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New Categories, New Struggles

The BBC's Maryam Moshiri reports that shirt sponsorship is no longer reserved for large multinational corporations, but also online gambling companies (as with AC Milan) and even charities (Barcelona and Aston Villa). As the sponsorship coffers get more limited across the board, teams throughout the world are relaxing their virtuous restrictions on all kinds of categories and expanding the ...

Sports Biz Networking Event TONIGHT in NYC

Russell Scibett and Joshua Duboff are holding the Business of Sports networking event tonight! Come say hi to us, tell us what you think of Spitch, buy us a beer (we're still bootstrapping people)... whatever. It's at Galway Hooker starting at 6:30 and should be a great event. Event Name: The Business of Sports Networking - New York City Date and Time: May 26, 2009 at 6:30PM Location: Gal...

Sponsorwise to SponsorPitch, 10 Years in Sponsorship

As you may have heard, Michael Munson, the founder of Sponsorwise, joined the SponsorPitch team last week. Michael will reside in Silicon Valley and continue in his current role for Fantell while serving as Vice President, Content & Strategy for SponsorPitch. Mike can be reached by email at mike@sponsorpitch.com and on Twitter at @mjmunson. Here is his story.. In 1998, After going throu...

English Premier Final : Commercial vs. Cause?

How's this for irony - in yesterday's English Premier League final, Barcelona FC faced off against Manchester United. Yup, the same Man-U that is looking for a new £300 million shirt sponsor to replace defunct AIG. In contrast, Barca has steadfastly passed on sponsorship money altogether and has a deal in place to actually donate £1.2 mm/yr to global cause and shirt partner, UNICEF. Fina...

Rationale: Armed Forces & Racing

The Armed Forces and racing (both NASCAR & IRL) are so closely tied to each other that sometimes they get recognition for sponsorships that don't even exist! If all branches of the armed forces are involved with racing, it must be successful in helping them meet their core objective: recruiting. Aside from the demographic overlap (18-24 year old men), Capt. Homero Martinez who serves a...

Step up to the Chalkboard, We're all Teaching Sponsorship 101

In the last year or so, I can't tell you how many times I've heard "we were close to a deal and then so and so left" or in this environment more likely "got laid off." We hear a lot about the direct hit that shrinking sponsorship budgets have on sponsorship projections, but one secondary issue you've most likely encountered is the loss of corporate side sponsorship professionals as companies d...

Key Learnings: "Recruiting" Partners the Right Way

Key Learnings is a regular weekly posting that covers insights and stories from thought-leaders within the sponsorship industry. Our fourth key learning comes from Jim Loria who has over 30 years of sports management experience and for the past 10 years as served as President of the USHL's Sioux Falls Stampede. Before making that first sales call, consider this strategy or thought process: ...

What is Lead Time™ by SponsorPitch?

You may notice a few new additions to the SponsorPitch website. We wanted to take a minute to catch you up. Our new social research service, Lead Time™ is the result of a long term trend, not an isolated idea (although we think it's a good one!). There is a systematic lack of transparency and teamwork across sponsorship sales peers. Everybody, except the ones that need it most, sellers of s...

Mediaedge:cia Forecast 15% Rise in Global Sponsorship

From AdWeek today: "Mediaedge:cia, the WPP media agency, is issuing a report -- supported with data from sister sponsorship consultancy arm EIG -- that forecasts significant global growth in the sector, despite the economic downturn....At a time when ad budgets are shrinking, the report predicts that spending on sponsorships and related activity will climb worldwide by 15 percent this year to...