How to organize your sponsorship portfolio
With the Olympics in full swing right now there’s a lot of attention on major endemic sponsors who sponsor the IOC and USOPC. Corporate sponsors are often receive the main spotlight, but there is so much more that goes into an athlete’s sponsorship portfolio.
This will likely be the first of a multi-part series, but here are a few quick broad thoughts to get athletes, agents and brand builders thinking:
Corporate sponsors: These are larger companies who see value in you, what you represent, the body of work you are doing your community and how it aligns with their mission as a company. It can take time to identify these companies and build up the relationships needed to get to the right decision maker. A great place as an athlete is by looking in two places: 1. Major businesses from your hometown or greater metro area. These are companies that will likely have budget to support local opportunities and campaigns who could be very interested in working with a local athlete. 2. Your personal network and connections. Don’t underestimate who is in your network and them being able to make introductions on your behalf. Referral business has an 85% likelihood to close versus cold calling.
In sport or In industry sponsors: These are going to be the companies that are specific to your sport or industry. Training products, nutrition products, technical gear, equipment, recovery gear - you get the idea. These deals tend to be more transactional but you can rack up a bunch of them over the course of your career as deals will typically last 1-2 years. Payment structure can vary but you should be including a handsome performance bonus structure for athlete performance during each year.
Short term social deals or Product only: These deals definitely have their place and time. Keep these super short in length and very transactional. It’s pretty much straight advertising (versus storytelling sponsorship). “Pay to post” type social media deals or product only deals that will help reduce your training expenses. Again, for product only type deals - push for performance bonuses.
We will go into detail with some examples in a future blog. Hope this gets you thinking about how sweet your sponsorship portfolio can be!
