Building a partnership that speaks to every audience at once is hard. Your fans, the athletes, the brand and its people, all with something real in it for each of them. It's not always possible, and I'm not going to pretend it is. That's the reality of the job.

But there's one group that gets left out more than any other. Not the fans. Not the athletes. The brand's own customers. The actual people who buy from the company sitting across the table, the entire reason they're spending money at all. And they almost never get mentioned once. Not in the deck, not in the room.

That's the whole point of this post, so stay with me.

The brand sitting across the table already has customers. Real people who buy from it every day. And they don't buy for no reason. They buy because it solves a real problem for them, or because that brand says something about who they are, and they want to be associated with it. Someone buys a certain car because of what it says about them and how it makes them feel behind the wheel. Someone buys a certain kit because of what wearing it makes them feel part of. That relationship already exists, and it matters to the brand more than anything on your reach slide.

Now here's the question almost no pitch ever asks. How does our sport let those people be more of who they already are?

Because that's the brand's real role, and yours. Not to be the hero. To be the one that hands the fans, the athletes and the brand's customers a bigger stage to express who they are. The brand already gives its customers a version of that. Your sport can extend it. You can take the thing that person already believes about themselves, the reason they bought in, and give them a whole new world to live it out in.

Why nobody does this

Because you can't extend a platform to people you've never thought about.

In theory you're looking at all three groups. In practice, what makes it work is a match. One of your two audiences, the fans or the athletes, has to genuinely line up with the brand's customers.

The brand's customers already believe something about themselves, that's why they bought in. You can only extend that if your fans or your athletes share something real with them. Some belief, something they're both chasing. If that overlap is there, you've got something to build on. If it isn't, there's nothing to extend, and no amount of reach will fake it.

That's the work almost nobody does. Not because it's complicated, but because it means knowing your own people and the brand's people well enough to spot where they actually meet.

Instead, the league sees a logo and thinks, yes, this is the one. The brand is treated as a name and a budget, not as a company with its own people to serve. And the customers on the other side, the actual humans the whole deal should be built around, never get mentioned. Not in the deck, not in the room, not once.

This isn't a data problem, and it isn't me saying data doesn't matter. The data on the brand's audience might be sitting right there. The point is you have to go a step past it and ask what those people actually want, what they're chasing, what they'd love more of. The numbers can tell you a customer owns the product. They can't tell you why it matters to them, and the why is the whole thing.

What the job actually is

So the real question stops being "how do we get this brand in front of our fans." It becomes "how do we let this brand's people be more of who they are, inside our world."

What does your sport let their customer feel that they couldn't feel before? Where does your world solve more of what they care about? How do they actually fit into what you do, not as an audience to reach, but as people you're genuinely offering something to?

Answer that, and the whole thing flips. You stop being a logo placement the brand pays for. You become the place their own people get to belong. That's a role a brand will pay a premium for, because it's you helping them do the thing they care about most, better.

And I'll be fair, same as always. Not every deal has room for this depth, and targets are real. But even a few done this way would put you miles ahead, because right now almost nobody is But here’s the reality. You can't position a brand as a guide until you've actually built the story that holds everyone together.

Right now, almost everyone builds their decks backwards: slides first, numbers second, story last.

How do you flip it so the story writes the pitch for you?

That's the next one.