WME Sells Sports Agency to Publicis
Publicis Groupe is set to acquire 160over90 in a bid to win more of advertisers’ spending in sports
Publicis Groupe is acquiring sports-marketing agency 160over90 from WME Group for more than $500 million.
The acquisition capitalizes on sports becoming an essential channel for brands seeking mass reach amid splintering consumer interests.
A new partnership between WME Group and Publicis Groupe will give the advertising giant access to WME’s talent roster.
Publicis Groupe is acquiring the sports-marketing agency 160over90 from talent firm WME Group as sports becomes an increasingly essential channel for brands seeking mass reach.
The French advertising group will pay more than $500 million for the company, according to people familiar with the transaction, and absorb its 670 employees into a unit called Publicis Sports. WME, which was known as Endeavor until going private last year, bought 160over90 in 2018 for approximately $200 million.
The agency is best known for brokering and managing brands’ sponsorship deals with athletes and sports properties. It also runs corporate hospitality and branded experiences at events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics.
Sports has emerged as one of the few pillars of monoculture still standing while consumers’ interests, tastes and time splinter across an array of media channels. The rise of women’s sports has at the same time opened up more sponsorship opportunities to female-focused brands.
Ad holding companies have tried to capitalize by forming new teams to help clients navigate the world of media rights, exclusivity deals, athlete contracts and more. Stagwell in January announced it had spun off its Sport Beach events business into its own company, while the media-buying arm of London-based WPP announced the formation of WPP Media Sports, “a unified, data-driven sports marketing practice.”
Publicis, which owns agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH, similarly said it would bring more transparency to the disjointed business of sports marketing, a channel that clients have long complained lacks good data to reliably prove a return on investment. It will pitch advertisers on an all-in-one solution: Publicis will broker sports sponsorship deals, but also make the ads, buy the media and work with influencers to amplify them, and boot up its Epsilon data business to measure and adjust for reach and effectiveness, executives said.
“Everything in sports is completely disruptive, the growth has been crazy, but yet it’s fragmented, and the model hasn’t changed in 25 to 30 years,” said Suzy Deering, a former chief marketing officer of Ford and eBay who was named chief executive of Publicis Sports last October. “We’re bringing it all together so that we now have one comprehensive strategy.”
The arrangement will give the advertising giant access to WME’s talent and intellectual property roster, and WME access to some of the world’s largest brands, at a time when celebrities are growing more and more reliant on brand deals to shore up their wealth and fame. WME represents stars including figure skating gold medalist Alysa Liu, tennis champion Carlos Alcaraz, and actors Teyana Taylor and Michael. B. Jordan. Publicis clients include top ad spenders like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.