Partnerships are important in life and in all types of endeavors. It turns out, that they are also crucial to growing your fitness streaming business. A partnership is an arrangement where two or more parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. In fitness streaming, there are several types of partnerships you can leverage to grow your online fitness brand and fitness content. We are going to focus on the Licensee side of things for this article, covering these three areas:
Specialty Fitness
Fitness Aggregators
Broadcast TV
Before we jump into the licensing side of things, let’s discuss three principles that should serve as the decisions making foundation for your partnership choices as a fitness creator. The first one is Content is King. This is important because your content is a representation of who you are as an artist, a creator, a brand, and a company. The licensee or partner you engage with should not change your representation but expand your content reach. The second principle is Connections are the Kingdom. Your goal is to use the content to create as many connections as you can with people, products, and partners as it expands your circle of influence. The third principle is Other Peoples Companies. Partnerships allow you to leverage other people’s reach and unique offerings while at the same time, filling gaps you may have with your content and company.
Your goal, is to build your fan base or kingdom. By partnering with other companies you can leverage their technology, marketing and sales resources and distribution networks. The most common distribution partnership is called content licensing. Content licensing is the distribution of media assets to any third party, generally for a fixed term, and for a fixed price. Put in other words, there are vast audiences of fitness consumers who are starving for content. Licensing companies take your content and distribute it through their channels to reach the consumers who want it and who are willing to pay for it. The resulting transactions create an extended fan base and revenue stream for you while giving the Licensor the inventory they need to meet the demand.
I recently sat down with Endophinz Executive Producer, Mike Donavanik, to discuss fitness content licensing. Mike is an international fitness streaming super star and producer. He outlined three content licensing paths that are available. While all of them are viable one needs to be aware that generally, the larger the potential distribution network, the smaller the fitness creators revenue share will be. Mike does not look at the license as a way to make a lot of money but as a way to expand the brand and reach into new circles of consumers he may have not otherwise reached with his content and brand.
