Marketability means many different things to many different people. It is, you could say, in the eye of the beholder.
Since 2010, when we first compiled SportsPro’s annual list of the world’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes, we’ve spent untold hours attempting to determine what defines marketability – and, specifically, what makes one athlete more marketable than another. It is, of course, an inexact science, one dependent upon an extensive and ever-evolving array of variables.
No single ranking can possibly please every sports fan – we’ve seen the passionate social commentary to prove it – nor can it meet the needs of every organisation or sponsor. The global head of sponsorship at an established multinational will have a different view of an athlete’s commercial power than, say, the chief executive of a fledgling challenger brand prioritising growth within a specific market or among a certain demographic.
Some brand marketers want broad geographic reach and mainstream visibility. Others seek authentic ambassadors with local or regional relevance and smaller but more engaged followings. Some prioritise activity and engagement on specific platforms over performances on the field of play. Others just want to sign the most famous athlete their money can buy.
Put simply, an athlete’s marketability can be defined as the extent to which the individual influences purchasing behaviour and brand affinity. But that says nothing of what actually drives marketability. In reality, an athlete’s ability to convert fans into consumers depends on a multitude of factors, ranging from personal attributes like personality, talent, presentation and reputation, to external ones such as the size of their home market or the reach and relevance of the sport in which they compete.
For that reason, the variables that make an athlete marketable have evolved and the model powering SportsPro’s list has evolved with them. Marketability used to be mostly a question of fame and exposure. Today it is about the relationship between an athlete and their audience: how strong it is, which way it is moving, and how much of it is still to come.
Indeed, when it comes to athlete marketability, timing is everything and context matters.
How many partners does an athlete already have in their portfolio and in what categories? How willing and able are they to accept new sponsors given their other competitive or commercial commitments? Where is their audience, and what does that audience look like? What major events are they competing in this year? How much career runway do they have ahead of them? How visible and influential are the organisations they represent? What’s public sentiment like towards them? To what extent can they speak authentically about topics and issues that drive cultural conversations?
Many of these questions are not easy to answer, but they are all important considerations for any brand marketer with a budget to invest in athlete sponsorship. Equally difficult is the very task of compiling a ranking that compares all types of athletes, across all sports and geographies, in a definitive or standardised way.
Though we might lay claim to the most comprehensive assessment of athlete marketability undertaken anywhere in the industry, SportsPro’s list of the world’s 50 Most Marketable Athletes is precisely that – it is SportsPro’s list. It is built using NorthStar’s data-driven marketability assessment model but represents just one possible ranking based on our own understanding and definition of athlete marketability, which has been developed and refined over 16 years.
Equity meets momentum
Our editorial view is that the most marketable athletes in any given year are not only those who are winning titles or breaking through competitively. They are those who are emerging as highly desirable spokespeople in an increasingly cluttered sports marketing landscape because they have a unique story to tell and are cultivating engaged digital followings, particularly through their effective use of social media.
More specifically, we believe those who are experiencing the most accelerated growth in reach, engagement and cultural relevance are also the most commercially appealing for brand partners. Whether established or emerging stars, their upward trajectory signals untapped marketing potential, indicating future opportunity that likely exceeds present scale.
This year, working closely with NorthStar, we’ve restructured the model around three defined pillars: brand equity, momentum and commercial trajectory. Previously, the model’s drivers were composites weighted heavily towards established equity, with momentum recognised only through a set of scoring boosts and no dedicated measure of future trajectory.
Now, each of three elements has its own pillar and its own drivers. Brand equity remains the largest single pillar with 45 per cent of the total NorthStar Marketability Score, but the two forward-looking pillars together carry 55 of the 100 available points, so built-up brand equity gets an athlete into contention, while momentum and trajectory differentiate.
As such, our ranking is intended to highlight the current and future commercial trajectory of athletes competing globally, not to reflect individual marketability over the fullness of time. Marketability, at least as we define it, comes down to these past, present and future considerations.
An athlete’s accumulated brand equity is defined as the trust, reach and commercial standing that define where they are today. Momentum signals the direction and pace of change in that equity; whether attention and engagement are building, and whether brands are moving towards the athlete. Commercial trajectory is a forward-looking measure that assesses the room left to grow – in years, markets, and categories.
Assessing athletes in this way gets us back to the root of our 50 Most Marketable Athletes ranking – or 50MM, as we’ve taken to calling it.
In the early years, 50MM was all about identifying up-and-coming talent poised to break through in a big way. Initially, we ranked athletes according to relatively rudimentary and somewhat debatable criteria like value for money, willingness to be marketed, age and marketing potential over the coming three years, with the intention of identifying where brands could generate most bang for their sports marketing buck.
That logic still applies in this more data-driven era, but it also works both ways. Most sponsors sign athletes for the length of a deal, not for a single moment in time. Two athletes can have the same commercial profile today – and score similarly in the 50MM model – but be heading in opposite directions.
If an athlete’s commercial trajectory can be defined as their capacity for future growth, not current stature, then career runway – or lack thereof – must also be factored into the calculation. Runway amplifies other growth factors, but it also narrows with age. Likewise, monetisation headroom – i.e. the extent to which an athlete’s brand strength exceeds what is already being monetised – is a measure of marketability that changes as careers progress.
Take Harry Kane. Few could deny England’s record goalscorer and newly minted Ballon d’Or winner is marketable. In fact, according to data tracked by NorthStar, his current commercial returns, led by estimated media value, are strong relative to his overall brand profile, and at 33 he has less career runway ahead than many of the athletes around him. In other words, the 50MM model reads his commercial value as already well realised, with limited untapped headroom and therefore a lower commercial trajectory score.
But a comparatively low commercial trajectory score doesn’t indicate weak marketability; it indicates that an athlete’s marketability is mature and already strongly commercialised. Kane is ranked 45th in this year’s list because of his brand equity and momentum scores, the two pillars that carry 85 of the 100 available points.
One model, many configurations
One of the most fascinating aspects of compiling this year’s list was the way in which adaptations in the assessment model could produce very different outcomes.
Each configuration answers a different question. Tip the scales towards brand equity and established names will generally rise to the top. Shift the balance towards momentum and, with a few notable exceptions, rising stars come to the fore. SportsPro’s list reflects our own view of marketability, expressed through the weights we chose. NorthStar’s model can be configured just as purposefully for other goals, with different weights, different inclusion criteria, or a different selection of drivers to suit a specific brief.
Interestingly, across the 247 athletes fully assessed by NorthStar’s model, the correlation between brand equity and momentum is close to zero, and no athlete in the top ten on one measure is in the top ten on the other. That highlights several unavoidable tensions within SportsPro’s list, such as how to weigh marketability today against future potential, or established profile and emerging opportunity.
“What we’re seeing is that, from the overall marketability standpoint, you have athletes that have built brand equity through long and successful careers. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have current day momentum,” explains Chris Collins, the founder, chief executive and president of NorthStar Solutions Group. “Likewise, you may find athletes that have a lot of current day momentum, but they may be earlier in their career and maybe haven’t converted that momentum into stable brand equity.
“We’re not seeing a ton of overlap there – although when we look at number one Aryna Sabalenka, one of the really cool things is she tends to do well across all three pillars of equity, momentum, and commercial trajectory. She earned more than 70 per cent of the available points on every pillar, and she’s the only athlete of the 247 who did.”
Other challenges are inherent within the process of compiling the 50MM rankings. Every year, the availability and quality of data are key considerations. Often, publicly available data is incomplete, making it impossible to assess all athletes on a level playing field, and any data used to inform the analysis must be validated and verified for accuracy.
NorthStar utilises data from various leading providers, but how that data feeds into the different drivers within the 50MM model is crucial. This year, with an expanded slate of 27 drivers per athlete, NorthStar has brought greater depth and granularity to the analysis while ensuring the same data isn’t feeding into a set of drivers that effectively measure the same thing.
“We’ve obviously refined [the model], gotten better, gotten more efficient,” adds Collins. “There’s more data that’s out there. The tools that are available to measure it and process it have gotten better and we’re continually integrating them into our overall platform and what we do. So, we continue to evolve with it.”
That evolution opens up new possibilities for SportsPro’s list in future. It also speaks to the power of NorthStar’s model, which is comprehensive in its breadth yet malleable enough to evaluate commercial opportunities against any organisation’s priorities and objectives.
Once those priorities and objectives have been set, the model can be configured to reflect them, with marketability drivers weighted differently to feed the desired outcome. Indeed, SportsPro’s list is but one configuration of NorthStar’s platform: the same data can be set up to answer a sponsor’s brief, audit a brand’s roster, or assess a team, league or programme’s athletes.
“There’s an engine underneath all of this,” explains Collins. “The cool part about what we built is anybody can come to us, right? It could be a different list. Somebody may want to know the most marketable women athletes in a specific country or a specific sport. And we would collect the requirements and then configure and tune the model to drive that.
“We can work with athletes directly or with agencies to help them understand, with these drivers of marketability, where they are today, where they are excelling, or where there are gaps where they may want to put some strategy behind.
“We can look at the interplay between sponsors and which athletes to sponsor. From a sponsorship investment standpoint, what are their goals? What should their sponsorship portfolio look like? Who’s currently in it? Where are the gaps? Who then can they approach to fill those gaps? And what part of that portfolio is an athlete playing? Is it a growth play? Is it a value play? Are we looking at creating a balanced and diversified portfolio?
“There are lots of different use cases that span lots of different stakeholders and we can configure this a lot of different ways.”
To find out how NorthStar’s model can be configured for your organisation, email sports@northstarsg.com.