In Sport Sponsorship

Sometimes sports sponsorships grant a bonus to athletes or teams linked to their results. The team winning the Champions League, the driver who becomes world champion, the National team that wins the World Cup or the tennis player who wins a Slam… here are some examples of exceptional results that give teams and athletes the opportunity to pocket a bonus.

Great results obviously are followed by an increase in visibility and prestige for the brands that have supported the adventure and, if the contract contemplates it, the athlete or the team are rewarded for the greater visibility and prestige obtained.

In general, sponsors are happy to pay an extra in exchange for this boost…And many times they are even happier because they use the insurance tool to cover the “risk” that their protégés behave very well.

Proper brokers

Actually, there are brokers specialized in covering these risks: in this scenario, the bonus is covered by insurance.  

It is the same mechanism that you have certainly seen used in highly-rumored promotional actions.

An example? The classic “Hole in one” of golf that provides that, if you make a hole in one shot, the lucky player wins a millionaire prize or, to refer to very popular activities in the consumer electronics sector, sales promotion of large TV screens on the occasion of the World Cup with the promise of restitution of the price if the National team wins the event.

In the same way, we can and we should cover the beautiful risk that our team or our athlete achieve exceptional results, because if they do they can put us in trouble having to pull out an extra budget for the prize.

Mitigating the risk

So it is good to mitigate the risk by turning to one of the specialized operators.

You pay the policy at the beginning of the year – a real bet – which has a certain cost and can be immediately included in the budget, and we have the opportunity to always rejoice for our colors without having to worry about the wallet.

Here is the umpteenth voice to remember when we think about our sponsorship plan. We must take care to think about all the budget items, even the ones that come following exceptional results.

Riccardo Tafà
Riccardo Tafà
Riccardo was born in Giulianova, graduated in law at the University of Bologna and decided to do something else. After a stint at ISFORP (public relations training institute) in Milan, he moved to England. He began his career in London in PR, first at MSP Communication and then at Counsel Limited. Then, following his unhealthy passion for sport, he moved to Jean Paul Libert's SDC and started working in two and four-wheelers, this was in 1991/1992. A brief move to Monaco followed, where he worked alongside the owner of Pro COM, a sports marketing agency founded by Nelson Piquet. He returned to Italy and started working in the first person as RTR, first a consulting firm and then a sports marketing company. Back in 2001 RTR won the ESCA award for the best sports MKTG project in Italy in the year 2000. Among other things, RTR obtained the highest score among all categories and represented Italy in the ESCA European Contest. From that moment on, RTR will no longer participate in other national or international awards. Over the years he takes some satisfaction and swallows a lot of toads. But he is still here, writing in a disenchanted and simple manner, with the aim of giving practical (unsolicited) advice and food for thought.
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