How Can Teams Treat Sponsors Better?

Darren Rovell's cnbc blog post today on the New Jersey Nets sponsorship efforts led to some interesting discussion.

I think in general, it is a good time to sweeten the pot for your partners with soft benefits (remember, soft benefits are "experiences" or other value delivered with minimal hard cost association). From the article, it sounds like many of the extras being thrown in are experiential in nature. Still, we had a few questions..

1. How do you keep 120 official partners happy? If you're looking for an account mgr position this might be a good place to start.

2. Does the number of partners dilute the value of the association?

3. Will these "extra benefits" affect the team's pricing power for sponsorships in future years?