Playfly Sports Founder and CEO Mike Schreiber sits down with Yahoo Finance Live to talk about sports stadium naming rights partnerships, developing fan engagement elements, and working with crypto company brands.

Video Transcript

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ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: This Sunday's Super Bowl will serve as an advertising platform for a lot of companies, but perhaps none bigger than SoFi, which paid more than $600 million to have its name on LA's football stadium, which is, of course, home to Super Bowl LVI.

Here to talk more about sports naming rights is Playfly founder and CEO Mike Schreiber. Mike, your company did not organize that naming rights deal that we just talked about for SoFi. But I know that you help a lot of other venues find partners. What's the trend you're seeing right now in that space?

MIKE SCHREIBER: Yeah, great. Thanks for having me. And great question. There's a huge wind change that's happening in sports around sponsorship, and especially with marquee sponsorships, buildings, even actually the player uniforms is changing inside the US. We're seeing more and more opportunities and more and more flexibility from pro teams, pro leagues, and even college athletic departments as well, looking at naming buildings and putting brands on different uniforms.

If you look at what's happened in Europe over the past bunch of years, you can see a difference between what a European uniform and sponsorship opportunity looks like and then the US. So the US is actually now getting more and more flexible to be able to actually put a number of-- of those opportunities into play. So SoFi is a great example.

We've constructed deals, as an example, Mercedes-Benz in Atlanta. But if you really think about it, these opportunities are driving significant growth for these sports organizations and leagues that they haven't really had access to before by adding more brands going forward.

So we're excited to be a partner to the industry. We actually acquired, at Playfly sports, a business called Premier Partnerships, which has now become Playfly Premier Partnerships. And that is really driving this industry change forward by using our amazing sales teams and partners to try to find more opportunities that are really native and synergistic when you put both the brand partner and the sports team together.

JOSH SCHAFER: Hey, Mike, Josh Schafer here. I wanted to kind of pin down on the growth you were talking about there. I mean, we saw the Crypto.com deal last year that took over the Staples Center valued at 700-- reportedly $700 million. I mean, these numbers are starting to get really big when we talk about growth. Obviously the Staples Center is a huge venue and very popular. But do you think we've seen kind of the top as far as valuations go for naming rights? Or do you think there's still room to grow?

MIKE SCHREIBER: Yeah, there's-- there's still room. Some of these numbers are pretty large. And they include not only the naming rights, but they include a lot of other elements, including in-venue signage, even TV and digital. And that's one thing that's really unique about Playfly Sports.

Our business is-- we're a relatively new brand in the space of sports over the last two years. But we've combined a number of businesses that have been around for 10, 20, 30 years, that now, actually, we function as a network effect where we can actually support TV, digital, in-venue, and marquee naming rights as a business. We do it in some way or another for every NBA team, every NHL team, every MLB team, as well as a number of marquee college athletic departments.

So what you're seeing now is using that stack-- and that's really how you get to those big valuations that you're talking about, is using that stack, starting with the naming rights, and then developing all of the other categories, whether it's TV, whether it's digital, whether it's in-venue, and all the other fan engagement elements that drive up those values that you can create that-- those big numbers.

We actually have seen, really, when you look at it from a number of brand entitlements and venues and properties across the US, it's grown almost 39%. When you actually go down into like the hat, helmet, headset, jersey-patch market, you're seeing almost a 150% increase in deals inside of-- of that group of inventory. So it's really interesting. So it's not only the size of the deals, as you mentioned, but it's also the amount of deals that are coming to market and then all the different elements within the deal that creates those big numbers that you referenced.

JOSH SCHAFER: And I know your company is going to be working with the Nashville Predators to secure their new jersey patch sponsor. What do you think-- what do you think you're going to see from there? And do you think that-- would you look at a sports gambling company, a cryptocurrency company? We know those sponsorships have been hot. Are those companies still interested in something like that, you think?

MIKE SCHREIBER: Yeah. And happy to actually break that news with you-- with you guys here today, that we are-- have been retained by the Nashville Predators to-- to secure their first ever sweater patch sponsor. So the NHL, as of August of last year, allowed for jersey patches to start for this upcoming season.

So we're excited to be partnered with-- with Nashville and the Predators team, thinking through what types of partners-- to your point, there's really three categories of brand partners to work with, in broad strokes. The first is a major national brand that's looking at more exposure. And they're already advertising on a national level and looking for that big property and partner like the Predators to-- to partner with.

There's the next category is a local or regional. A lot of times, you'll see this with a number of brands. And we actually helped in-- around the actual Bridgestone Arena that the actual Predators play in. But we think there's a regional and local play too with companies that are part of that region that really want to up their game and associate with a big brand like the Predators, both on and off the ice.

And then the third category is these breakout brands. And that's what you were referencing when you talk about Crypto.com and sports betting brands and even-- even a lot of the digital finance brands, like as we started off with the SoFi brand, those breakthrough brands are brands that are really going from a growth mode into the national sphere. And taking a name on top of an arena or taking a patch like the Nashville Predators patch is a really interesting way to elevate that brand and break through all the clutter.

We actually did that for the Pelicans in the NBA. And we did their patch on their jerseys for a company called Ibotta, which is a software company, again, breaking through a new company onto the national sphere, breaking through using that as an opportunity. So national, local, and then these breakthrough brands. When it comes to the breakthrough brands, obviously crypto is a big category here that we're seeing a lot of. And we're partnering with a lot of those companies. Sports gambling, as you mentioned, is-- is probably one of the fastest growing. It's the fastest-growing category for us here at Playfly Sports.

But it's really interesting because it's going-- it's rolling out market by market. You're seeing each of the states roll out legality of the sports gambling opportunities. So what's ending up happening is we've now got majority of the country legal. So you're seeing bigger and bigger implementations of that. We've actually done some of the largest deals in sports gambling in the sports industry, including in college with our recent deal with Caesars and Michigan State.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, that's-- that's another interview. And there's lots of exciting stuff happening in that space as well. Mike Schreiber of Playfly, the CEO there. Thanks so much.