The Compete-At Blog

If you’re considering organizing a competitive event, you have probably thought about sponsorship. Watch any live or televised sporting event and your eyes will be bombarded with a mind-boggling array of brand names and corporate logos plastered onto just about anything that moves (or doesn’t move). Players’ uniforms, sporting equipment, playfields, TV backdrops - not to mention websites, brochures and programs - all bear the unavoidable mark of sponsorship.

Sponsorship is a major driver of successful sporting events in today’s world. Sponsors provide money, products, services and strategic partnerships to event organizers and competitors. They also provide prestige, credibility, marketing value and a host of other intangibles. Sponsors are indispensable allies in today’s event-organizing landscape. So how can you get your hands on some of the perks a great sponsor offers?

Well, the first thing you need to do is to step back, take a deep breath, and gain an understanding about what sponsorship is. Contrary to popular hopes, sponsorship is not just a cash faucet that you turn on to help you make money. (How lovely if that were true!) Sponsorship is a special type of business arrangement, with special rules and considerations. If you really understand what sponsorship is, you will gain a distinct competitive advantage in attracting great sponsors for your event.

So let’s look at a definition, shall we? It won’t be too painful. Promise.

Sponsorship is a (1) mutually advantageous (2) business relationship between parties in which the sponsor provides benefits for the sponsored in exchange for a (3) result that can be measured (4) against pre-defined objectives.

Now that may sound like something out of a Harvard MBA course catalog, but let’s break it down into simple terms. If you’ll notice, the definition contains four key components.

Sponsorship, first of all, must be mutually advantageous. That is, it must work for your sponsor as well as for you. Sponsorship is a two-way street. The key to successfully wooing sponsors is to understand the benefits they will be receiving, not you. Presumably you already know what you hope to gain from the partnership. So your entire focus, as you’re pitching sponsors, should be on convincing them that you are prepared to provide them with specific benefits. Show them that you understand what they want and that you, among all potential event organizers, are uniquely positioned to deliver it.

Second, sponsorship is a business relationship. “Business” defines the type of benefit the sponsor is looking for from the relationship. Remember, your sponsor is not providing the sponsorship as a charity gesture or as a way to relieve herself of burdensome excess cash. She is doing so with the intention of receiving some business-related benefit.

What that means is that she is looking for a result that can be measured. As organizers, we may be tempted to think it’s enough to accept a wad of corporate cash and splash the sponsor’s logo on a player’s helmet or two. But most sponsors are looking for actual, tangible results – an increase in foot traffic to their stores, a bump in web sales. Yes, sponsors also want intangibles such as public exposure and brand enhancement, but it’s the business bottom-line that is driving their interest. How will partnering with you bring them more business? Plain and simple.

So always try to come up with some specific and quantifiable pre-defined objectives. Let’s say, for example, you email a coupon from the sponsor to everyone who registers for the event. Your sponsor can then easily track how many coupons are redeemed in its stores. Does this number match their objectives? Does it indicate strong buy-in among your event competitors and spectators? That’s just one example of how pre-defined objectives can be used.

Remember, specific objectives are good for you as well as the sponsor. Why? They give you something to point to. They give you concrete evidence of your success that you can cite when trying to re-sign this sponsor or attract new sponsors.

Always keep in mind the two-way nature of sponsorship. It’s those organizers who are highly motivated to show what they can offer to sponsors, not what they can gain, who routinely snag the great corporate (and local) sponsors.

Article by David Ross CEO Compete-At.com