There is no secret that the sports world is inundated with corporate brands and logos.  We know this as sports sponsorship, which we define more clearly to survey takers as “a brand that partners with a team or league in exchange for marketing opportunities, which includes using the brand’s logo or product in the arena or in advertising.”  Multiple motives exist for companies to sponsor a team or an event, including advertising, targeting, communicating corporate social responsibility, corporate hospitality as well as building connections and stakeholder benefits.  No matter the objective behind a sponsorship, we at Navigate take pride in assisting our clients with measuring the impact sponsorship has on key markets and populations. 

Just as there are multiple ways to execute a sponsorship strategy based on event, targets and time of year, determining the research methodology can be equally endless as creative strategy is used on our end to ensure we are appropriately assessing the outcome of a partnership.  One of the best ways to measure a sponsorship is to utilize our Sponsorship Snapshot option.  The Sponsorship Snapshot is a budget-friendly method that provides powerful insight to your sponsorship’s performance. 

Using a sampling plan of fans of a given property and non-fans of the same property in a particular geo, we are able to dive into a sponsorship and understand what fans think and how their behavior and attitudes alter, if at all, because of the sponsorship.  Gauging metrics like sponsorship awareness – are your key targets aware of your association with a property?  Or is another brand benefiting from your sponsorship due to misattribution?  From there, we can dive into the “so what?” factor by analyzing fans who correctly identified the brand versus fans who did not against key metrics.  We can answer questions such as, “What do fans think of our brand as a sponsor of X property?”  or if fans are more likely to purchase your product or service because of the partnership.

To keep costs low, the Sponsorship Snapshot adheres to a standardized questionnaire, sampling plan and report design.  The standardization of the product allows for a fast turnaround from project inception to deliverable and also enables the study to be comparable to other projects Navigate has executed in the past.  Navigate has a databased comprised of thousands of respondents who have answered similar questions.  The dynamic database allows for us to filter projects by property type (league or team, college or pro sport, event, etc.), sponsorship spend, number of years with the sponsorship, among others.  The Snapshot report conveys the brands’ measurement as well as industry trends we see in our Comparative Database.  This type of comparison provides additional color to not only understand the sponsorship impact of a given brand, but to also examine the deltas between similar studies; rather than looking at results in a vacuum, the Snapshot showcases industry norms highlighting if a given metric is performing above, at or below what Navigate typically sees in sports sponsorship – examples shown below:

Sponsorship Impact Metrics

All marketing strategies, in sports or otherwise, should always be supported by research to know if (1) the objectives are being met and (2) if the strategy plan should be altered in any way.  Decisions are often made within short time periods or at the end of a budget year when money can be tight.  Regardless of the situation, Navigate has an option that can work for you.  The Sponsorship Snapshot delivers insights on the crux of the sponsorship and provides arsenal answering if a partnership should be renewed or negotiated differently, all within a low-cost budget and quick two-week delivery.