Digital Asset Management for Sports Teams

If your professional sports organization is like most, your photographers and videographers are capturing a lot of content from locker room arrivals to autograph signings and every game-defining moment in between. These images and videos are plentiful and often require an almost immediate turnaround to get this play-by-play action out to the media, fans, players, and partners. It can be a challenge, to say the least. So how do you seamlessly execute this content-rich, fast-paced workflow?

To ensure you’re maximizing your investment in not only game day content but also promotional photography, merchandise images, social reels, and more, you need an easy, fast way to access and distribute content. And it’s not only about immediate usage. How do you make certain that your team’s future marketers and partners can take advantage of your team’s rich digital history, too?

A digital asset management (DAM) platform helps you make the most of your team’s digital assets by allowing you to organize, find, share, and track digital assets like photos and video. Let’s take a closer look at the critical role a DAM solution can play in helping your sports team protect and grow its brand.

Importance of DAM for sports

A DAM platform is critical for sports organizations that are serious about boosting brand awareness, facilitating brand consistency, and creating impactful marketing campaigns. Using a DAM system allows sports teams to easily and effectively create, store, manage, and distribute digital assets — something that the professional football team, the Houston Texans, learned firsthand.

Competing in the NFL, the Texans’ creative team maintains a vast library of digital imagery including game day photos. The team’s massive content volume meant it struggled to get digital assets to the internal and external stakeholders who needed them, making it more difficult for everyone — from marketing and PR teams to players, coaches, the media, and other collaborators — to help tell and amplify the team’s brand story.

But after deploying a robust DAM solution, the Texans were able to make game day photography available quickly, centralizing access and supporting brand consistency. And the new system has streamlined content creation processes across the organization. “As [the DAM system] has made it easier for people to find and leverage imagery, the more it’s become an increasingly important part of how they do their job,” explained Zach Tarrant, Team Photographer at the Houston Texans. 

How sports teams use DAM

 Sports teams use DAM software in many ways:

• Players can easily share images of their touchdown catch or buzzer-beating three-pointer on social media. 
• The press can easily select just the right images to accompany print, broadcast, and online reporting from brand-approved collections. 
• Partners have controlled access to the photos, logos, and other brand images they need to promote the team’s story and brand.
• Coaches can include video footage of an important play in their post-game analysis or pre-practice presentations.

With a DAM solution in place, stakeholders can securely and easily locate and use assets that support the larger brand.

Use assets that support the brand

Using the wrong image of a player, an image of the wrong player, footage from a different game, or an outdated version of the team logo can be embarrassing for the team and its partners. Just ask the Washington Commanders, who made headlines nationwide when its promotional coffee mugs included the Washington D.C. team’s logo superimposed over a silhouette of the state of Washington — rather than the District of Columbia.

With proper governance, a DAM platform greatly minimizes the chances that a well-meaning employee or partner will accidentally use the “wrong” asset. Because it creates a single, centralized repository for all images and digital assets — which are organized and clearly labeled — employees, vendors, partners, and other stakeholders can feel confident that the asset they’re using is correct. This boosts brand consistency by ensuring people only use approved, updated videos, images, creative content, marketing collateral, and other digital resources. 

The Houston Texans have realized significant benefits with the team’s updated DAM solution. “It allows our stakeholders to quickly and easily adhere to internal brand standards,” stated Tarrant. “And I think that’s something that anybody can relate to, no matter what kind of company they work for.”

Find assets quickly

If you’ve ever felt like you were on a wild goose chase for the photo, video, or creative asset you need for a project — searching Google Drives, emailing colleagues with file requests, and even searching your local machine’s hard drive in an attempt to locate the necessary file — you’re not alone. Most sports marketers and professional sports organizations have experienced the same situation. But a DAM solution ensures your stakeholders and partners can find assets quickly, whether logged into the company’s corporate network or working remotely. 

Because it leverages taxonomy frameworks and metadata schemas, a DAM system helps users across the organization quickly access the files they need to perform content tasks — and tell the team’s story. Users can easily search and navigate the DAM site to discover digital assets based on precise search parameters — from player and opposing team to jersey color and more. 

“People don’t always know exactly what they’re looking for,” said Tarrant. “They know what kind of story they want to tell. They know what they want the images to accomplish. Having this good tool empowers me to use the knowledge that I already have about our library to help them accomplish their goals with imagery.”

Additionally, a self-service DAM solution allows teams to more easily find just the digital assets they need, ensuring they can quickly get critical, time-sensitive images out to the world. Within minutes of taking a photo, photographers can upload it to the DAM site, tag it, and release it, making it accessible for partners and the media to use almost immediately. 

Provide instant access

Being able to securely access your content from anywhere in the world is critical to moving fast. You don’t want to have to log into a VPN or to require users to work from the company network only. With a cloud-based DAM solution, access is as easy as hopping online. Not only that, but permissions are upheld no matter where you are and companies can choose to employ single sign-on (SSO) to align with overall IT security measures. 

Portals are another way teams can provide asset access without actually giving someone login access to the entire DAM system. A portal is a way to distribute a selected subset of assets to a particular audience. This level of access can be open or gated behind a password. Either option is a great way for teams to easily share access to curated content. 

Teams can also access their brand assets on the go with a mobile app. This level of access lets individuals use, share, and download assets without being on a computer, while still maintaining the full permission settings found on the desktop site. 

Getting started

Looking for a way to empower internal and external stakeholders to tell your sports team’s unique story and provide rich, up-to-date content to your growing fan base? A DAM solution can help you make that happen. By creating a single, easy-to-use place for all your team’s digital assets, you’ll be able to more effectively tell your team’s story while protecting your larger brand.

Ready to discover the impact a digital asset management platform can have at your professional sports organization? Learn more about how Acquia DAM (Widen) can streamline and simplify content creation across players, coaches, marketers, the media, and your external partners. And when you’re ready, get in touch for your free, personalized demo. 

And if you’re interested but not sure where to start, we’re proud to partner with Stacks. They’re DAM experts with years of experience helping sports teams like the Baltimore Ravens get their DAM efforts off the ground, build their DAM program, or receive ongoing support.