For Sponsors

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The best sponsors in the world are continuously rethinking their portfolios. They see value in their contracts as long as they are clearly supporting brands’ or enterprises' business strategies. When strategies change, they quickly adjust their investments accordingly. 

Unfortunately, this discipline is not embedded in all organizations, causing sponsors to suffer with irrelevant contracts, overinvestment obligations and requirements that take their focus away from what truly matters. Sponsorships should work for the business, not the other way around. 

An independent external portfolio assessment is a discipline all companies should implement as part of their business plan cycles.

No sponsorship has a pre-defined price. A good understanding of the business needs, the competitive set, a thorough mapping of the sports industry to identify opportunities, relationships with rightsholders’ decision makers and the knowledge of what is valued by the sports organizations are all critical factors to determine the final cost of a deal. Knowing what to ask is as important as how much is paid.

A common mistake companies make is to delegate the very specialized task of a sports deal negotiation to generalists - usually their marketing or procurement teams. This is an expensive mistake that an external advisor can easily solve.

The world of sponsorships is laden with hazards like scandals, doping, corruption, careless comments on social media, etc. These situations can create problems that, although they are unrelated to business operations, could potentially damage company and brand reputations.

Assessing the level of risk of a portfolio before a public relations disaster happens is the way a sponsor can minimize this threat. 

Using reputable and meticulous external resources, we run background checks on organizations, teams, athletes and sports management agencies.

The work consists of assessing the risk offered by the existing partnerships or partnerships to-be signed to a level of comfort that is compatible with the company management’s expectations.

When it comes to sponsorships, the most common questions senior executives ask are about the impact investments will have on the business: How much in incremental revenues and profits will a particular investment generate? If we sign this contract, how much better will our campaigns perform? 

Unfortunately, most marketers obsess over Key Performance Indicators that only they care about. Yes, the value derived from the brand exposure or the association with the event is important, but not sufficient on its own for a successful partnership.

Resolving these concerns is a complex task that requires large sets of data and sophisticated modeling. In most cases, it is doable and worth the investment. 

The best foundation for a future sponsorship decision is the learning derived from an owned model developed for each business – it has the potential to save millions of dollars in better contracts.