Sponsorship in Sports: How to Attract Businesses to Your Organisation?

Managing a sports organisation is not a piece of cake. But if you want to keep your club in apple-pie order, you need to score that sponsorship.

Securing a sponsorship in sport is highly beneficial to your organisation in various aspects. It is seen as an ideal platform to raise brand awareness as sports has always been genuinely captivating fans worldwide. Especially now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, technology and strengthening the organisation’s digital maturity is more important than ever before.

At TISA, we believe in comprehensive strategies and versatile solutions. We focus on combining technology with other key business areas, such as marketing and design. 

In this article, you will learn:

• To understand the full potential of the available IT tools,
• How to transform your sports organisation and reach digital maturity,
  and finally,
• How to attract sponsorship through the use of implemented tools and strategy.

First lesson: Boost your online reach

Building a fan community and expanding your reach is fundamental – both from your perspective and from your potential sponsors. Social media benefits clubs, fans and players by enabling them to strengthen their online presence. Broad fan communities allow them to reach a wider audience than just local people, which can be national or international.

Both aspects combined create a well-built and engaged fanbase, which is a crucial determinant for other organisations and companies whether or not your sports club is a visible and attractive place for sponsorship. 

To achieve the best results in building a fan base, implementing a club dedicated CMS is a go-to. UMPIRE is an example of an integrated content management system (CMS) that helps sports organisations enhance their communication across all digital platforms, boost fan engagement and build community.

Creating a well-functioning CMS will encourage businesses to cooperate within a sponsorship, such as sharing its content via your CMS. Bringing your online presence to a national or international level highly increases your rating. 

Second lesson: Enhancing your content hooks the followers

Reaching out to the fans is one thing; holding on to them is another. 

Creating quality content for viewers will anchor them at your organisation, thus creating more reasons for businesses to offer you sponsorship. Sponsors are looking for permanent partners as opposed to those “having a moment”.

Captivating content must be designed and planned carefully, but on the other hand, it must be highly responsive to current trends and events. One solution is to use TISA’s social media management tool – BRISK. It’s a business-driven product that enables sports organisations to create effective communication strategies in social media and build relationships with fans.

A combination of a functional CMS and well-run social media management opens truly innovative possibilities of engagement, content and data that might prove helpful in attracting sponsorship. Businesses will pay a lot to have their materials appear among your best quality and up-to-date content, including your top league scorer or your confirmed new signing!  

Third lesson: Gather your data first-hand

Every day we all encounter invasive cookie notifications when entering a new website. A cookie is an example of third-party data gathering, which is slowly going out of date. Rightly so. Instead, websites turn to first-party data gathering, which is far more beneficial for many reasons:

• It focuses on building direct relationships with your followers by getting to know them. You can do it by engaging content, product offerings, or value-added content;
• identifies the right marketing strategy to secure your followers;
• builds a database with uniquely crafted information about your followers;
• personalizes your customers rather than treating them as categories. This allows for exclusive feedback and insight on how to improve your content;
• and most importantly, it is required as all regulations worldwide go a long way in prohibiting third-party data tracking. The first-party data of logged-in users will most likely become a “must-have” at some point, and it is better to be prepared for it in advance!

TISA’s product WICKET offers all of the benefits mentioned above. WICKET is a tool designed to manage customer identity, consent and access. Its prime goal is to help sports organisations gather, store and manage their fan base in one unified place. It enables the collection, storage and classification of data while being highly scalable and adapted to the growth of the database.

Fourth lesson: Tokenisation is the way to success

Still, few know the concept of tokenisation. However, it is a technology that is emerging in many areas of business. Big sports clubs such as Juventus F.C. or F.C. Barcelona and small and medium sports clubs like Legia Warsaw and Jagiellonia Białystok have successfully introduced tokenisation to their advantage. What does this have to do with sports sponsorship? Contrary to appearances, quite a lot.

Firstly, tokenisation is a way of loyalising fans and building their engagement. Clubs have done it via loyalty programs, which offer rewards to the fans for their increased activity online and offline.

Secondly, it counteracts the loss of revenue of your organisation. With the use of tokens, you can sell tickets to your games without the need for an outside ticket selling operator. Moreover, you can do the same about the sale of sports merchandise. Tokens can be used as a form of certification, whether the bought merchandise is legitimate or fake.

Thirdly, it is another way of gathering data about your fans. Rewarding your followers with tokens in return for filling out surveys sounds more fun than spending that valuable time for nothing, right?

And last but not least, it produces new sponsorship opportunities. Tokens create a new space for advertising and can be used as a form of gratitude for sponsors and business partners. 

Here again, our tool WICKET comes in handy; with its use, you can offer your fans exclusive services or discounts in your e-commerce. Monetising your database through tokenisation can help you drive your sales!

Suppose you would like to read more about tokenisation in the sports industry. In that case, we highly recommend you to check out our previous article, Tokenisation – a Game Changer for Loyalty Programs in Sports Clubs.

Conclusion

Although technology has always attracted attention, its skilful implementation and use determine the organisation’s attractiveness in the eyes of the potential sponsor. By executing carefully crafted comprehensive strategies and versatile solutions, your organisation could achieve great results that will attract sponsorship offers. 

Our company has tools to offer that will successfully transform your organisation and allow it to reach digital maturity – a highly desirable trait by the sponsors. Make sure to follow the four lessons we had to offer and check out our products – UMPIRE, BRISK, WICKET.