The New Killer B's of Sponsorship

What could be cooler on a summer Friday afternoon than a crash course in managerial finance. In college, you probably dreaded the thought of this as your last class of the week. Nevertheless, the economy means sponsorship professionals are getting an all too up close and personal look at the killer B's of a sponsorship deal: bankruptcy, bailouts and buyouts. Sure there are a lot of other thi...

Sponsor-less in Seattle

Sometimes, as a group of like-minded sponsorship professionals, it's good to take our head out of sponsorville and see how the general public feels about the practice. Sure, media pundits weigh in about the virtues, and more often lately, the pitfalls of sponsorship, but how does Joe Public feel when his favorite event gets cancelled. When Chase spokesperson Donahoe-Wilmot said there's "no ch...

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All that Jazz... Sponsors Sing a New Note

Yesterday, TD Bank announced that it would take over presenting sponsorship (from GM) of the 2010 Montreal Jazz Festival, the largest jazz festival in the world with nearly 2.5 million visitors. Not to be outdone, Jazz' chief promoter on the same day announced an ambitious plan to revive jazz festivals in Newport and New York... this time on his own, just like he did for the first time in 1...

Selling Local Sponsorships for Nonprofits: Reaching Out

A cause is often the cornerstone of many sports and entertainment sponsorship platforms. Today's "key learning" comes from Joe Waters, who is the Director of Cause Marketing for Boston Medical Center, an avid blogger at Selfishgiving.com and a rabid Boston Red Sox fan. In addition to being a one-time winner of the SponsorPitch Friday Caption Contest, he has agreed to lend us his insights on ca...

Sponsorship + PR DeathMatch

Stand-up and take credit sponsorship professionals! Many a perfectly manicured press release has been mangled by your doings. Sure you've explained it away: "more deals, more revenue, more acknowledgements..." but when media relations and corporate sales really go to battle, who comes out alive? From Sarah Talalay of the Sun Sentinel: Here’s my favorite part of the press release [on the Ma...

An End to Alcohol Sponsorship II

So if 40% of police time is alcohol-related, 30% of alcohol time is sports-related, 10% of sports time is sponsor-related and 20% of sponsor time is alcohol-related, what does that make the percentage of police time that is alcohol sponsor-related? That seems to be the basic deduction being espoused in this news piece on Australia's recently proposed sponsorship ban on alcohol products. Fin...

What Happens When Peer Properties Collab to Cross-Sell?

Charities and local sports properties are a natural fit for sharing and cross-selling benefits as evidenced by the fact that virtually every sports property as some sort of charity affiliation. The importance of their collaboration was never more apparent than when a Performance Research study recently revealed that 41% of consumers believe sponsorships of nonprofits should increase to raise o...

Lance Armstrong Finds American Partner for TDF '10

Much has been made about Lance Armstrong's somewhat unfamiliar Tour de France partnership with Astana Group, an affiliation of Kazhak companies. Now that the Borat references have subsided, he made it clear today that he doesn't plan on sticking with the team for 2010. He's found a new American partner and plans to race with them in next year's Tour de France. Great news for American cycling ...

Bears Join Jersey Patch Bonanza

Good tie-in or bad jinx? For obvious reasons, we're sort of torn on whether practice sponsorships by health and life insurance companies is such a good idea. Knock on wood, Bears fan. Brad Biggs at the Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Chicago Bears have agreed to a practice jersey patch deal with Northshore University HealthSystem. The sponsor patch will be 3.5"x 4.5" and will not be worn...