNews recently.
“We implemented it for the first time last year in a pilot format and will implement it more robustly this year."
Formula One has been looking for a new approach to valuation after becoming frustrated by the limitations and inconsistency of other valuation methods.
“We’ve been very unhappy with the way people evaluate sponsorship, it doesn’t give a full picture of what the sponsorship is achieving," Barnett said.
Gemba director and CEO Rob Mills says there has been a "tremendous reaction" to the platform from brands and sports rights holders since it launched in late February. AdNews understands TV broadcasters have also shown an interest.
“Our aspiration is to make Turnstile the global standard for the pricing of sponsorships in sport and entertainment, so the endorsement of such a powerful brand like Williams Martini Racing is a very important milestone for us and strong recognition of the value of the platform,” Mills said.
“The industry is desperate to get a new approach to pricing sponsorships, that moves the conversation away from the current obsession with simply counting logos."
Mills recently explained how the new approach could help valuations move away from “wildly exaggerated exposure valuations” and drive a lift in the IP valuations of sporting codes.
“We might see a contract value of $10 million, we might then value it at $11 million, but the media exposure value might reach $40 million,” he previously told AdNews.
“Nobody really believes that number anyway. We’re better off having a grounded discussion in what these things are worth and the different components of value.”
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