Global marketing and communications agency, Allison+ Partners, has announced the launch of its own sports marketing agency, Allison + Sports.

Allison + Sports will harness the power of influencer relationships and endorsements whilst working with the brand’s existing marketing operations to help drive their communications value.

Allison + Sports’ managing director of strategy and sports marketing, Shane Winn, said sport’s entwinement with mainstream culture provides extensive storytelling opportunities on and off the field.

Winn said: “We know that relationship-building across an ecosystem of reporters, sponsors, properties and fans is the fuel that will bring these stories to life in a massive sea of sports headlines,”

The agency’s offerings will feature a data-driven approach, consulting its brands on media relations strategy and execution, sponsorship and talent evaluation, campaign development, and on-site consumer and B2B audience activation.

Most notably, the agency will specialise in research and data mining to evaluate and inform predictive campaign analysis.

Since its announcement, Allison + Sports have already launched its ‘Earned Performance Scorecard’ (EPS), a data-driven tool that evaluates if the brand’s sports investments are effective and builds strategies from the results to help design future campaigns, programs, and investments.

The agency plans to make EPS a scalable tool allowing any brand to evaluate their messaging impact, social stickiness, endorsement and partner impact, conversation creation, and pop culture relevance.

Allison + Partner’s global partner and president, Anne Colaiacovo, said Allison + Partners welcomes the EPS due to the agency already relying on data and analytical products to guide its work.

“The EPS fills a gap in our industry, providing brands with a tool that at once can gauge past performance and also guide and predict future results,” Colaiacovo said.

Using this system, the agency has already uncovered some insights and sporting trends applicable to today’s sports marketing.

These being:

• 44% of American sports fans are paying closer attention to women’s college and professional sports than they were three months ago.
• 41% of all sports fans are more likely not to place a bet on a sporting event than they were three months ago.
• 56% of American sporting fans report listening to sports-related podcasts at least once a month, of those 33% are listening at least once a week.