Premiership Rugby have announced new commercial agency appointment

Premiership Rugby have announced that they have appointed the Turnstile valuation agency to work alongside the league’s commercial team to value its sponsorship offerings as part of a broader review of its commercial programme.

The rights-holder to England’s top-flight rugby union league will adopt Turnstile’s valuation approach which is premised on quantifying the three key components of value: benefits, exposure and intellectual property.

Dan Gaunt, general manager of Turnstile, explained that its recent work with a broad range of premium rugby properties and major leagues in other sports, had provided Turnstile with insights and benchmarks that will be factored into the Premiership Rugby valuations.

Gaunt told SportBusiness: “Premiership Rugby has a unique proposition for commercial partners with its combination of broadcast reach and strong connections in local communities. It also has a relatively affluent audience that is highly attractive to specific sponsor categories.”

In terms of the valuation methodology, he said, quantifying the value of intellectual property was a major part of the process. “This is an area that Premiership Rugby hasn’t previously fully quantified as part of its partnership offerings. We are increasingly seeing that both rights-holders and sponsors are looking for a robust approach to understanding the value of associating with the image and marks of leagues, events and clubs.”

Gaunt added that traditional sponsorship valuation metrics have been solely focussed on the exposure components. “Turnstile has a proprietary methodology that calculates the value of the intellectual property of sponsorships based on the fanbase of the property. This will in turn will allow Premiership Rugby to quantify its IP value to commercial partners in addition to the exposure value and other benefits in contracts.”

Mark Brittain, chief commercial officer at Premiership Rugby, said Turnstile’s valuation approach is the best way of fully capturing the commercial proposition of Premiership Rugby. “I was keen to work with the Turnstile team as we look forward to implementing a new commercial programme at Premiership Rugby,” he said. “The relationship with Turnstile will focus not just on valuation, but also on how we can drive innovation to deliver maximum commercial growth.”

In addition to a valuation report, Premiership Rugby will use Turnstile’s ‘Dealmaker’ software, which inputs hundreds of data points and market benchmarks, allowing commercial teams to model the value of new deals and renewals.

Turnstile clients also include Formula 1, World Rugby, Manchester City, adidas and Toyota. It is owned by the Tenka Group, a holding company focused on sport and entertainment businesses.