Successful partnerships between health systems and sports teams require clear organizational alignment and value propositions, marketing leaders said at Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting.

But they do not always go as planned.

An athlete might get arrested. The team might jack up the sponsorship costs. The collaboration might not sync with the organization’s mission or bring any value. So thorough due diligence is required.

“It becomes very expensive, very, very quickly,” Andrew Chang, chief marketing officer of UChicago Medicine, said during an April panel discussion at Hyatt Regency Chicago. “And if you are spending that much time and budget on something without a true reason for doing it, then it just becomes waste, in my opinion.”

Mr. Chang said it is important that these partnerships are not just an “ego buy” — a way for leaders to acquire tickets to see their favorite team and meet athletes.

It also depends on the unique situation of each health system and sport. Mr. Chang said UChicago Medicine has Chicago in its name — does it really need to spend millions of dollars to partner with all the Chicago sports teams to raise brand awareness? Some sports leagues’ collective bargaining agreements also allow athletes to see any physician, lessening the likelihood they will go to the partner health system for procedures, he noted.

But when the relationships go well, they can create real value. Through its deal with the NFL’s New York Giants, Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health’s patient acquisition cost is $25, compared to several times that industrywide, Chief Marketing Officer Opeyemi Oluwole said. And then there are the things on which one cannot put a price tag.

“Jaxson Dart, who is the new quarterback, the rookie quarterback, on Halloween, went to our children’s hospital to visit oncology patients. That went viral. He had on his Superman costume,” Ms. Oluwole said. “You cannot buy media like that.”

Health systems are also thinking globally these days, expanding their brands — and patient catchment areas — internationally, like UChicago Medicine and Formula 1, and Hackensack Meridian Health and the World Cup.

For Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, which partners with all four major pro sports teams in the city, these collaborations are “part of the brand infrastructure” and are not necessarily something that shows up on a spreadsheet, said Tim Coughlin, vice president of brand engagement and marketing.

“For that matter, neither is trust,” he said. “So we need to connect it with philanthropy. We need to connect it with service line marketing. We need to connect it with recruitment, brand or employee engagement.”

Sylvester Youlo, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at Rolla, Mo.-based Phelps Health, said he favors high school partnerships because there is an opportunity for more business simply because of the volume of student-athletes. And, as he noted, the insurance for a high school student and a professional athlete pays the same for an ACL surgery.

“The second thing is you are serving communities,” he said. “You are not serving professional organizations, you are serving communities.

“Don’t just send only athletic trainers to be there. If there’s a big football game for the kids, have your doctor go on the sideline. When I joined Phelps Health in our department, I told them if a mother calls, a parent calls, and says, ‘My son was playing and he got hurt yesterday,’ even if the clinic is full, find a way to get him in. … That mom goes and tells the next mom, ‘Hey, my son got hurt and, oh, they got us in right away.’ That is how you build credibility. That is how you build trust. That’s how you get referrals, word of mouth, without even having marketing involved.”

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