It is important to realise that, to potential sponsors, the real commercial attraction of your club is the whole membership. If your total membership is, say, 500, it is fair to assume that the commercial “reach” for sponsors will be double that figure once you factor in associates, friends and families of the member. Whatever the figure is it will be a lot higher than the numbers in the first team squad. This is the key point. Many clubs try to replicate their national side and senior clubs by placing too much emphasis on shirt sponsorship and pitch side banners. Whilst these “channels” have their place, unless your club is drawing big crowds and receives a lot of media coverage then they are relatively unimportant to a sponsor. Local businesses want to talk directly to the whole of your membership, particularly the parents of your mini and junior sections. We will work with you to devise marketing opportunities for your sponsors to reach the whole of the membership, so that your club becomes a viable add-on, or even alternative, to other forms of local advertising.
At a national or international level the big emphasis in sports sponsorship at the moment is to ensure that the sponsor brand has relevance to the lives of the fans of the sport. It is no longer considered enough to simply plaster the sponsor logo all over the sports property and hope that the fans will empathise with it. Indeed, it is highly likely that the London Olympics will be a logo-free zone, so sponsors will have to innovate in order to maximise their message. At grassroots level the same applies...within reason. It is important that you, the club, work hard on your sponsor’s behalf to come up with new ways to help them engage with the members. Your members are like any other consumers in that they need to be stimulated if they are to give one brand more loyalty than another. We will guide you through the many ways to achieve this. We will also work with your sponsors to help them get the best out of their relationship with you. However, unlike sponsorship at the highest level you have another ace up your sleeve. Your fans are also members and as such they are emotionally involved with the club. This enables you to “pull their emotional levers” and gently remind them that their club directly benefits from sponsorship. Experience shows that club members, when reminded that your sponsor needs their support, do increase their spend with the sponsoring business.
