Sponsorship

Sponsorship is an exchange. The academic definition that the literature attributes to Meenaghan speaks of “the provision of assistance either financial or in kind to an activity by a commercial organization for the purpose of achieving commercial objectives.” The Czech Advertising Regulation Act puts it more briefly: sponsorship is a contribution made with the objective of promoting the production or sale of goods, the provision of services, or other activities of the sponsor. Both definitions share one word, objective: the sponsor wants something back. In the industry, the other side is called the property, meaning whatever is being sponsored: a club, a league, a federation, an event, an athlete, or an arena.

Sponsorship differs from related tools in who controls what and who gets what. With advertising, you buy space and decide on the message yourself. With sponsorship, you don’t have firm control over the medium or the creative; you buy an association with everything the property does, including its losses. Patronage and donations want nothing back. For Czech clubs, it’s also a tax question, and what decides is consideration (what is given in return), not the name of the contract. A donation is given for nothing in return (a thank-you doesn’t count as consideration), and a company can deduct it from its tax base, up to 10% of the base, if the donation is at least CZK 2,000 and goes to a purpose listed in the law; sport is one of them. A sponsorship contribution is tied to a service in return, typically advertising: for the company, it’s a tax-deductible expense; for a nonprofit, it’s advertising income, which is always taxable. What the contract really is gets decided by the tax authority, based on its actual content.

You’ve come across sponsorship in the Marketing class as part of the communication mix, in Sports as one of the revenue streams, and in Advertising with the example of the Chance Liga. Today we’ll go deeper and sit on both sides of the table: what a property sells and how, why a company pays and for what, what happens after signing, and how you can tell it worked. Today, the word partnership is used instead of sponsorship on purpose: both sides should get something out of the deal that they couldn’t get on their own.

How much the world pays for sponsorship is a surprisingly hard question. For a long time, the only comparable series was kept by the agency IEG (then part of ESP Properties) and, with it, WARC: according to their estimates and forecasts, global spending on rights, excluding activation, grew from $57.3 billion in 2015 to $65.8 billion in 2018, roughly 5% a year. Then the series ended. According to WARC’s forecast for 2018, North America accounted for the most (36.8%, $24.2 billion), followed by Europe (26.7%) and Asia-Pacific (25.2%). In North America, according to IEG’s forecast for 2017, roughly seven dollars out of ten were expected to go to sport.

Newer figures diverge by more than a factor of two. GlobalData tracks individual deals in sports sponsorship and counted 41,674 of them in 2025, worth $42 billion; by its count, the peak was in 2024. Statista puts sports sponsorship at $105 billion for 2025, two and a half times as much for the same market, and Europe at over €32 billion for 2024. The difference isn’t an error but a definition: one counts rights fees, another tracked deals, a third sponsorship revenue, without publishing its methodology. So for every market figure, ask what exactly it measures.

We found no public estimate of the Czech sponsorship market, and big deals are rarely made public. All you can work with are individual deals that make it into the media, and even those tend to be estimates. That’s why Czech numbers in this class always have a source, and where the source speaks of an estimate, the word estimate stands next to them.

Companies don’t sponsor as a hobby. In IEG’s survey of sponsors (2016), entertaining clients moved up significantly among the objectives: from tenth place to fifth, with 35% of sponsors rating it 9 or 10 out of 10. Typical objectives are:

Why it works was described by Kevin Gwinner (1997) as image transfer: the associations people have with an event carry over, through sponsorship, to the sponsoring brand. Two years later, he and his colleague Eaton tested it in an experiment, including the finding that the transfer is stronger when the event and the brand go together, in image or in function. This match is called fit. Research on sponsors of the Beijing Olympics (Petrovici et al., 2015) confirmed that perceived fit is a significant factor in whether people respond positively to a sponsor.

Functional fit is easy to see: Škoda supplies cars for the organizers of the Ice Hockey World Championship, and DHL, as the official logistics partner, moves Formula 1 between races. Image fit is subtler, such as an energy drink and extreme sports. Where fit is missing, activation has to supply it; otherwise, all that’s left of the partnership is an expensive logo. How a brand keeps its identity is covered in the Brand chapter.

A property doesn’t sell a logo; it sells rights. Everything it can offer a partner is called its inventory, and a good salesperson knows it better than the partner does. A typical sports organization’s inventory:

The most visible item is the name. The arena that was called Sazka Arena when it opened has been named O2 arena since March 1, 2008: Telefónica O2 signed a five-year contract with the operator, Bestsport, and unofficially there was talk of CZK 30 to 50 million a year. In December 2024, both sides extended the partnership for another five years, so the name will stay until at least 2029; the amounts haven’t been made public. Slavia’s stadium in Eden, opened in 2008, has successively been called Synot Tip Aréna (according to ČT24, the betting company paid roughly CZK 10 million a year), Eden Aréna, Sinobo Stadium, and, since July 2022, Fortuna Arena. Since 1999, the sports hall at the Prague Exhibition Grounds has been called Paegas Arena, T-Mobile Arena, and Tesla Arena, then Tipsport arena from December 2011, and Fortuna Sports Hall since 2022.

The names show how the market moves: betting companies, telecom operators, and owners come and go; O2 has stayed for over 18 years. A long partnership is probably worth more, because, according to image transfer theory, association takes time; a short-lived name doesn’t have time to settle in. At Fortuna Arena, Slavia has a contract with Fortuna that, according to CzechCrunch, could exceed CZK 300 million over five years, but only if the club meets undisclosed sporting targets. According to CzechCrunch’s information, the general partner eToro is said to pay Slavia around CZK 40 to 50 million a year.

An organization’s partners aren’t equal. At the top of the pyramid are one or a few general partners (for competitions, often title partners) with the most rights; below them, main and official partners; then suppliers, who pay mainly in goods or services; media partners, who pay with space; and institutional partners: the state, the region, the city. Each tier has a different package of rights and a different price; the higher you go, the more exclusivity and the fewer names around you.

Two Czech examples from public partner pages. The Czech Olympic Team has four general partners (Allwyn, Fosfa, BILLA, Czechoslovak Group), a main apparel partner (Alpine Pro), official partners (Toyota, Budějovický Budvar, innogy), general media partners (Czech Television and Czech Radio’s Radiožurnál), suppliers such as Koh-i-noor Hardtmuth, Lasvit, and the Czech Mint, and an institutional partner, the National Sports Agency. The hockey club BYD Energie Karlovy Vary has its general partner in the club’s name, support from the city and the region, main partners (such as Mattoni and Dr. Max), more than a hundred official partners, partners who outfit the club, and youth partners. Same structure, different scale.

The pyramid rests on category exclusivity: when the general partner is a carmaker, there usually won’t be a second carmaker among the partners. Exclusivity raises the price of the upper tiers but shuts out competitors, which is why contracts define the categories precisely. At the top of the world’s pyramid is the International Olympic Committee’s TOP program (The Olympic Partner): in the 2021–2024 cycle, it had 15 partners and, according to Reuters, brought in $3.04 billion, compared with $2.3 billion in the 2017–2020 cycle (according to The Conversation). Partners leave even here: after Paris 2024, Toyota, Bridgestone, and Panasonic, which had been an Olympic sponsor for 37 years, all ended their deals. In 2025, the program brought in $560 million, the lowest since 2020; China’s TCL joined with a contract through 2032.

Of the publicly known Czech amounts, the highest is for the name of a competition. Since the 2024/25 season, the title partner of the first and second football leagues has been the betting company Chance, part of the Tipsport group: the LFA, which runs the Czech professional football leagues, states more than CZK 250 million a year, and CzechCrunch exactly CZK 260 million, for five seasons. Price was the only criterion in the two-round tender; ČSOB and Fortuna each bid around a hundred million. The analysis from the advertising perspective is in the Advertising chapter. The ice hockey Extraliga has carried the Tipsport name since 2010, and it shows how rights are sold: the Extraliga’s exclusive marketing agent is the agency BPA sport marketing. Tipsport bought it in 2016, so the title partner owned the agency that sells the rights. From the 2028/29 season, the Association of Professional Ice Hockey Clubs (APK LH) wants to offer the rights in tenders as separate packages, including the title partnership.

The Guinness record for the longest main sponsorship of a sporting world championship is held by a Czech company. Škoda has supported the Ice Hockey World Championship since 1992 and has been its official main sponsor since 1993; the 2026 championship in Switzerland was the 33rd in a row. Guinness World Records listed it in 2017, for 25 years at the time. The contract runs until at least 2027. What Škoda gets for it, and what it does, is a textbook case of activation: the logo in the center ice circle and on the boards, a fleet of cars for the organizers (53 electric cars in 2026), a trophy for the most valuable player made of hand-blown Czech crystal, fan zones, and the world premiere of the new Epiq model during the tournament in Zurich.

In world football, the jersey is among the most expensive spaces. Premier League clubs will get a combined £444 million for the front of their shirts in the 2026/27 season, 8% more than the year before (Ampere Analysis). According to City AM, Manchester United has been getting £60 million a year from Snapdragon (Qualcomm) since the 2024/25 season, the same as Real Madrid gets from Emirates; Liverpool signed a deal with Turkish Airlines starting in June 2027, reportedly worth £60 million a year and £300 million in total. Clubs don’t officially disclose the amounts. And watch the methodology: according to Deloitte, Real Madrid had €594 million in commercial revenue in the 2024/25 season, but the club’s “marketing” line was roughly €508 million in the same season (derived from €539 million for the 2025/26 season and 6% growth; in 2018/19, it was €296 million). The difference comes from methodology: Deloitte sorts revenue into its own categories. Both numbers are correct; each just counts something different.

A property doesn’t sell a logo; it sells access to an audience and to emotions the partner can’t produce on its own. That’s why selling starts with audience numbers, not with a price list. The process in five steps:

People who do sponsorship in practice say the same thing. At a MediaGuru panel on Czech sports sponsorship (2023), the speakers said the key is to try to find out what the sponsor needs, set mutual expectations, budget for activation too, measure the value, and stay authentic. Petr Hercík of Sport Invest Marketing pointed out that only a few Czech sports organizations can afford to employ five, ten, or fifteen people for marketing and partner servicing. A small club or federation therefore needs a process one person can handle.

The price is made up of three views: what delivering it costs you (production, tickets, people’s time), what comparable partners pay on the market, and what it’s worth to the partner (new customers, employees, content). The last one gives you the strongest negotiating position. Part of the deal can come as goods or services (in-kind, barter): in 2023, Rohlik.cz became a partner of the RunCzech running league and provides the refreshments at races, and Škoda, as the main sponsor, drives the organizers of the Ice Hockey World Championship. For a supplier, goods tend to be cheaper than money; for the property, it’s a cost it doesn’t have to pay. For tax purposes, in-kind support with something given in return is also treated as sponsorship, not a donation.

Rights are just the ticket in. For them to produce anything, the partner has to pay a second time, for activation: its own campaign, content, contests, fan zones, hospitality, and employee involvement. How much was shown by the 16th edition of the IEG and ESP Properties survey of 102 sponsors from December 2016: for every dollar spent on rights, they spent an average of $2.20 on activation, the most in the survey’s history (the previous high was $1.90 in 2007). Half of sponsors spent $2 or more, and nearly a quarter $4 or more. There is no fixed rule: according to older IEG research from 2011, cited by McKinsey, companies spent only $0.50 to $1.60 on activation per rights dollar, and many were skimping, McKinsey says. The Advertising chapter made the point that without activation, a logo is just a logo.

The Czech textbook case of activation is the Olympic park. The Czech Olympic Committee first built one during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and according to the committee’s marketing director, Marek Tesař (2016), after its success, most partners were persuaded to bring their own sports program to the parks. Before Paris 2024, MediaGuru described what the partners were preparing. ČEZ: a campaign for children and young talent linked to the “Pomáhej pohybem” (Help by Moving) app, and canoeing and its own zone at the Olympic festival in the city of Most. Sazka: a campaign for its Sazka Champs program and its own social media team in Paris. T-Mobile: the show “Voláme Paříž” (Calling Paris) and a pump track with the cycling federation. Alpine Pro: an Olympic collection and archery. Visa offered a 10% discount on tickets.

Good activation has three traits. It gives the fan something they wouldn’t have without the partner: a sport to try, a discount, an experience, not just one more logo. It’s connected to what the partner sells or needs: Škoda drives the organizers and unveiled a new model in Zurich. And it can be measured: a code, registrations, zone attendance, survey responses. A partnership without activation is a logo for a lot of money.

A partnership contract is a list of promises on both sides. What it shouldn’t be missing:

After signing, the work is only beginning. The partner needs one person who answers the phone, an activation plan for the season, and regular reports on what has been delivered: photos of the branded spaces, numbers of tickets and guests, post reach, links to articles. At the end of the season, a final report goes on the table, with the numbers set against what was promised. Whoever sends it unprompted and on time doesn’t have to beg for a renewal; whoever only gets in touch with the partner to send an invoice gives them a reason to look elsewhere. Renewal is discussed long before the contract ends, not in its last month.

The hardest part of the contract is the one about what can go wrong, because sport can’t be guaranteed: the team gets relegated, the athlete gets injured, the event is canceled or moved. A good contract won’t rule that out, but it says in advance what happens then. An example from practice shows how quickly a sold-out tier can turn into an empty arena.

The oldest and most convenient sponsorship metric is AVE (advertising value equivalency): how much the same space would cost in paid advertising. The logo was visible in the broadcast for ten minutes, a minute of advertising costs this much, so the partnership “was worth” millions. AMEC, the International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, has rejected it since the first Barcelona Principles in 2010. Principle 5 of the current version 4.0, from June 2025, says that “invalid measures such as advertising value equivalents (AVEs) should not be used” and that communication should be evaluated “by its outcome and impact”; AMEC considers variants such as EMV (earned media value) just as flawed. The reasons: AVE confuses price with value, ignores quality and tone, and every vendor calculates it differently.

Today, sponsorship is measured on three levels:

In the most recent public surveys, measurement lagged behind. In IEG’s 2016 survey, 27% of sponsors spent nothing on measurement, and 22% didn’t know whether their return was rising or falling; according to the ANA (the US Association of National Advertisers, 2018), only 37% of companies had a standardized process for measuring return. For a small property, that’s an opportunity: whoever sends the partner numbers it doesn’t have itself is worth more to it than a rival with a bigger arena. Simple things are enough to start: a unique discount code or link for each partner, a “where did you hear about us” question at registration, and photos of the branded spaces at every event.

Along with the property, a partner also buys its messes. The textbook case is Tiger Woods at the end of 2009. After a scandal in his private life, Accenture (which said he was no longer the right representative) and AT&T left, Gatorade ended its deal in February 2010, Gillette stopped airing ads with him, and Tag Heuer scaled back its use of his face. Nike and Electronic Arts stayed. Economists Christopher Knittel and Victor Stango of UC Davis calculated that the shareholders of eight sponsors lost $5 to 12 billion over 13 trading days; the upper estimate corresponds to 2.3% of market value, and the biggest losers were the sports sponsors Electronic Arts, Gatorade, and Nike. That’s why a contract with an athlete needs a morals clause: when the partner may withdraw.

Ambush marketing is piggybacking on an event without paying for the rights. At the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg, during the Netherlands–Denmark match, stadium stewards detained 36 Dutch women fans in orange dresses from the Bavaria brewery, which were sold in the Netherlands with packs of beer; the tournament’s official beer was Budweiser. Two women accused of organizing the stunt were arrested under South Africa’s Merchandise Marks Act, and the charges were dropped only after FIFA reached an agreement with Bavaria. In the Czech Republic, the organizing committee of the 2015 Ice Hockey World Championship had recorded around 25 cases as of April 22, nine days before the tournament. They included a TV spot by the discount chain Penny Market featuring the former goaltender Dominik Hašek and the championship’s name, and the organizers also considered ticket giveaways by companies that weren’t partners to be ambush.

The third risk is regulation. In April 2023, Premier League clubs agreed that from the 2026/27 season, betting companies would no longer appear on the front of matchday shirts; in 2023, 8 of the 20 clubs had one there. The clubs replaced betting deals worth £67 million with new ones worth £75 million from finance, technology, and tourism. Some betting companies moved to the sleeves and training kits (see the chart), but overall, their spending in the Premier League fell by £92 million (Ampere Analysis). In the Czech Republic, gambling sponsorship falls under the Advertising Regulation Act: advertising must not target people under 18, must carry a Ministry of Finance warning, and the advertiser risks a fine of up to CZK 2 million, or up to CZK 5 million for advertising unlicensed gambling. That’s why the law firm ARROWS describes a betting company’s logo on youth team jerseys as risky and, in many cases, impermissible.

Sponsorship is a deal in which a property sells access to an audience and to emotions the brand can’t produce on its own. What’s bought is a bundle of rights: name, space, designation, exclusivity, access, content. The price rises with the audience, the fit between brand and sport, exclusivity, and the length of the partnership. After signing comes activation, on which sponsors in the IEG survey spent more on average than on the rights, and partner servicing, with reports and numbers. What gets measured is impact, not the list price of space, and the contract says in advance what happens if something goes wrong.

Pair exercise: one of you sells a partnership for a model judo club or tournament, the other buys for a local company. The seller has four minutes for one slide: the audience in numbers, three rights, two activations, how we’ll measure it, the price, and what could be bartered. The buyer asks three things from the Advertising chapter: what content will come out of it, whom they can invite, and what employees will do with it. Then switch roles.

A checklist for a property selling a partnership: