Sport Beach CEO Beth Sidhu on how to work with athletes: ‘Take those athletes seriously’

Beth Sidhu, the CEO of Sport Beach, has led the charge in launching what has become one of the most transformative beachfront activations at Cannes Lions in recent years.

Created in 2022 by Stagwell, Sport Beach started as a place to bring together athletes, marketers and creatives to facilitate industry discussions and deals.

In recent years, it has grown into a full-fledged sports marketing platform, expanding beyond the shores of Cannes to massive events like the Super Bowl, the NBA All-Star Weekend and CES  in Las Vegas.

Sidhu, who was named CEO of Sport Beach earlier this year, spoke to The Post about the company’s growth, the lucrative world of sports and what’s next for the brand.

Q:  Sport Beach has become such a focal point at Cannes Lions. Who came up with the idea and how has the brand grown since its inception?

Beth Sidhu: Sport Beach was the brainchild of my colleagues at 72 and Sunny Glen Cole and Damien Journey. What they saw was that there was no place for sport in Cannes at all. And so rather than make our activation about our holding company, Stagwell, we thought let’s make it about what you would do for a client; make it about an audience, make it about something they care about. So the idea was around sports at the beginning. There was an ‘s’ – it was initially Sports Beach. 

I was sent a single slide in October of 2022, and it was an amazing lightning bolt. I thought, this is an idea to bet the house on. Year one was just me running around promising people it wouldn’t be Fyre Festival 2.0, and now I really think Sport Beach is the premier and premium home of all sport in Cannes and in many other places. We’re bringing together the same audience and really sort of around the calendar and around the world.

Q: What was the moment when you realized it had become something bigger than an event?

BS: The moment I realized what Sport Beach was going to be… you know, year one, we had a lot of great moments. Carmelo Anthony, Maria Sharapova, Sue Bird took a chance on the idea, came and leaned in and told their story and built business on the back of Sport Beach, which is the intent. 

Year one, no one has any expectations. Season two, people are like, ‘Oh, what are you going to do?’ We had Travis Kelsey, Jason Kelce and a climbing wall. We launched our wine and spirits festival. We went to Davos. So each year has grown on itself and really presented our athletes, brands and marketers with different opportunities to work together. I don’t know if there was a moment. .. it’s just when it hits, it hits.

Q: Can you give me a sense of how it’s grown revenue-wise?

BS: It started with zero, right? It’s grown substantially. We don’t tell the FCC how much revenue we make for our individual agencies. We’re not going to change that here but we have said it’s a growing, profitable company and it also drives significant value for our clients, our athletes, Stagwell and my sister agencies at Stagwell. We’ve said publicly in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Q: What makes sports such a popular topic?

BS: The obvious answers are it is the last appointment viewing and uninterruptible by AI. I think that those two things are important and not going to change. They are fixed and important. In addition, sport has become a cultural mover and a technology mover in a way that it wasn’t 10 years ago. 

My theory of this case is that everyone’s a sports marketer now. Whether or not you work for a sport-endemic brand or one that has never engaged in sport, whether or not you think you’re a sports marketer or not. Yeah. Almost every brand around the world B2B, B2C — B2I and by “I”, I  mean influencer — they are all using sport because of its incredible breadth, incredible diversity and incredible power to move culture.

Q: What mistakes do brands make or misconceptions do they have when working with athletes?

BS: The best brands treat athletes as genuine co-conspirators in the project. Sport Beach is based on this idea of co-creation, where we genuinely treat athletes, brands and marketers as equal partners in any project. The best brands doing the most interesting, coolest, most diverse work are ones that take athletes seriously as business partners, as creators, as thinkers … whether or not it’s around the development of a podcast or a tequila, you know, the brands doing it right. Take those athletes seriously. As opposed to a logo slap or an NIL [name, image, likeness] slap, I guess is the athlete equivalent. 

Q: Women’s sports have experienced extraordinary growth. What opportunities do you think brands are still underestimating when working in the women’s sports space? 

BS: I’m so glad you asked that question today. We actually just launched our Women’s Leadership Council. We have an incredible group of women who are part of it. And what we are trying to do with the council is move past the “everyone invests in women’s sports, everybody watches women’s sports.” Like, yes, now what can we do to advance the conversation? 

Our Women’s Leadership Council, Fueled by Gatorade, is looking at a specific issue each year. This year is all about coaching and representation. We are going to produce some [intellectual property] and some thoughts about how the industry can move coaching and female representation at the highest levels of coaching forward. That’s where Sport Beach wants to be. We want to make sure that anything we do in that area of women’s sports is actually just part of sports.

Q: Which brands are doing women’s sports right?

BS:  So many. I really do think Gatorade and PepsiCo are doing a great job. They have a whole body of science, really science-backed research that looks specifically at female athletes. I think that Elf Beauty is doing really exciting different programs, whether it’s partnering with Billie Jean King or their “So many Dicks, so few of everyone else” campaign which you should look up, if only to entertain yourself. They did some research and discovered that the number one name people on corporate boards is Dick. It’s a sort of tongue-in-cheek way to get representation on corporate boards.

Q: You’ve described Sport Beach as a place “where deals start.” Can you share some examples of partnerships or businesses that originated there?

BS: Off the top of my head, the number that we use is dozens. That is because, honestly, we stopped counting. We’ve had an NFL player get a Super Bowl ad. We had an Olympian do a year-long partnership contract with a telco carrier to be the face of that. We’ve had people ink podcasts deals. 

Q: Sports brings so many people together. Do you see other industries that do that? Will there be any extensions for Sport Beach?

BS: Music is the obvious one. We announced Cannes’ first country music concert. It’s on the beach, which will be at Sport Beach in 2027. It’s going to bring together sport and music in a way that only Sport Beach can – these two great passions.