Male Gen-X Opps: Bally Sports TV launches pool floaty for hockey fans

Sales Lead: Bally Sports TV recently launched the Bally Sports TV Screen Saver, a pool floaty with branding.

• The initiative was made with R&R Partners.
• It's a jest suggesting that if hockey fans chill out in a pool, they'll get less exasperated when their teams don't do well; the product saves TV screens, hence the name.
• The company will likely:
  • Continue experimenting with a satiric messaging
  • Keep increasing national TV spend
• Target demographic: 
  • Gen-X with a male skew

Recent leadership shifts:

• This launch closely follows Bally's hires of D2C marketing VP Allison Ross (October 2022), Bally Sports+ brand marketing director Jessica Musmanno (November 2022), and associate partnership marketing director Brenda O'Donovan (February 2023).

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend)
  • YTD spend: Please refer to this chart for recent national TV spend for Bally's top channels; note that these channels made their first forays into this channel earlier in 2023.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: Since the beginning of 2023, Bally has spent approximately $1.8k on digital ads, less than a quarter of the approximately $8k spent by this point last year.
  • YTD data: So far this year, the brand has earned ~248.8k digital impressions, 60% via Facebook ads and 40% via Instagram ads.
  • Last year: In 2022, Bally ended up spending roughly $28.9k on this channel, 28% less than the roughly $39.9k spent in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The brand utilizes local broadcast, digital, radio, OOH, and Google Ads.
  • Bally holds planning conversations in Q1 and buying conversations in Q4.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: Bally is clearly working with an outside agency partner on creative, so it may seek other services as well such as PR, media, digital analytics, social media management, influencer, experiential, and/or multicultural.
• Current agency roster:
  • ​​​​​​​R&R Partners: Creative agency partner (at least for this initiative project)

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix.