Sports is one such event that is globally and locally viewed by thousands of people. We all can see the names and logos of brands printed on the player’s jerseys, shoes, and sports equipment. Event on the big screens there are digital banners and do not forget to mention advertisements during the breaks. When it comes to sports events sponsorships, roles are mostly reversed. Brands are also actively looking to provide sponsorship for sporting events. Sports makes one of the best places to market brands. Hence, Strike when the iron is hot!
One of the emerging events across the world is sports. So, it makes sports events highly preferable to sponsored events even for the brands. Strategically do your sports event marketing and get yourself the best sports sponsorships.
Let’s get started with your sports events sponsorships hunt!
Sports Events Sponsorships Benefits
For Team
Sports clubs and teams are looking for money, goods, and other equipment-related help from sponsors. Sports event sponsorships are not always monetary.
For example, You might have approached a sports goods manufacturing brand, they might be interested in proving you with a customized jersey
Or a health care brand might be interested in providing free health check-ups and other services.
Sponsors of sporting events are more likely to sponsor financially for uniforms, equipment, travel costs, and as such.
It is not just taking, but also providing your sports sponsor with valuable benefits and added services. So, what is there for your sponsors?
For Sponsors
Fortunately, sponsorships are effective and much cheaper than traditional campaigns.
Sports events or clubs can provide sponsors with rigorous marketing and branding. Sports events sponsorships are not just for the business giants, even local businesses can sponsor the sports events.
Sponsors gain branding and marketing on a vast level -which is spread across thousands of people. By sponsoring an event, brands find their potential customers, increase reach, brand awareness, and eventually good sales.
It is important to show your sports sponsor what you bring to the table for them.
Tips to get sports events sponsorships
Sports events are highly dependent on the sport’s sponsors. Having sports sponsorship is a great relief for teams. Having a sports sponsor in the form of cash or in-kinds lessens your budget burden.
Know Your Target Sponsors
Eventually, everything comes down to selling, marketing, and branding of the goods and services. Companies and brands take sports events as marketing to sell their products. Also, ensure that your business objectives and values are in alignment with that of a sponsor. There are plenty of sponsors of sporting events.
Don’t just go and write away and approach a sponsor. Here are multiple ways to approach your sponsors.
Here is how to get sponsorship for sport:
- Type of business and brands you want to associate with your club/team
- Look for the sponsors who have sponsored sports events in past, or are interested in sponsoring sports events.
- Look for their target audience as well.
- Know what the sponsors are looking for
- What type of marketing they are expecting
- Your and your sponsor’s objectives and values should match
Tip: Make a list of at least 10-15 companies, collect their data and then approach them. Create your events on Linkedin and publish them to find your potential sponsors.
Know Your Offerings
Know what are your strengths, and what you are offering to your sponsors. Make a list of things that look appealing attractive to your sponsors.
For example, if you are hosting a university-level sports event, state the fact that your tournament will have visibility across all the top universities in the region.
Also, gaming events at university can get huge sponsorships as well. With the increasing virtual events ideas, game events are getting highly popular across the world. People are equally excited to participate in gaming events as physical sporting events.
Collect the data on sponsors who previously sponsored sports events, and show it to your potential sponsor as well.
Make sure you include data, numbers, metrics, graphs and charts, and everything that shows your event success and how sponsors can leverage your sports event for their brand awareness and marketing.
Prepare Your Pitch
Your sports sponsorship highly depends on your presentation. To convince your sponsors you need to make a good sponsorship proposal. Now the question is how to create perfect sponsorship proposals? Here are some tips to create sponsorship proposals:
- Try to make your presentation catchy. Presentations are more effective than a word doc proposal or pdfs. So use catchy captions and lines to make an impact.
- Make use of a color pallet that goes with your theme.
- Make it a detailed presentation. Include your past sports event success, and highlight your achievements and results.
- Show your media presence- if you got featured in news articles or magazines. Also, mention if you got a special feature or television. Everything is important.
- Prepare the list of benefits your sponsors will get. Mention it in bullet points, graphs, and short sentences to make it more impactful.
- Your presentation must be neat, precise, and not so wordy.
Tip: Canva, Adobe InDesign, etc. are tools that provide amazing templates for your sponsorship proposals.
Create Sports Events Sponsorships Packages
Provide your sports sponsors with multiple options. You cannot directly ask Yes or No. No sponsor would take it positively when you straight up ask for a direct result.
Create categories based on different costs with different benefits. Sometimes a sponsor doesn’t want to directly give away the money, sometimes they want to sponsor in forms or any other kind.
Check out our list of types of sponsorship for sporting events.
For such sports sponsors, create sponsorship packages as per the benefits given.
Let us understand it in this way:
- Sponsorship- $2000
Incentive: Media publicity, exhibition space, and small session in the event.
- Sponsorship: $1500
Incentives: Media publicity, and exhibition space.
- Sponsorship: $1000
Incentive: Media publicity.
Also, let them know you are accepting in-kind sponsorships such as ground refreshments, sponsored uniforms, and others.
For instance, if you are approaching a marketing or publicity firm for sponsorship, you can ask them to sell your tickets for sports events.
Tip: Do not mention your monetary expectations in the first proposal or pitch itself.
Show the Numbers and Stats
Present the parameters on how you are going to measure the sponsor’s contribution. Here is the list of things you must include in your proposal:
- Number of participants teams
- Revenue from past events and expected revenue
- Categorize marketing budget, promotion budget, and so on.
- Number of the expected audience
- About the demographics
Let your sponsors know that you do post-event follow up which helps them know about their contributions.
Tip: If your plate is too full, you can leverage different types of event management tools to make your work easy and less.
Go Local
If possible, get a guest at your sports event. Influencers and famous personalities can drive the crowd at your event. This will also increase the value of your event and make a way for the enhancement of the sports.
Make sure you highlight this in your proposal, this becomes the center of attraction for sponsors as well.
Tip: Here your social media promotion for events will play a huge role in attracting sponsors, players, and audiences.
Keep an Eye on Your Competition
The similarity in events is common. Look who organized the same type of sports event, how it turned out for them, and what was the downside for them.
Look who sponsored their events, you can approach them as well or go to their competitors seeking the sponsorship.
Let your sports sponsors know that what you are providing is different and unique and it will provide an edge for them against their competitors.
Conclusion
You don’t necessarily be the team on top, you could play local tournaments and get sponsorships. Here, we’ve elaborated on why sponsorship for sporting events is important and tips on how to get sponsorship for sports events and close the deal.
Manali is a writer, editor, and content marketer by profession who specializes in event management and planning. She is working with AllEvents to help them create engaging content that drives the event organizers forward.