Ten Reasons why Sponsorships fail

1. Not understanding that the sponsorship has to be led by the consumers needs, not yours.

2. Not enough resource allocated to manage the sponsorship properly.

3. Not understanding the right due diligence on the property before signing the check.

4. Paying for rights fees and doing nothing with the sponsorship.

5. Misunderstanding the relationship between the different stakeholders in an event.

6. Jumping from one sponsorship to another without making the most of long-term involvement

7. Insufficient integration with other communications channels.

8. Failing to secure trade interest and support in the sponsorship.

9. Not understanding that an event you create takes time to build and grow too.

10. Failure to specifically measure Return On Investment of the sponsorship activity.

Deciding sponsorship benefits Solus or cooperative

A very important sponsorship consideration is whether the organization wishes to have sole benefits and costs of the sponsorship. Any organization which plans to sponsor any event must think what deal can be the best for them in terms of mileage, publicity, entertainment values and must pre determine the advantages they can derive from the heavy sponsorship they wish to invest. For example, Pasta foods created significant benefits from a subsidiary sponsorship of the London marathon. Their participation provided opportunities to put over the fact that pasta is a very high energy food. In addition, the eve of the marathon – pasta banquet created unique media opportunities for the company. This was all achieved without the need or cost of solus sponsorship.

If publicity is the objective, the public relations advisor needs to be certain that the media coverage will reach the audiences that are relevant. For example, it is arguable that an up market sport like show jumping may not be of much interest to the potential customers of double-glazing as football might. The relative importances of the publicity and entertainment opportunities need to be balanced. Some sporting events like the America cup, sailing provides good publicity but limited entertainment opportunities. Football or golf can provide both. For some sponsors entertainment opportunities are the most important. Events in music and the performing can be particularly effective in entertainment terms. In sports events like:

• Celebrity Golf matches.
• Annual Formula 1 v/s Football players match.
• NBA All stars weekend.
• Harlem globetrotter’s basketball tour.
• Manchester united f.c pre season Asia tour.
• Celebrity Rugby matches (hosted in India by Procam intl.)