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Join Talisman, an award-winning, full-service agency igniting memorable partnerships & collaborations across sports, entertainment & web3 where they host industry leaders to unapologetically deconstruct the business of sports.
Welcome to the Playbook Podcast by Talisman. We recently hosted our first live Playbook Conversations panel discussion in New York City, bringing together executives and brand leaders to explore the future of sports marketing. In the opening session, Talisman founder Dapan Randhawa shares his thoughts around how new fan behaviors, formats, cultural moments are reshaping the industry and what it means for brands trying to cut through the noise and build authentic connections.
Dharpan Randhawa:Alright. Okay. Look. We're just people are running late. I think it's a New York thing, but it's always supposed to be a small group anyway.
Dharpan Randhawa:So I wanted to start by saying thank you. Everyone that's in this room and people that we've invited has been invited by design. We are not here to sell you anything. This is an information sharing session. At 05:30 or whenever we start having some drinks is when we'll start selling you stuff.
Dharpan Randhawa:Not yet. But wanted to sort of create a forum here that we can bring people together, bring some speakers together, and just have a chat as a community. Because I don't think a lot of sports agencies, rights holders are doing enough of this stuff. So for those who don't know, Talisman, we are a four year old agency business. We've surrounded ourselves with some really talented people.
Dharpan Randhawa:We're part of the Project Worldwide family, which has 16 different agencies, 2,500 people around the world, 45 cities. So we've hitched our wagon to a really big wagon, these offices and the facilities you're in today is that wagon. So we're very fortunate. And we have assembled some pretty interesting speakers today to talk about what's happening in sports, what's happening in the industry today, the way we see it. And I had a I think my time is limited now, but I just wanted to sort of talk to you guys a little bit about what I'm seeing, what we're seeing as an agency.
Dharpan Randhawa:And sports today is reinventing itself. I think we're at a really, really exciting time in sports marketing. You know, new formats, new fan behaviors. We're seeing a lot of different agencies hiring sports departments within their different agencies. We see it here in this building as well.
Dharpan Randhawa:We're seeing a lot of rights holders who are bolstering their sales team, their commercial teams. So what does that mean? It just means that there's a lot more conversations happening around sports. If you're a brand or a CMO, and I see there's a few of you CMOs in this room today, your phone is running off the hook. Your emails are being plugged up with all sorts of information.
Dharpan Randhawa:You should do this. You should do that. You should do this. And that's a good thing because it means that the relevance around sports and the buoyancy around these conversations and the currency that's being developed around sports is big. What's not so good is what do you do?
Dharpan Randhawa:How do you cut through the noise? And and that's the sort of conversations we're having quite a bit with new technology formats. Everyone's talking about AI. Hey. We need to get into this AI thing.
Dharpan Randhawa:And, you know, how does AI help us make the decisions? Well, there's more to it than that. The inventory that are coming out from rights holders are probably another issue as well. We're seeing all this innovation. We're seeing all of these different formats and leagues that are coming into play.
Dharpan Randhawa:They come and talk to us and said, hey, we've got this interesting digital inventory that can do this. So we've got this new I was talking to someone at McLaren the other day, and now they're talking about putting two tone paint on the car so they can have two brands in the same spot. So when they go around the the lap and the sun hits the car in a different way, you'll see a different brand. True story. I'm like, you can't do that.
Dharpan Randhawa:They're like, well, we can. So so, you know, what does that mean for brands today? And that's kind of I I'm hoping that could be the the theme that that comes out of this. And the message that we tell a lot of our brand partners and clients today is you've got to stop renting and start creating. What does that mean?
Dharpan Randhawa:It means that a lot of rights holders are saying, you're going to buy this sticker on the car, this on the jersey. You're going to get this much signage, and it's going to be great. And these are your eyeballs, and here's your media valuation. That's all great. But is that authentic?
Dharpan Randhawa:Because fans are getting younger. The consumers are getting younger. And I love telling this particular story. If you were to ask a male or female in The US between the age of 25 to 35, they like Formula One, About 80% will say yes. But if you were to say to them, how long have you liked Formula One for?
Dharpan Randhawa:About 90% will say since Drive to Survive came out three years ago. So, you know, that is a cultural moment that shifted, And that's something that I thought was a genius move by Liberty. But then if you were to say to them, who's your team? Who do you follow? On average, they follow 2.5 teams.
Dharpan Randhawa:How do you market to someone like that? Right? And you say to them, why do you follow McLaren? I like Lando. Why do you follow Red Bull?
Dharpan Randhawa:I like Max. Okay. So now you got the hero culture on top of that as well. How do you consume content? Well, I watch it on TikTok or not watch it on Snapchat.
Dharpan Randhawa:Have you ever watched the full race? No. Who does that? So they're not consuming content on regular television as much as they probably should. So in the mix of all of that, there's other layers too.
Dharpan Randhawa:You've got Puma that's hired A$AP Rocky to be their fashion director for the f one collection. So you've got all of these worlds colliding to create a product that is supposed to have meaning to a particular group of people, that's culture, that's passion, and it's really difficult to find that moment as a brand to be authentic. And what I think is really exciting and and to close-up, we are experiencing or about to experience one of the largest moments in US sports history in the FIFA World Cup. We're engaged with 26, 27 brands today asking us, what do we do? We don't wanna pay $60,000,000 to FIFA.
Dharpan Randhawa:How we be relevant? How can we be part of this? And they're the 26 or 27 brands who get it. There are thousands more who we feel don't even know what's about to hit them. This country is about to see something magnificent in sports, something they haven't seen in the last two decades.
Dharpan Randhawa:And personally, and we'll talk a little bit more about that with Tom who's Mr. Football, but personally I'm surprised we haven't seen much more already. But is that because they don't know what to do? Because ambush is a dirty word. It's a scary word in a world full of litigation.
Dharpan Randhawa:Is the right word guerrilla? I don't know. So we're trying to figure all of these things out, and then there's LA 28, which is another layer again on top of that, which we'll get into as well thematically in this. So so, you know, to to wrap things up, I think what's really exciting is we are at this pivotal moment in time in sports where cultural moments are being defined. Savvy marketers, and a lot of you are in the room today, are starting to realize how do I have the right conversation with my customer who could be a fan of such and such team at the right time, and do they care about that?
Dharpan Randhawa:And there's so many different variables that sits on top of all of that. So so, hopefully, we're gonna try and unpack a little bit of that. And and somewhere in all of that, we hope that you take something away that could be meaningful to you.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed the chat and look forward to having you next time on the Playbook podcast.