Nike named sporting world's most marketed brand in social media

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The sportswear giant has received the most value of any entity invested in sports sponsorship.

Posted: October 5 2020
By: SportsPro

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Global sportswear company tops SportsPro’s inaugural list of World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands powered by Hookit
Emirates Airlines, Adidas, Monster Energy and Red Bull complete top five
Brands ranked according to Hookit’s SportGraph™ and computer vision technology

Sportswear giant Nike has been ranked as the most marketed brand in international sport according to SportsPro’s inaugural list of the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands powered by Hookit.

The Oregon, USA-based company, which has over 11,000 athletes and sports organisations promoting its brand worldwide, was found to have received the most value of any entity invested in sports sponsorship, coming in ahead of Emirates Airlines, Adidas, Monster Energy and Red Bull.

Hookit’s proprietary methodology for assessing sponsorship value is built upon its SportGraph and computer vision technology, which tracks the social activity of every major professional athlete, team and league, totalling more than 500,000 accounts. To arrive at the total value received by each brand, Hookit examines two key metrics – potential value and promotion quality – which are multiplied together to determine a discounted Adjusted Ad Value (AAV).

For the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands, all social and digital posts from professional athletes, teams and leagues between 1st August 2019 and 1st August 2020 were examined for brand promotion. More than 25,000 sports organisations and athletes posted during this period, promoting in excess of 7,000 brands across platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, VK, Weibo and YouTube.

Now in its 11th year, SportsPro’s 50MM platform enables sports marketers to make sponsorship decisions more quickly and intelligently than ever by objectively assessing where true value lies in sports marketing through the application of in-depth data analysis, social media monitoring, and consumer insights.

Focused on athletes only since their inception in 2010, the global rankings have been expanded for the first time to include top 50 lists for brands and properties, including leagues, teams, governing bodies and major events across the globe.

The inaugural list of the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands powered by Hookit has been released in full today via a dedicated 50MM content hub containing interactive tables and graphics, individual commercial profiles, features, podcasts and more. The World’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes powered by Nielsen is also available via the hub, while the World’s 50 Most Marketable Properties powered by SponsorPulse will be released on Monday 12th October.

“Supported by three of the world’s leading social media analytics companies, our newly expanded 50MM platform and dedicated content hub paints the most complete picture yet of where value lies in sports marketing – across athletes, brands and properties,” said Michael Long, SportsPro’s editorial director.

“With marketing budgets being tightened in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, spending on sports sponsorship is being more scrutinised than ever. Now, with the richer data sets and deeper insights provided by this year’s 50MM rankings, marketers working across all sports can easily identify where the real value lies in order to justify their spending decisions and maximise return on investment.”

“Where sponsorship value has traditionally gone unmeasured by brands, Hookit provides the data and insights to empower sports marketers to know where they are getting actual value for their investment, which partners are performing and where there are opportunities for growth within their portfolio,” said Scott Tilton, co-founder and chief executive of Hookit.

“Brands on this list understand that social and digital promotion has become a core pillar to their sponsorship strategies and are building these activations in as key elements in their sponsorship agreements. We expect to see this emphasis on digital promotion continue to grow due to the impact of the coronavirus and the ability of sports partners to directly influence their value to sponsors through their massive social channels.”

To view the full list of the World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands powered by Hookit, head over to SportsPro’s dedicated 50MM content hub and join in the conversation on social media using the hashtag #SP50MM.

World’s 50 Most Marketed Brands powered by Hookit – the top ten: