The U.S. was unlucky in the final minutes of extra time during the USA-Belgium round-of-16 match, resulting in the disappointing score of 2-1 Belgium. The dreams of many U.S. soccer fans of having the national team reach the final World Cup match next Sunday have ended, even though most knew the betting odds at the time were 80-1.
The team may not have won, but soccer in the U.S. and the team players themselves may in the long run end up being big winners. All the attention focused on the sport, team and players have increased the value of all.
CONSOR regularly prepares valuations on celebrity rights of publicity, including celebrity athletes. In fact, our Chairman Wes Anson is writing a book entitled Right of Publicity: How Much is Your Client Really Worth?, which will be published by the American Bar Association and available later this year. In the book, Anson discusses how you can place value on your celebrity or athlete client.
Many of these World Cup soccer players have now become part of the new breed of celebrity, created through the availability to view real time performances, and instant social media mentions. Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici was at Twitter headquarters when the aforementioned USA-Belgium match was taking place and noted that “Julian Green’s strike to bring the game back within reach within just minutes to play in extra time sent the TPS (tweets per second) meter into the stratosphere. It was one of the most tweeted moments of the game, along with Belgium’s two goals and the blowing of the final whistle.” And the U.S. record breaking goalkeeper Tim Howard was the “most tweeted about player of the match, with more than 1.8 million mentions and discrete spikes for each of his saves.” In total to date, as of the morning after, Howard was the most trending World Cup player with an average of 32,629 mentions per hour, according to the FIFA website. Argentina’s Lionel Messi is still in the totals lead with 14,082,866 total mentions.
All of the media attention will eventually translate to value for the celebrity athlete. One of the metrics that CONSOR looks at in rights of publicity valuations is the celebrity Q Score. Q Scores helps predict the appeal of that celebrity which helps determine their marketability. In the case of sports personalities, Q Scores measures the person’s familiarity, believability, appropriateness, and personality image. Basically, a score to determine if the celebrity or athlete would be a good fit to endorse your brand or product. I would imagine that overall, the average U.S. consumer has become much more familiar with the World Cup athletes, and it would be interesting to see what their Q Scores are now after receiving all the recent attention. Tim Howard’s defending skills apparently sparked a #fearthebeard trend, which included mentions by the Duck Commander himself, also a #fearthebeard subject.
How much can a celebrity or athlete be worth? Let’s review some of Forbes recent annual top earnings lists. For 2013, the top celebrity was Madonna earning $125 million, top dead celebrity was Michael Jackson at $160 million, and top athlete was Tiger Woods at $78.1 million. For the top 50 athletes listed, there were three soccer players: No. 8 – David Beckham (who retired during the year) at $47.2 million; No. 9. – Christiano Ronaldo at $44 million; and No. 10 – Lionel Messi at $41.3 million. Looking at another survey by Forbes of the top paid U.S. World Cup players, listed at No. 1 is forward Clint Dempsey with a salary of $7.8 million from the Seattle Sounders FC, but being one of the few Americans with endorsements from Nike, Pepsi and Upper Deck, and more, he is estimated to make roughly $10 million. Tim Howard, No. 4 on the list has a salary of $2.6 million with Everton, but adds on to that amount from his Nike sponsorship and Allstate appearances.
Getting estimates of an athlete’s worth is essential in entering negotiations with and for those athletes. The value of each athlete will help determine pricing in endorsement deals, appearance fees, and licensing opportunities. CONSOR developed a formula in valuing celebrity and athlete rights of publicity and that is: Persona (Context + Time) + Product x Geography = Value (for you math geeks: Persona (C +T) + P xG = V). Right now, these World Cup athletes can take advantage of the increased awareness of their persona (especially via social media), the context of the World Cup, the timing of being having the “now” factor of the sporting event, the global popular product of the sport, draw upon the increasing popularity of soccer in the U.S. (and the popularity of U.S. “products” around the globe), which combined equals value for the athlete, their sponsors, and their licensees.
In this scenario, everybody wins – the sports and licensing industries, the fans, and the athlete (along with their agents). This fan has got to go, time to grab a Team USA jersey.