Belonging is the new scoreboard
belonging is the new reach, and today’s fans, especially the younger ones, can tell instantly when a brand has earned the right to ask something of them.
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Rugby League World Cup 2026 announced the tournament’s inaugural commercial partners, coinciding with its 100 Days To Go countdown:
Youi – Official General Insurance Partner
Bank South Pacific – Official Banking Partner
Rebel – Official Sports Retail Partner
Steeden – Official Match Ball Partner
Ticketmaster – Official Ticketing Partner
New Balance – Official Apparel Partner
Los Angeles Rams launched a new collaboration with social enterprise streetwear label HoMie ahead of its clash against the San Francisco 49ers at the MCG in October - all profits from its new range go directly to combat youth homelessness
Essendon FC announced that Toyota Material Handling Australia will continue as a co-major partner of the Club’s AFLW program for Season 11 which will see the TMHA logo remain featured on the Bombers AFLW playing guernsey
Cronulla Sharks welcomed leading Australian clean energy company Think Renewable as the front of shorts sponsor for both the NRL and NRLW teams, the partnership will cover the remainder of the 2026 seasons for both the men’s and women’s teams, while extending into 2027 as NRLW shorts sponsor
Western Sydney Wanderers FC unveiled Western Sydney International Airport as a Major Partner for the club’s highly anticipated Sydney Super Cup fixture against English Premier League side Chelsea FC
Perth Glory announced a 3-year major partnership with Northside Rentals which will feature on the back of the match shorts worn by Glory’s A-League Men’s and Women’s teams
South East Melbourne Phoenix secured a new partnership with Budget Car & Truck Rental for the NBL27 season which will feature on the front of the Phoenix's home and away jerseys, as well as the club's training apparel
Brisbane Bullets announced a suite of new and renewed partnerships with Cleanworks Australia (Official Cleaning Partner), Sirromet (Official Wine Partner) and Sunny Advertising (Media Partner)
Townsville Fire (reigning WNBL Champions) and South32 Cannington renewed their partnership for 3 more years
Brisbane Roar renewed multiple partnerships which includes Cannon Logistics, Arrivederci Pizzeria and Big Michael’s
Netball WA and West Coast Fever renewed their partnership with HCF through to 2027
AusCycling unveiled a string of new partnerships ahead of the UCI BMX Racing World Championships:
Quench Water Bottles became an Official Supplier
Queensland University of Technology will support the delivery of a live stream of the Challenge component of the event (from 20-25 July) and students will receive work placement opportunities
Brisbane SX (part of Stadiums Queensland) is hosting the event and has agreed to a holistic partnership covering food and beverage, venue hire, marketing and infrastructure
AusCycling also confirmed that Westbridge Funds are returning as naming rights partner of the Westbridge Funds Road National Championships, being held in Perth in January 2027
Boost Mobile AUSX Supercross Championship presented by Monster Energy announced the renewal and expansion of its partnership with DEWALT for the 2026 season, and welcomed MyPayNow back as a Major Partner
Torrie Lewis and Mollie O’Callaghan were unveiled as NAB ambassadors ahead of the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games
South Sydney Rabbitohs hosted Jai Arrow’s 31st birthday alongside a VIP list of guests which included Anthony Albanese, Peter V’landys Andrew Abdo and The Wiggles
AFL, Dan Does Footy, 7plus and Kayo Sports united for a creator-led live stream - In an AFL industry first, ‘The Ultimate Footy Watchalong 2’ integrated official AFL match vision into the Dan Does Footy creator-led live stream
AFL and Bunnings launched their inaugural National Footy Sausage Sizzle involving more than 260 community football clubs taking over the tongs to raise vital funds that flow directly back into their clubs
AFL unveiled its long-term strategy to grow the game in India, with an ambition to increase participation in the country (population 1.48B) to more than 100,000 registered participants over the coming years
Melbourne Storm confirmed that it is in negotiations with two international bidders and is exploring a mega $160 million investment (via Code Sports)
Cricket Australia announced that the Melbourne Renegades and Perth Scorchers will open the KFC BBL|16 season in Chennai, India
Both of the above announcements were made as part of Prime Minister Albanese and Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the Melbourne Cricket Ground
AO Ventures, the venture capital arm of Tennis Australia and the Australian Open, announced two new investments 1) Scottish wearable technology company PlayerData 2) Sports media platform ScorePlay
A-Leagues revealed the Isuzu UTE A-League Men 2026/27 fixture exclusively across the official A-Leagues’ app - The season will kick off with the Sydney Derby for the first time ever
Seattle Seahawks sold for an NFL record of US$9.61bn (Previous NFL team record sale was US$6.05bn)
FIFA is considering expanding the men’s World Cup to 64 teams after the 2026 tournament (this year’s tournament featured 48 teams, up from 32)
Guest Writer: Tom Meredith
Today we’re welcoming Tom Meredith, Director & Principal Consultant at PLYMKR, as this week’s guest writer!
Tom is a freelance sport marketing and fandom consultant who supports agencies, brands and governing bodies in unlocking growth by connecting with fans in more meaningful and memorable ways.
Guided by a deep passion for sport, and his beloved Swansea City Football Club, Tom has carved a 15-year career in the sport marketing industry, at agencies in London and Melbourne - IMG, Synergy Sponsorship, Bastion Collective, TLA Worldwide and TGI Sport Wildcard.
In today’s article, Tom In today’s article, Tom shares his biggest takeaway from Victory Lap 2026, exploring why belonging has become the most powerful competitive advantage in modern sports branding.
Belonging is the new scoreboard
A few hundred marketers gathered in a converted power station on the Brisbane River last week, and something interesting happened. Across sixteen sessions, given by an array of world class sports marketeers - the same words weren’t always used, but almost everybody arrived at the same idea… The power of belonging.
That’s my real takeaway from Victory Lap, and it’s a genuinely exciting one for anyone building a sports brand right now. It’s a shift from rational marketing and analytics to emotional connection and identity.
The journey is simple - a clear brand narrative leads to compelling content, compelling content leads to fandom, and fandom, if built well, leads to belonging - the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself that speaks to you emotionally. The power that gets someone to renew a membership, buy a jersey, get a tattoo, or barrack for a club they’ve on the other side of the world like it’s family.
Kieran Murphy, now Senior Creative Director at IMG after shaping the Tottenham Hotspur rebrand and Formula 1’s creative direction, framed it as well as anyone on the day - attention used to be the metric brands chased. Now it’s belonging. The more you can get a fan to participate in your sports brand, the more opportunities you have to make them feel belonging.
At Tottenham:
“Football was the product, but belonging was the brand.”
- Kieran Murphy, now Senior Creative Director at IMG
Swap football for whatever code you love and you’ve got a sentence worth pinning above your desk.
Tottenham Rebrand:
People, place, positioning, participation – the pillars of belonging
Four ideas kept surfacing throughout the conference – people, place, positioning and participation. These four factors drive belonging and are levers that you can use to create deeper and more meaningful connections to your fanbase.
People, first. Know what makes your people tick. The strongest brands have done the deep work of understanding why someone becomes a fan in the first place, then build everything else from there.
Shana Stephenson’s story of Ellie the Elephant is a masterclass in this. Ellie is the New York Liberty’s mascot, dressed in swaggy outfits, with dance moves dripping in Brooklyn style and born from Ellis Island (home of the Statue of Liberty) and the true story of elephants once being walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to test its strength. She’s a style icon, appeared in Vogue, but most importantly she belongs to the people of Brooklyn. It’s not a content idea, it’s fandom research wearing a costume, and it’s now the most valuable mascot in women’s sport because of it.
Then place. Every place has a story to tell. Dan Beltran’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers talk was one of the highlights of the conference for its commitment to place. When Tom Brady moved on, the Bucs brand team had a moment of real clarity - for years they’d let one player carry their identity, and now it was time to build something that belonged to the city itself.
Beltran’s team spent months photographing Tampa’s architecture, its light, its textures, its hidden design, and turned all of it into the brand’s visual language
This is real identity. ‘Your city already has a brand,’ he said. ‘Your job is to find it.’ It’s a brilliant reminder for every Australian club sitting on its own goldmine, every place has a history and a community with a story only that club can tell.
Positioning was a thread running through multiple sessions, and we heard two equally valid ways to execute and manage it.
New Zealand Rugby’s Kerry McKenzie runs the All Black marketing off a beautifully tight brand framework - Think, Feel, Do - anchored to one positioning line, ‘Embrace the Power of Black’. This is the framework that everything they do has to live by - from a coach announcement to a TikTok post.
Dan Beltran liked a bit of breathing room for creative exploration - his rule was that if a piece of content feels 75% right, that’s good enough to put into the world, and the flexibility is what keeps things feeling alive. Whereas the creators spoke to enjoying the freedom of flexibility in the content they create. The core point that everyone that spoke to positioning was the importance of total clarity on why the brand exists, so every decision downstream gets easier.
Our Home, Our Team – All Blacks
And participation, the pillar with significant energy behind. Formula 1 was held up again as the brand that’s cracked it – Drive to Survive, F1 go-kart tracks, a merch line dressing people who’ve never watched a race. For clubs and sports, the takeaway should be that the brands winning today aren’t creating bigger campaigns. They’re creating bigger ecosystems with multiple entry points for participation - and the role of branding has shifted from helping people recognise a brand to helping people find their place within it.
F1 Drive - Go Carting Experience
How are you helping your fans participate in new ways?
Speed and craft, working together
It’s an age-old tension – do you want it done quickly, or do you want it done well. We saw advocates for the power of both at Victory Lap. Dan Gorringe made the case for speed with the energy of someone who’s built ten million followers on it – the core of his approach is that being early to a moment or conversation is a genuine competitive advantage. He argued that attention needs to be grabbed in the first 2.8 seconds or you’ve lost. Attention belongs to no one, it’s earned. Because of this, Gorringe’s production and craft is limited – but for him, that works - his voice, deliberately, sounds like you’re down the pub with your mates. As creators, speed is vital. And AFL have recognised the power of this and DDF by granting them access to match vision as part of an AFL industry first collaboration with 7plus, Kayo, DDF and the AFL. The Ultimate Footy Watchalong will change the way AFL fans interact with the sport.
Shahbaz Khan, leader of the NFL’s global social strategy team, talked about the importance of craft when the time is right to create a deeper belonging – ‘build things that last rather than things that trend’, and earn your stripes on the platform before you make the commercial ask to the fan. For major sporting brands such as NFL, All Blacks or F1, craft is important for perception of the brand as well as connection.
However, speed and craft may actually be two halves of the same toolkit. Speed is how you show up for culture in the moment. Craft is how you show up for identity over time. The best brands or sports know how to reach for both, utilising the relevant creators or channels and understanding what’s right for the moment.
The opportunity in front of us
What struck me most, is how achievable all of this can be. It’s an invitation to lean into the most rewarding parts of our jobs - genuinely getting to know your fans and your place and building your brand or campaigns to tell their story. Get clear on what you stand for before you decide what execution looks like and then share real creative control with the people who can make it feel true - your creators, your players, your community.
Lavender Baj’s session was a genuine call to arms on this front, encouraging brands to treat creators as production partners with real access rather than talent working off a brief – something that NBA and NFL have really lent into with amazing success in recent years. Lavender’s promise was that the work gets better for everyone when they do.
In closing, Nicole Pincus’s line has stuck with me since - belonging is the new reach, and today’s fans, especially the younger ones, can tell instantly when a brand has earned the right to ask something of them.
That’s the golden goose sitting underneath everything at Victory Lap this year. Belonging. Fans who belong don’t just watch a sport, they attend it, defend it, fund it, wear it, and pass it on. Every club, league and brand in this industry already has the raw material to build that - a place, a history, a community, a story nobody else can tell. The opportunity now is simply to build the brand around it, with the same courage, clarity and emotional resonance that the best speakers in the room showed us this week.
See you at Victory Lap 2027.
adidas - Senior Director, Brand
AFL - Digital Producer
AFL - Retail Category Manager
AFL - Senior Digital Producer
Amer Sports - Graphic Designer & Production Coordinator
Amer Sports - Marketing Operations Manager
Amer Sports - Sports & Community Marketing Manager
Australian Golf Services - Partnership Manager
Australian Sports Commission - Senior Program Manager
Bastion - Senior Client Director
Brand Collective - Key Account Manager - Lifestyle
Cricket Australia - Partnerships Lead
Cricket Tasmania - Media and Public Relations Advisor
Easygo - Sponsorships Lead
Entain Australia & New Zealand - Marketing Operations Manager
ESNP - Marketing Manager
Football Australia - New Business Executive
Future Golf - Head of Customer / Member Experience
Geelong Cats - AFLW Content Lead
Gemba - Strategist
Golf Australia - Head of Evolve - Emerging Formats
Guzman y Gomez Mexican Kitchen - Senior Partnerships & Sponsorships Manager
Greyhound Racing NSW - Marketing Manager
Greyhound Racing NSW - Media Manager
JD Sports Australia & New Zealand - Senior Digital Trade Manager
Lion - Partnerships Manager
lululemon - Events Manager
LSKD - Athlete Team Coordinator
LSKD - Public Relations Coordinator
Melbourne Cricket Ground - Club Functions Lead
Melbourne Cricket Ground - Tourism Products and Experiences Manager
Melbourne Park - Senior Event Manager - Australian Open
Melbourne Racing Club - Account Manager
Moonee Valley Racing Club - Event Sales Coordinator
Netball Australia - Head of Media Rights & Broadcast
Netball NSW - Media & Communications Specialist - NSW Swifts
Netball NSW - Partnerships Executive
Netball World Cup Sydney 2027 - General Manager - Marketing & Communications
News Corp Australia - AFL Chief of Staff
NT Government - Play Well Activation Manager
O’Neills Sportswear - Senior Sales Rep
Octagon - Project Executive (Fixed Term Contract)
Omnicom Media - Sports Partnership Executive
Penrith Panthers - Marketing & CRM Executive
Picklebet - Promotions Specialist
Port Adelaide FC - Head of Education
PUMA - Head of Retail - Oceania
Queensland Cricket - Education Partnerships Manager
SailGP - Marketing Manager, APAC
Sole Motive - Social Media & Content Manager
Sportslink Travel - Sports Travel Consultants x 2
Sports Entertainment Network - Commercial Manager
Sports Entertainment Network - Community Development Manager
Sports Entertainment Network - Consumer Communications Coordinator
Sports Entertainment Network - Digital Content & Video Producer – Sport
Sports Entertainment Network - Digital and Social Platforms Manager – SEN TEAMS
Sports Entertainment Network - General Manager - Melbourne Mavericks Netball
Sports Entertainment Network - Partnership Manager
Stadiums Queensland - Senior Operations Coordinator - The Gabba
STH Group - Event Delivery & Account Coordinator
STH Group - Senior Account Manager
Supercars - Event Manager
Supercheap Auto - Sponsorship & Content Specialist
Swimming NSW - Retail Operations & E-commerce Manager
Sydney Roosters - Commercial Partnerships Executive
Sydney Swans - Head of Content & Creative
Tabcorp - Social Content Producer
Tennis Australia - Head of Commercial
Tennis Australia - New Business Development Lead
Tennis Australia - Partner Activations Lead
Ticketmaster Australia - Account Manager - Rugby World Cup (Fixed Term)
Under Armour - Assistant Manager, Brand Marketing
Under Armour - Assistant Manager, Trade Marketing
Under Armour - Sr. Manager, Digital Sales
Victoria Racing Club - Partnerships Lead
Victorian Institute of Sport - Community Programs & Marketing Coordinator
Viva Leisure - Head of Performance Marketing
Western Bulldogs - Philanthropy and Fundraising Administrator
World Surf League - Partnerships Manager, APAC
Youi - Partnerships Manager
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