Sports intelligence agency Gemba has created Turnstile, a sponsorship evaluation platform for esports. This new platform allows buyers and sellers to see the physical assets, and intellectual property, of sponsorships. Gemba had been working on Turnstile for over two years prior to its launch, with brands such as Formula 1 testing it out extensively before it was made available to others.
Rob Mills, CEO & Director, Gemba delved into his new platform in a statement: “As we developed Turnstile we [were] very conscious that esports and gaming is increasingly going to take a larger part of the global sponsorship market. Turnstile provides a holistic solution to both buyers and sellers, incorporating traditional broadcast, social media and esports channels.”
“Our guiding principle in developing Turnstile was to provide a methodology that moves beyond just exposure measurement and seeks to understand the intellectual property value of sponsorship assets. The industry does not need more media equivalencies – it needs a robust approach to pricing using actual market benchmarks,” Mills continued.
The platform is said to have three core components to its service: benefits, exposure, and intellectual property. As such, Turnstile offers the market rate for tickets, hospitality, media assets, and so on. Not only that, it uses a “proprietary methodology to assess the effectiveness of logo exposure”.
After trying out the platform, Murray Barnett, Head of Global Sponsorships and Commercial Partnerships at Formula 1 said that the platform is “helping us shape the conversation with our commercial partners and teams moving forward,” which is important since the company is looking “to broaden and deepen our audience engagement” with esports.
Esports Insider says: Without seeing exactly how it works, it’s safe to say that the concept of Turnstile is interesting. The real test will be making it readily available for organisations and figures in the industry so they can weigh in on it themselves.
