How can you find the right sponsorship format to boost your gaming brand's visibility? Dmitry Belianin, a seasoned iGaming expert, is here to tell you how.
Don't let your competitors steal the spotlight. Listen now to find out the secrets to boosting your brand's visibility through sponsorships.
Dmitry reveals the sponsorship formats you may not have thought of, such as the power of LED displays, front-of-shirt placements, and even underutilised options like sleeve and upper chest sponsorships.
You will learn how to align your sponsorship choices with your business goals, whether it's building brand awareness or strengthening specific brand attributes.
Dmitry shares the hidden gems of sponsorship, from niche sports like Polish wrestling to innovative concepts like 3D carpets.
You have to think creatively and test unconventional approaches to captivate your target audience.
0:00 Sponsorship Formats in Gaming Businesses
3:18 Choosing the Right Sponsorship Format
4:59 Undervalued Sponsorship Opportunities
7:10 Creative Sponsorship Ideas and Challenges
9:56 Measuring the Value of Sponsorships
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Welcome to “15 Minute Mastery,” the ultimate show for iGaming professionals, hosted by industry veteran Dmitry Belianin. With over 17 years of experience, Dmitry brings unparalleled insights and wisdom from top industry experts in just 15 minutes. Each episode delivers actionable strategies from all iGaming verticals to improve your personal and business performance. As the founder of Belianin, Dmitry also shares his expertise in nurturing high-potential iGaming startups. Subscribe to “15 Minute Mastery” for concise, high-value content and stay ahead in the competitive world of iGaming.
You as the brand, you should always try to think more creative, like what is the most visible, maybe not available opportunity for me to tap into. You're listening to 15-minute mastery, a show that empowers you with insights from leading iGaming experts to enhance your personal or business performance. The show is brought to you by the AI-powered data analytics platform Velask, and supported by 10 driven affiliate and media company already media. Voila starts the leading casino partnership program and next.io, the world's iGaming community. Hello and welcome back to 15-minute mastery. Today, Dimitri's in the hot seat discussing different sponsorship formats and how to pick one that's most effective. Welcome back Dima. Hey John, it's always a pleasure to be here. Okay, so let's kick things off. What are the different sponsorship formats available to iGaming businesses looking to grow their brand? Yeah, I think based on the country, this list could be slightly different, but I think in general, you have two kinds of sponsorships. The one which is used to build brand awareness, and the one which is used to build any of your brand attributes. You know, talking about the brand attributes, I think we've done the episode about it earlier, but you probably want to influence your trust attribute, like speed attribute, and something related to your brand and its persona. So the brand awareness ones are quite simple. If you're talking about some of the world's biggest leaks, they mostly have LEDs, right? So LED as the format is a very unique and very useful format where you can use your brand message, your brand logo, some of your brand codes to be able to show it in front of the user. But most important and probably the most credible one and the most brand awareness driven one is the front of the short sponsorship, right? So this is probably the one which is the most desirable for everyone. So I think based on the leak, this is either available or taken or prohibited for the high gaming companies, like for example in English Premier League, which is going to happen soon. But if you think about the shirt and the uniform of a player in any sport, whether it's cricket, whether it's football, you can see this in even like boxing or MMA, you have space on the uniform somewhere, whether it's short, whether it's sleeve, whether it's front of the shirt, to be able to put your brand. So essentially, once it's visible on the TV screen via the live broadcast or when someone bought a shirt and walking with it on the streets, you can clearly see the brand visible by anyone. So I think talking about the formats, there are two brand awareness ones and the ones which are building your brand attributes. And with all of these options available, how do you decide which sponsorship format fits the goals of your brand? Yeah, that's a good one. So you as the company, you obviously need to understand your strategy. And the marketing is pretty much the tool to be able to drive your business strategy. So if you're a new player in the new country, you just literally entered the market, you really need to build your brand attributes and trust most importantly. So to do that, you want to endorse like a sportsman, you want to go and sponsor local football team if the football is the biggest sport of this country. So you want to clearly attach yourself and build the brand attributes, which is very similar to your brand and the team you're sponsoring. If you as the company want to increase your market share, then you need to invest more into the brand awareness. But at the same time, to be able to utilize a certain set of assets, or build a certain set of attributes, you still need to have someone, either athlete or a team, to be able to use it. Sometimes actually, league sponsorship is a very great opportunity, which is allowing you to tap into both trust element. I mean, pretty much most of the most important and crucial iGaming brand attributes. And at the same time, build a massive brand awareness, because if you think about the league and its name, they always use with the sponsor's names in it. So it's a very good one. So yeah, you need to start with with the business strategy, and then to be able to utilize a certain sponsorship opportunity to be able to drive your business results on the business strategy. And with all of these sponsorships available, are there any out there on the market that you look at that you know from experience are undervalued? Everyone obviously wants to fund a short sponsorship, but what other options might give them better bang for their buck? Yeah, so I think sleeve opportunity was underutilized a lot. And in some of the leagues, actually, sleeve is not even like a placement for the sponsorship. So I remember when Tim hit and their sports bad.io sponsorship with Watford, if I'm not mistaken, you know, they've done this like a Bitcoin sleeve as the part of the deal, which which was absolutely phenomenal. And it was it was that kind of a deal which, you know, put like a sleeve on the map of many iGaming companies back then. So I think the sleeve is underutilized. And if you think about the leaks were actually the upper chest, you know, this part is available is actually an incredible opportunity to be always seen on the camera. If it's a photo shoot, if it's like a close, close focus of a player on the pitch, it's always seen like this, right? So if you have a brand put somewhere here, it's a great place. So I think this one is underutilized. And to be honest, it's not available in many leagues across the world. I think Brazil is one of these countries where you can pick that one. When it comes down to more niche sports, I think one I really like a lot is actually a body paint. So if you're looking at the Polish absolutely crazy wrestling or boxing or even MMA organizations, they are loving to paint on the on the athlete's body. So I think this one is is really cool and is allowing you to really extract the value of your brand. Back in the days when UFC, they allowed to use sponsors on the on the shorts. It was a good one because you could attach yourself and could be very visible during certain time frames of a game. And then you can obviously use this like like as a beautiful screenshots all over the place. So I think there is, you know, there are a few formats available for sure. But you as the brand, you should always try to think more creative, like what is the most visible, maybe not available opportunity for me to tap into. If your country, if your league doesn't have any of those, maybe you can try and go with, you know, speak with the federation to be able to, you know, come up with something new. One very cool one. I remember Sergey Portnoff, who was a mastermind of pretty much many years back. He was always talking about 3D carpets. I don't know if you saw these ones, but these are like these little carpets which are placed just behind the pitch. And when there is like a penalty, when there is highlights of the scores, they're always visible because they're next next to the goalposts. Right. So this is where I think that was one of the most underutilized formats. And he always knew that this is the best because, you know, you can always see it on the camera. And I don't think many countries actually using that one and those who are using, I think this is like one of the best opportunities. And yeah. So how do you begin to talk for all of these options and calculate in a measurable way whether a particular sponsorship format might be valued for money before you begin? I think sometimes it's very hard to understand because if this is something like I mentioned, unique and you're the first like company who is trying to understand the impact of it, it's going to be like a pure black box. Because if you like as an iGaming company, it's the first to show your brand in that particular spot, like whether it's LEDs or uniform, then you might be the one who is utilizing the access to the fresh audience, the first, right? Because if you are the second, the third, the fees operator who is doing the same placement all over again, this is where the audience might be burned out. And the problem is if the sports fans are, sorry, if the casino's fans, they switch from one brand to another quite a lot, sports fans, they're more well. And to think about what am I as an operator able to give to a new sports fan or the existing sports fan to be able to switch him from Betty 65 or any other major operators in the world, what is this, right? Showing him just a logo, probably it's not going to work, right? So if you're as the company advertising in the spot, which was previously badly utilized by other bookmakers, probably it's not going to work, right? So this is why I'm quite skeptical when I'm looking at case studies, I'm quite skeptical when I'm looking at, you know, the CPM numbers, even though the reach could be massive, but if you're the fifth operator taking that spot, probably you're not going to convert and you're not going to build the brand awareness you want. So I think if you're talking about the way how to be able to forecast something, it's very tricky. And for one industry, this could be like a gem, but for the other, like as an i-gaming, this could be a total burden. So I would be looking at, obviously, the reach is probably the most important one. What is the reach? I'm going to take here. And second, I would have studied the history of all the previous sponsorships in that category, and trying to discontinue the reach dramatically if I'm not the first in that category coming in. So then moving onwards from once you have activated the sponsorship and you've had some time to see the results. How do you measure the effectiveness of that particular campaign? Yeah, so I think we also discussed that previously and you can rewatch like a full episode about it, but in short, you should be looking at your brand attributes. You know, how they've changed before you've done a certain sponsorship before you started, like any advertising campaign, whether it's LEDs, whether it's like a team endorsement. And the most importantly, you need to understand the change in your share of voice and the brand awareness, where brand health tracking matters coming in place. Blask is probably the iGaming's leading tool will allow you to understand the impact of your brand awareness, according to a certain time frame, a certain game. And we just recently done a really cool post about it, about the butterfly effect of Palimachian Brazil, which is literally closely attached to the games of butterfly. So Blask will allow you to do that. So what I'm recommending is to do a brand health tracking study before any of the major sponsorships. For some brands, you know, picking up a few influencers might be the one as well. So you need to understand what are the attributes of your brand and then to measure it on the go. So Blask is a really cool tool which will allow you to understand all those. Yeah, awesome answer. So one thing that occurs to me is that it always feels like a cat and mouse game with iGaming brands wanting to have placements on the front of shirt and then regulators and governing bodies of those faults stopping that activity from being able to happen. Premier League, prime example, right? So how can iGaming companies continually adapt to these changes without having to keep thinking of continually creative placements of sponsors, shirts and probably socks soon? Yeah, the short answer, I don't think it's possible because if you're as an iGaming brand, not agile enough, not creative enough, not fast enough, you're probably already gone. So the COVID was a great example when all these like, you know, worlds largest companies, they couldn't like adopt to the new reality when there is no sports, right? So I think you always need to understand what's going on in the market. You need to understand, you know, what kind of sponsorship opportunities is available, who's utilizing them for how long to be able to find a new creative way of how to advertise your brand. There is one very interesting technique which is called surrogate branding, right? So if you think about, you know, alcohol industry, tobacco industries, you know, they were prohibited for ages and they were always finding a very creative and unique way in how to be able to showcase their brand in front of their audiences. So I think surrogate branding is one of the techniques which will allow you to put your brand in front of the eyes of the audience anytime, anywhere. So I think this is where you need to come up with a very creative strategy, sometimes very radical strategy on what is your surrogate brand and whether you can have one because, you know, launching another wannabe surrogate brand, which is very similar to, you know, the rest of the market is not going to work either. So I would recommend not spending your money in the surrogate brand, which is not enough of advertising and which is not having like an extra final and an extra engagement. I've seen a few examples of BVN in Italy, I've seen a few examples of Leo Vegas, even though these guys are pouring like very big budgets, I think this can be done in a much better way in much, much more engaging fashion. So I think you as the brand, you always need to find a way how to reach the audience, you need to test it. And English Premier League is the world's greatest example on how you cannot rely on just one advertising and sponsorship source, which can be taken one day. And the regulation in the world is getting more strict, and this is where diagonal brands, they need to be as creative as ever. That's a great episode. They really shared so many great insights there, and it has been an absolute pleasure listening to share your thoughts today. Thanks, Ajahn. [BLANK_AUDIO]
