Sport sponsorship is about more than just winning

Sport is emotionally charged and forms a fundamental part of our society. Regardless of social standing or economic circumstances, a person almost always has a sport (or several) that they enjoy and a team that they support.

Most of us stay loyal to the provisional sports teams from where we hailed or the national sports teams of our home countries. Many of us stay up late into the night to watch Ernie Els outperform the field yet again, Michael Schumacher outrace the other drivers, or Manchester United playing against Chelsea in the English Premier League. We flock to cricket grounds to watch local and international games. Rugby and soccer stadiums are filled to capacity when teams clash.

The great equaliser, sport brings people together. It also gives them a reason, and a chance, to relax; to put life aside for the 90 precious minutes of the game; and in so doing it makes them more receptive to suggestions, both subtle and in-your-face. This is one of the reasons why sponsoring sport is such a good brand-builder, advertising and marketing tool, and why it has the potential to simultaneously benefit business, the players and the community.

Building brand

Creating brand awareness is an essential marketing element that any organisation worth its weight in gold should be engaged in. Sports sponsorship alone may not help your organisation build its brand up to the levels achieved by Google or Coca-Cola, but it does present you with an opportunity to work on your brand exposure, provided you choose the right sports for the message you want to send.

Coverage you can derive from sponsorship ranges from a mention in the media to the opportunity to put your logo on marketing materials such as advertising pamphlets, tickets and banners, or the privilege of being involved in the design of outfits so that your image is delivered with your brand; the possibilities are endless.

However, the sport or player that you decide to sponsor should be chosen with care and be in line with the company's attitudes and beliefs. Do you want to see your brand barely visible on a smashed up Formula 1 car? Or would you rather have your brand highlighted under the midday sun on a silenced golf course as Ernie sinks an impossible putt? How about your logo stretching across the magnificent white canvas of a racing yacht sail as it slides into the harbour to complete the next leg of the world's toughest sailing challenge?

Building character

The goal of sponsoring sport is to find that win-win relationship where you can maximise your marketing return on investment while returning something to the community, the sport and the players. Your investment should be done in such a way that it benefits the people involved, even if it is to cover some of the minor costs that are part and parcel of playing sport. By taking the burden of this cost away from the team or player, that money is freed up for it to be invested in training or to help other players that are struggling.

More than that, though, is that sport sponsorship can benefit your staff in non-marketing or non-business-related ways. Being involved in sponsoring a sport or sportsman, they could discover a desire to become more involved in the community in general; they could learn more about cultures, people and the particular sport being sponsored.

Sponsoring sports is about building: you build your company, your brand, your people; and you build on the sportsmen and -women being sponsored, the sport itself, the community and the country. And you do this while your brand sails around the world, brightens a player's uniform or stops that four from racing into the crowd as the ball slams into the billboard on the boundary.