How the Cincinnati Bearcats won big with digital asset management
| January 13, 2025
“Content is everything,” says the University of Cincinnati Bearcats’ Chief Strategy Officer, Ben Hofstetter. And he has an unusual example to prove his point.
“Recently, I was at a conference in Las Vegas and ran into someone who was a football player at Cincinnati ten years ago,” Hofstetter explains. “We got to talking about the work I was doing implementing our digital asset management system, and he said: ‘l’ve never seen any of the photos from when I was there.’ So, I searched on my phone, and immediately, I had about 25 photos of him.
“He starts looking through them, and all of a sudden, he gets really quiet. I can see he’s starting to cry. And he says: ‘This is me and my grandpa. He died about six months after this, and I’ve never seen this photo before.’ It’s amazing that a photo can mean so much to an alum with a connection to us; you can’t put a price tag on that.”
If Hofstetter’s story shows the power of one piece of content – even a decades-old photo – it’s also a stark reminder of the content challenges facing sports organizations like the Bearcats.
Competitive content
At any one time, Cincinnati’s athletics department supports 500+ student-athletes across 18 sports, from basketball and football to soccer and track and field. Hofstetter oversees a team of 48 creators across photography, design, and communications roles, and no matter how much more content is created, the demand continues to grow.
“If we look at one of our smaller sports, like volleyball or tennis — which aren’t even our main revenue-generating sports — we’ve seen 10x growth in content over the last five years,” Hofstetter tells an exclusive webinar in the SportsPro Insider Series, sponsored by Canto.
It’s a common picture seen across sports in America, according to Canto’s Andrew Hall:
“We’re seeing a massive explosion of content, more so in sports than any other industry.” Canto’s research found that marketers expect to produce 75% more content year-over-year across all verticals. “But in sports, this figure was 120% — sports content is more than doubling in volume each year,” Andrew says.
Getting game-ready
The proliferation of content driven by technology gives sports organizations several strategic opportunities: to engage fans, attract sponsors, monetize content, and maximize the value of their digital media inventory.
It also poses a productivity challenge, as organizations need better processes to manage and control their ever-increasing content library. Having the ability to organize, filter, and find the right assets becomes critically important, which is where a digital asset management (DAM) solution like Canto comes in.
“Before we went with Canto, it was hard to find content,” Hofstetter admits. “The traditional shared drive is a folder in a folder in a folder, and you have to know the person who knows exactly where those photos are. To be able to make that content more accessible more quickly has been huge for us. We wanted to have the right tools so everyone can be really efficient in what they do.”
Powering NIL with AI
One of the most tangible impacts of introducing a DAM solution is empowering student-athletes to grow and use their name, image, and likeness (NIL) throughout their careers.
Hofstetter explains that DAM enables Cincinnati to achieve its strategic goals through content. He says: “Being able to build a personal brand is a big deal for college athletes, and we had a big shift six or seven years ago to get content into the hands of our student-athletes, in line with the shifts in NIL. Building their brands is good for our brand. The bigger the stars they are, the better for us. So, how do we get them the content they need to promote themselves?”
The answer came in the form of Canto’s AI-powered DAM platform, which includes auto-tagging, facial recognition, and a new AI Visual Search function that allows people to find highly specific images simply using natural language. Andrew Hall explains that “AI Visual Search is really valuable for people like Ben when they’re looking for very specific images, but also for rights holders, players, and agents to find highly specific images in their repository.”
The final whistle
The future of content in sports will only become more competitive, and sports organizations are increasingly convinced of the value of content to help them achieve their strategic goals. The key challenge, according to Hofstetter, is harnessing the power of their content, being able to put data behind what that content achieves, driving commercialization, and improving usability of content — so even super-stretched marketing teams can reach more people by leveraging stakeholders.
“Content is key to our brand, to our storytelling, and our recruiting process,” Hofstetter sums up. “It’s everything.”
Ready to discover the power of digital asset management for sports organizations? Download Canto’s free ebook now — Digital Asset Management for Sports.