Frequently Asked Questions

Sports Sponsorship FAQ

In the following lines, we will try and provide your top questions like sponsorship costs, sponsorship activation, sponsor researchsports marketing…with an answer. It’s no easy task, as we know each athlete, each team, and each project is different. However, we hope these topics will help you through your sports marketing journey.

Finally, we know this list can’t be a fully comprehensive one. We will keep this as up to date as possible, but in the meantime, you can always reach us via our contacts page.

What is a Sports Marketing Agency?

Why would I need a sports marketing agency or consultancy on sports sponsorship?

The sport scenario is extremely wide and most of the times driven by very specific rules and dynamics, most of which are often overlooked. Therefore, choosing a sports marketing agency like RTR means saving on time, money and energy in the otherwise-difficult path to building an efficient sponsorship program for you business ( discover more about our Sports Marketing Case Histories). Moreover, we can provide you with official data, figures and researches, allowing you to make your decisions based on cold, hard numbers, and not gut feelings. Read More about Sports Marketing from A to Z

MotoGP Sponsorship Costs, Sports Sponsorship Costs…About Small Budgets

My company and I only have a small budget, but still we would like to use sports as a communication tool. Is there a workaround?

Truth is you don’t need a workaround. One of the main benefits of sport sponsorship is that it is highly scalable and very flexible: there are no minimum budgets and each and every project is tailor made on your own goals and culture. Out there there are a ton of extremely efficient sponsorship programs running on low budgets, and this because these programs have been carefully designed and fine-tuned to be super specific and accurate. With all of this said, it is more than evident that big projects with global visibility and international communication need bigger amounts of money, but the truth is that there are no “too small” budgets in the world of sponsorship.

Racing Sponsorship? Not only…

Why are most of RTR Sports’ sponsorship programs in the motorsport sector?

A very good question, and an important one indeed. Along the years, RTR Sports’ core business has been growing stronger in the MotoGP and Formula 1 industries. As you may very well understand, this is not linked to personal taste rather than to a matter of efficiency and marketing values and benefits. Business-wise, there are several advantages to be linked to the biggest motor series in the world (Formula E can be put in the mix, and the same goes for the World Superbike Championship. Discover Formula E Sponsorship Agency): these sport are highly international and make for an excellent moving communication platform, present no parochialism issues or whatsoever, are extremely technological and very close to the business world.

Which Sports Should I Sponsor with RTRSports?

Other than motorsports, do you also work in other sports/disciplines?

In our 20+ years of experience, we have been dealing almost with every sporting discipline and event in the world. From football to swimming, from the Olympics to the Internazionali di Tennis, from running to the XGames, we can count on a number of portfolios in several arenas and industries. As an independent agency, we are free to choose the best solution for you and for your business, with no ties or strings attached. There are no boxed solutions here, or standard sponsorship packages: each and every project is tailor made to your needs and goals. So if we think parachuting is your thing, parachuting it is. Or kite surfing. Yeah, maybe kite surfing.

Looking for Sponsors

I am an athlete/team manager and I am looking for some sponsors to back my career. Can you guys help?

Unfortunately, this is not what we do: we provide consultancy to brands and firms wishing to use sports as an efficient communication tool. On the other hand, we do not do sponsorship research for athletes, teams or events, no matter how big or how small they are. We like to leave this job to the people it belongs: managers, procurers and the commercial department within the teams and leagues.

Where to find Sponsorship?

I am looking for a sponsor for my future in sports. I know you do not provide sponsorship research, but could you give me some tips?

Once again, we are not the right interlocutor when it comes to sponsorship research. However, if you are looking for brand new partners for your sporting career, there are a couple of questions that need to be answered before even beginning your quest. Some of the questions are the following

  • First of all, can you show to your potential clients the benefits they are going to get and why and how sponsorship could be better than other forms of adv?
  • Have you got a powerful PDF or Powerpoint deck, featuring all the relevant information about you and the marketing benefits you can offer?
  • Do you have a solid, up-to-date website and strong social media presence?
  • Do you have good quality and recent pictures, videos, reports of the latest races or exhibitions?
  • Do you have all the necessary figures and data and numbers about your sport and about the league you compete in, such as TV and print visibility, social media reach, profile of the average follower and such?
  • Last but not least, before looking for a sponsor, have you carefully thought about a future path of 3-5 years? Is sport a hobby or are you going to make a job out of it? And if so, what’s the trajectory you will follow?

The MotoGP Paddock Pass

Where can I buy MotoGP paddock passes and what do I do with them?

Right, what do you do with a MotoGP paddock pass? This is frequently overlooked, as very often people think this tiny object gives you some kind of AAA to all things MotoGP. Well, it’s not, but let’s start at the beginning.

Practically-speaking, the MotoGP paddock pass is an 8x5cm plastic rectangle with a tissue neck cord for, er, wearing the thing around your neck. It is not the only pass issued by the MotoGP series: it is just one of the 10-15 type of passes you can find around a MotoGP circuit. This happens because in MotoGP each and every area is separated by fences and controlled by security personnel. The paddock is just one of these areas: it’s not the most important or the most “powerful”: actually speaking, with just a paddock pass, you are not even allowed to watch the race (as long as your pass does not have a VA -viewing area- sticker on the back). Of course, you can see the riders and the technicians stroll by, but it’s not like you can enter a team’s hospitality truck or pop a visit to the garages: these activities are reserved to guests and sponsors.

Long story short: the paddock pass is nothing but a working tool for staff, agencies and tech people who need to be in the paddock to get some job done. This is one of the reasons paddock passes are not for sale: as a fan you can pay a visit to the MotoGP paddock via the MotoGP VIP Village program, the most exclusive hospitality program in the pinnacle of motorcycle racing.

What is Sponsorship Activation?

A Sports Sponsorship programme is a part of sports marketing and sports sponsorship and is formed by the tactical activities that the sponsors devise to exploit to the fullest the marketing rights derived from the sponsorship.

There are different sponsorship trends and ways to activate sports sponsorship for a successful activation, some of these rights are:

The right to use name, fame and image of the sponsored team
The possibility to run PR operations at the game or event
The right to run promotional activities using the team
The possibility to have guests at the event
The possibility to use team’s merchandise in their promotional activities or otherwise.