SBJ Marketing: Manscaped goes global with UFC renewal

"Yesterday is a canceled check. Today is cash on the line. Tomorrow is a promissory note" -- Pro Football Hall of Famer Hank Stram.

Manscaped’s exponential growth over the past five years into a $300 million brand has more to do with marketing the right product at the right time than anything else. UFC has been since 2019 Manscaped’s largest sponsorship. Thus, a new three-year renewal of an original two-year sponsorship for the UFC’s “Official Electric Trimmer" almost triples the initial sponsorship investment -- a price in accordance with the growth of both property and brand.

Manscaped, which properties as prestigious as the Canadiens have granted the unusual designation of “official below-the-waist grooming partner,” is one of UFC’s biggest sponsorship success stories -- whether you track increased revenue, building of brand equity or activation. “UFC has been phenomenal for us and allowed us to zero in on their core of young males, which are our core consumers," said Founder and CEO Paul Tran.

Now that Manscaped has grown enough to sell products offshore, the new deal expands those UFC rights from domestic to global. Other new sponsorship elements include “ownership” of the fourth and fifth rounds, via voiceover and logo integration to match Manscaped’s Lawn Mower 4.0 electric trimmer, and its yet-to-be-released Lawn Mower 5.0. There will also be additional custom content and further integration of UFC talent. Octagon branding will continue, of course.

“They created an industry and we helped," said UFC VP/Global Partnerships Grant Norris-Jones, noting that the original sponsorship began with a cold-call pitch." The hookup started with a six-figure digital/social partnership to support Manscaped’s efforts in the direct-to-consumer channel -- which is still its largest -- though Manscaped products are now sold in retailers as large as Amazon, Target and Macy’s. This deal is around 3x the previous pact, rising to low seven figures annually. Keep in mind: This is a category so new, there’s no consensus on what to call it, aside from “men’s grooming."

Manscaped is also a corporate sponsor of RuPaul’s annual DragCon convention. Accordingly, Tran said his favorite post of the year was one that proclaimed Manscaped to be “the only brand that could sponsor drag queens and the UFC at the same time." Said Tran: “I was so proud for all that said about our diversity and the markets we are reaching. ... As we expand into things like lip balm, we feel the brand is very elastic and could work for anything under the men’s health heading," he added.

Along with the UFC and a quartet of its fighters, Manscaped’s sports sponsorship portfolio now includes NFL and NHL teams. With the company scheduled to go public on NASDAQ in March, we’re wondering how much its appetite for sponsorships will grow.

UFC, one of the first sports out of the box after the COVID lockdown, has been on a roll of late with a 34% increase in sponsorship revenue since 2020. It’s still without some of what other properties would call basic categories, so there is a particular emphasis in 2022 in landing sponsorships within the QSR, automotive and insurance categories.

• FanDuel extended its content and marketing deal with the PGA Tour for another three years. FanDuel will be the tour's official betting operator through 2024. The company will have rights in the U.S. to use tour marks, rights to advertise within tour media and tour partner platforms, plus content and video rights allowing FanDuel to create pregame and postgame betting programming.

• MSG and Anheuser-Busch renewed a marketing pact, and as part of the deal, the brewer will be a sponsor of both MSG-owned CLG, which plays in the League of Legends pro circuit in North America (LCS), as well as Knicks Gaming, which plays in NBA 2K, reports SBJ's Trent Murray. A-B will collaborate on livestream content on Twitch with both organizations aiming around insider access to the organizations.

• NASCAR is poised to ban political sponsorships, reports SBJ's Adam Stern, as it seeks to avoid controversies that most recently saw Xfinity Series driver Brandon Brown sign a deal tied to the "Let’s Go Brandon" chant that has become a coded phrase for cursing President Biden. While political sponsorships may be going away, NASCAR is set to have its first hemp deal, as Richard Childress Racing landed the first major team sponsorship in the category with cannabinoid product maker 3Chi. The deal is for multiple years and a significant number of primaries annually on Tyler Reddick’s No. 8 Chevrolet in the Cup Series.

• Real Salt Lake has secured Playfly Sports to find a new stadium naming-rights sponsor to replace mining company Rio Tinto, which had been affixed to the venue since October 2008, reports my colleague Mark J. Burns. The company’s deal expired in December 2020. RSL interim President John Kimball highlighted the state's fast-growing population, along with a potential Utah-based Winter Olympics in 2030 or 2034. RSL is “ideally looking for a 10-year commitment,” according to Kimball.

• Playfly also has purchased sponsorship sales and consulting agency Premier Partnerships, founded in 2003 by Alan Rothenberg and Randy Bernstein. The addition brings on an accomplished and well-connected third-party sales and evaluation agency to Playfly at a time when the amount of seven-figure sports sponsorship inventory has exploded, with the addition of uniform patches, extra signage in and around the field of play, and incremental virtual ad signage.