Sports sponsorship has become a popular marketing tool for financial services. Whether it’s Santander teaming up with Formula 1’s Williams Racing or Hong Kong-based insurer AIA backing Tottenham Hotspur as their main shirt sponsor, financial firms are now a common sight at sporting events. Tune in to almost any game or event, and you’re likely to spot their logos or names.
It’s not just teams getting sponsorships – more financial firms are securing naming rights for sports stadiums as well, like life and health insurer Vitality, which acquired the naming rights to AFC Bournemouth’s stadium, as covered in the previous edition of Financial Promoter.
From enhancing brand image to engaging with target audiences, sports sponsorship can offer a range of corporate opportunities. As such, many brands are either already involved in sponsorships or exploring them. Regardless of the stage of their journey, many teams on the potential receiving end of the deal have questions about how to maximise the impact of these partnerships.
To address this, Synonymous Sport partnered with Financial Promoter to host an event on January 30 at the London Stadium, home of West Ham Football Club and the site of the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. The event provided a platform for everyone involved in sports sponsorship, regardless of perspective or experience, to come together and discuss how to unlock the full potential of sponsorships.
During the event, a private roundtable gave panellists the opportunity to talk through strategies aimed at maximising the impact of sports sponsorships and boost return on investment (ROI). Discussions covered key topics, ranging from the importance of understanding the partnership’s objectives and sport’s audience to strategies for successful brand activation – even on a limited budget.
Understanding motivations
For many brands, the main goal of sports sponsorship is increasing brand awareness—getting potential customers to recognise their existence. Whether sponsoring a local, grassroots team or a globally watched sports event, simply having a logo visible can ensure more people at least know who the brand is.
Grant Wyatt, head of partnerships at payments solution provider Guava Pay, agreed that the thought process behind the company’s first sport sponsorship deal in 2022 was to improve brand awareness.
Guava Pay had previously sponsored events within the financial services sector, such as the Money 20/20 conference, but began looking beyond its industry to increase recognition among a broader audience, he said.
“For brand awareness, you can’t get better than watching Sky Sports Plus or Match of the Day and seeing ‘Guava Pay’ go around on the LED boards,” he said.
Stewart Sanderson, CEO of Irwin Mitchell Asset Management, highlighted the opportunity to leverage these partnerships to provide unique and interesting experiences to customers.
Instead of focusing solely on brand awareness, Sanderson said the company uses sponsorship to offer clients an experience they can share with their network or family, fostering deeper, more meaningful relationship.
“It’s less high profile, but more about being integrated into something they love and they’re passionate about. And sport invokes a real emotion in people,” he said.
This focus on building meaningful experiences and relationships with clients helped Irwin Mitchell achieve its goal of evolving from a B2B business to one that also serves direct to consumers.
Knowing your audience
Putting your brand in front of more people to improve awareness is valuable but understanding the audience you’re putting yourself in front of is the key to securing a successful sports sponsorship, according to Stephanie Wilks-Wiffen, director of marketing at eToro.
She emphasised the importance of ensuring an overlap between the sport’s audience and that of the brand, or the audience the brand plans to engage with in the future.
“For example, we are very heavy in football, but we wanted to move towards a slightly older, naturally wealthier demographic so we’ve added premiership rugby to our portfolio of partners,” she said.
Darrell Fox, founder and managing director of Synonymous Sport, agreed that understanding a sport’s audience is a crucial step before entering into any partnership.
“You need to know the audience that you’re trying to engage with. If you can find a sport that has a very detailed audience that matches yours, there’s huge opportunity,” he said.
He added that this depth of audience knowledge is also important because it helps to avoid wastage of coverage, ensuring that the budget is spent effectively on areas of value.
“If you’re a brand that’s looking for UK coverage and you do a Premier League partnership with grand LED boards, a lot of that spend is going to go into overseas, in different territories that might not be right for your business,” he noted.
While panellists discussed increasingly popular sports, such as darts following the rise of Luke Littler’s popularity, padel, women’s cricket and women’s sports more broadly, Wilks-Wiffen stressed that brands shouldn’t get caught up in chasing the next big sport.
Instead, they should focus on whether the audiences of these rising sports align with the target profile of their current or potential customers, she said.
Fox agreed that understanding these audiences is a crucial first step. However, he noted that niche sports offer a real opportunity if they align with a company’s audience, as they can often be acquired at a low cost while delivering strong results.
Managing budgets
Once a company understands the sponsorship objectives and knows both its own audience and the sport’s audience, the next step is brand activation to bring those elements to life to make an impact.
During the panel, Charlie Dewhurst, chief commercial officer of SailGP, an international sailing competition, shared the perspective of a sports entity receiving sponsorship. He emphasised that the key to brand activation is to take the time to plan and ensure well-established integration before announcing a partnership.
“The best partnerships we’ve had were those where we signed a deal in February and announced the partnership the following January,” he said.
This allows a company to develop its brand activation plans properly and helps everyone fully understand the sponsorship’s objectives. However, he highlighted that objectives need to be clearly defined.
“That’s only going to happen if one, you’re really clear about what those objectives are. Two, you give all the teams, on the brand, the rights holder and agencies sides, the time to understand what this partnership is all about, how it’s integrated, how you’re going to story tell around it and how you’re going to activate around it,” he added.
In addition to spending enough time to develop activation plans, it is also essential to get your team on board, Sanderson added.
He said it’s important for a company to bring staff along on the sponsorship journey, as this team will be crucial in delivering the activation goals.
“If you haven’t got the people on board that actually want to roll their sleeves up and get involved with the activation and apply themselves, then it falls at the first hurdle,” he said.
While Dewhurst advised against rushing into activation right after signing a partnership, he acknowleged that this long-term approach requires careful budget planning.
Wilks-Wiffen added that the cost of effectively activating a sponsorship is often a major concern for companies, particularly when they first enter a partnership, due to limited resources and budget.
As a result, she said she “wiped out all of the extra fluff” from the contracts, focusing on key strategies and tactics that would help eToro achieve its main goal of brand awareness, while aligning with the firm’s resources and budget.
For example, tactics like player appearances may seem like a great idea, but they require a significant budget to effectively activate, she said.
“Most footballers are divas, often leaving you waiting around all day for 20 minutes of their time. Unless you have significant resources and budgets to manage multiple player appearances, it’s often not worth the time,” she said.
Instead, Wilks-Wiffen recommended using LED boards and media backdrops as a more cost-effective, tailored way to achieve reach. eToro also opts for legend appearances over current players, as legends are more flexible with their time and open to participating in meet-and-greets, which creates memorable experiences for customers.
To dive deeper into understanding the key elements of sports sponsorship, join us at the FP Live! 2025 conference on March 31, where the panel ‘The perils of sponsorship’ will explore the subject further.