Inside Modern Sponsorships: How Brands Evaluate, Negotiate, and Activate Sports Partnerships in 2026

30:15They've never had this kind of income or dollars or exposure. They get more opportunities to take dollars than they ever have before. but what they haven't recognized or starting to now that we've been exposed long enough is that your life is now public all the time. And so that inauthicity shows up and it shows up quickly in ways where historically you might've been able to hide that you didn't drink that drink or didn't wear those shoes or whatever. But now every kid on campus is a media reporter. There's stuff showing up, there's pictures, your brain is going to get notified. Logo detection online for brands and marketing agencies and research centers are really, really able to track all of this stuff quickly.

30:49And so recognizing that is truly important. I had, I spent a couple of years running a collective before I came back into the tech world. And I had an athlete who did a deal on his own. And I was very proud of him. He pitched himself, he built his story, did a great job. And then he came back and the deal was a piece for pizza. He's lactose intolerant. He did not eat cheese. And so I said, okay, hold on, we're going to put a stop. Let's find out if there's something in this chain that actually works for you, besides the fact that it will cook up you and your boys with, you know, all the pizza you want for the rest of the year.

31:18And we did find out actually, they had a dairy free gluten free pizza option. And that's what he ate. And we totally flipped the campaign for that local business to focus on that for him. But then the delivery of the pizza for all his boys who would be a part of that deal anyway, and it became a much more valuable piece for both the brand and the athlete. So figuring out that authenticity layer really, really matters in the long run, as far as making deals more successful, as well as like keeping things in a place where you don't get called out for like inauthentic plays and money grabs. That's a great point.

31:50I think I wanted to just chime in here. You know, it's so great to say no to something, you know, thank you, but no, that could be on the agency side, taking on client work that maybe it's, it's not a great fit and it's not kind of what you do, but you want the business and it could be on the athlete side, you know, to Marquis point, you know, on not authentic, but representing a brand that you don't believe in. But it's just when you remove bottlenecks to your day, we all have busy schedules. It'd be if you remove a couple of bottlenecks of things that, well, maybe you shouldn't do that one, or maybe, you know, I don't believe in that one.

32:30It frees you up to, to, for new opportunities to come in. and you know for our work with with Elliot and Cleave Construction it's it's something that you know this is what we do day in and day out is authentically form partnerships with teams that are working partnerships that take what the client does embeds it within the team organization and then helps the team scale its enterprise and then helps the brand, to Elliot's point, increase their hiring, do client entertainment, bring clients to a game and say, we built this. Wouldn't it be great if we can do this deal for you? And storytelling around that with athletes and NFL owners, It's just great to sometimes you don't have to say yes to everything, you know, say no a couple of times.

33:29And it's amazing what comes in. Well, that's a great point. And even with, you know, I've been fortunate enough to work with some of the biggest athletes in the world, especially when I was at Clutch. And I would say that like when you there's so many times they say no more than you say yes. Right. Because that's what makes you think if you're just doing everything and you're a NASCAR, I'd say you don't want to be NASCAR as an athlete. and to the touch on sam what you were saying about nil my roles at under armor and adidas and i tell people when i was on that side like i was the original nil like because shoe companies before your values i sponsored all of the 707 all of the aau teams all the coaches all of the events we could fly kids around and all that type of things and i would say that like now that they're actually getting actual cash.

34:25I've got a niece that runs track, uh, uh, uh, division one and super successful. And I had a conversation with her. I said, wait a minute. So you've got a brand that you, you want this brand for your footwear partner. She's a triple jumper and a long jumper and she's really good and won a bunch of conference championships. But the other, this other startup brand and no would wanted to give her cash or whatever. I said, but you don't want to, you don't jump in that shoe or you don't like that shoe or that their apparel, why would you take it? Well, just for the money. I said, no. And then what happens is that's not fair to the brand because they want you to believe in a little.

35:04And to your point, Sam, you're around campus and you go to school with 20 ,000, 30 ,000 other reps, and you're all on your devices all the time. The moment they see you in the facility or whatever, not with those shoes on, it's going to blow you up. And then And other brands don't want to work with you because they're like, oh, you just take the check. No, don't just take the check. There's always more opportunity down the line. Again, old money ain't good money. Elliot, I want to go into I know you you said your goals were growth and your goals were brand on this partnership. But could you go in internally?

35:41Like what was the decision making process like to even get to sports partnerships? Like, what were you doing before? And then why did that start coming in the conversation for Cleveland Construction? Well, it had a lot to do with Chris. It was really eye-opening with what some of the opportunities were. And him really helping us think outside the box on bigger things. You know, we looked at it for hiring. We looked at it for, you know, local exposure and, you know, what it could mean for, you know, from growth as a whole. But even Chris said, hey, these teams have partnerships. They have other sponsors.

36:24Those sponsors build buildings. They can get you in the door with those other sponsors. And those other sponsors are people that, you know, we're experts in what they need us to build. so there's there was like an when that clicked our ownership got on board pretty quickly um and it was a it was like an aha moment that there's a bigger opportunity here than what we had originally seen um chris i want to go to the because one thing i'm hearing on both sides of this the coin is one thing is like the partnership has to have a lot of storytelling and integration when you have but also like could you talk about how you chris how you talk to brands how to storytell this internally um because that's the other side of the deal is like you you you story told it really well about there's other sponsors the the owners and all this stuff how do you like when you talk to brands put together a storytelling proposal that they can bring to owners to get them to spend the money to make sure that this is a great sponsorship for them?

37:31I think it starts, to Marquis's point, with authenticity. I think it's starting with a positive attitude. I mean, I don't surround myself with naysayers. I like to say, we can do this. I think we could do this. Let's start today. Let's roll up our sleeves. Let's come up with the best storytelling idea that we can. So in Cleveland Construction's example, it's, it's, it's building in real time that, you know, projects will take several years to, to complete. And who are the people doing that, right? What's it, what's it take just like a football team? Uh, what's it take for contractors to communicate, right?

38:18There's all different positions. I mean, you play ball, it's different positions on the field, different positions at a job site. So that's a story right there that, that we, we like in rolling up our sleeves on, like, what's that story? How does that, how do teams communicate? And then how are the ownership groups involved? How are the heads of operation at the teams involved? What's their role? Because they're kind of the quarterback on the field. This has to be built here. We're building this hotel here. The music venue is going to be going here. Who are, who are the clients? Who are the brands that are doing that then you take the marketing rights um with with the marketing rights with the team and you put that into a whole content series with with clean construction and it becomes very authentic and really engaging to to the fans because they want to see their future being built it's a really unique window that they get that you know it's it's a modern story it's a new way brands are telling stories, you know, to your point, as opposed to a logo slap, which, you know, if it's not done now, it's going to be done pretty soon.

39:27It's a cost center and it's what you're paying for. It's got to have a lot of miles to it. Oh, go ahead, Sam. No, I was just going to say, Chris, you mentioned marketing rights. And I was just going to flag that one of the things that I think gets left on the table way too often is the lack of leveraging IP to the ability that it's there. You get IP in a lot of larger sponsorship deals and you only use it at the venue or you don't take it other places or you don't look for pieces in those contracts that allow you to maybe bring a player or do one team activation or things along those lines, they really get left on the table.

39:58I think people who do it really well, oftentimes are Olympic sponsors because it's clean venue. So they have to use the IP in other places, but colleges really leave it on the table. And then even some NFL overlap, I've seen a lot of pro where you just look in and go like, why are you not putting this, you know, in your storefronts or with your teams and people are putting it on your jerseys for your employees? Like, why are you not using this in a way that you can really extend the story. Right. Sam, you're so, like, I think colleges, especially, right, in this new world, they, I would say, they don't know how to monetize their assets and their IP.

40:29Some are learning, but a lot are still in the space. And I was in a college arena for a football game last year. Ohio State actually happened to be playing. They were on the road. And I was amazed at how they had this, They probably had 20, 30 amazing suites, but there was no integration with IP or brand. And I'm like, you just have great TVs, great food, but there's so much that could be done here that you're just leaving on the table. And then, Krista, what you said, I think this goes to what Elliot does and what he was saying about, like, if you're a construction partner. If you are all in it, and I've learned this, brands should actually be clapping for other brands and partners, right?

41:18Because if you're building an amazing stadium, I want that whatever that brand, if it's whatever the cell phone or telecommunications partner is the name of rights, I want them to be as great because then that levels everything up and it's a win-win. And I know, Chris, you've done it. And Sam, you probably done. And then when you get those key stakeholders in the same room, then you start to imagine like, oh, we can play together. Whereas I think 10 years ago, everybody was like, this is my ball and I want to take it and I need all this. And what do I get out of it? And then now that it is a cost center, when I was on the other side and had to manage a budget and I say, if I've got a partnership, oh, you mean Samsung or whoever it is is going to come in and we can one plus one this thing and make it greater and split the cost?

42:14I'm all in. Right. And that's the new way. I think you'll see more and more of that, especially in venues. you should at least. Tim, I know traditionally like these sponsorships were really hard to track and it was hard to like figure out like what the ROI I'm getting from the sponsorships because you talk a little bit about like those measurement points that like sponsors should be tracking to make sure that they like they aren't they're doing all these integrations and they aren't a logo slab because at the end of the day like you can become a logo slab if you, one, don't know what the metrics going in and what your success looks like, as Chris said, and what your KPIs are.

42:54And on the other side, like you're not tracking it in the back end. So could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. I mean, going back to like understanding the success conversation at the very beginning is really going to set up what you need to be tracking, right? There are the table stake things we talked about, like you're going to have exposures, you're going to have your media by your windows, you know, all of those little, those pieces, but you're also going to have intangible elements like, you know, hospitality and ticketing and the lifting or saving in cost or lifting costs like employee engagement.

43:22If you're a big player, community impact, are you building programs that have a legacy that in carry on and have conversations beyond the sports space? Where are you putting those? How are you tracking attendance? How are you tracking follow through? Is it beyond just news and PR hit? There's the elements of like, what are the assets that I'm getting? And are those assets delivering what I want from them. Like, do I have a digital footprint that allows me to engage with a client following, you know, or an audience following a game or following a season? Do I know how many times that client is on that team's website or on that team's app?

43:55How often they, how long they spend on that time. So I'm getting an idea of what those interactions look like. Does that market align to my market? So understanding what you're targeting as your business and did your sponsorship, you know, positioning align with what your business objectives are. So there's a lot of needs and understanding what your goal is, there are true awareness plays that are still unbelievably valuable in sports because you are seen, you are highly visible. And if you're trying to break into a space, it's a great place to play. If you're in a market where you're trying to keep competitors out, it's also a great place to play.

44:25I'm going to use an example right now and the alcohol brands as a whole, communities are drinking less. You wouldn't agree that from the Scottish coming for the world cup, but in general, communities are drinking less, especially the younger age group. And so now there's this value of, well, how impactful is it for us to be the only supplier of an alcohol in a venue? Because there are like 12 categories of alcohol. Do we want to keep our competitors out completely because it's going down and we need to find some brand loyalty lift that doesn't exist anymore? There's a lot of things you should look at, figuring out what those are up front and what your goals are and the things that matter.

44:59And then backing yourself in with your agency partner and your technology partners to figure out what do I need to be measuring? How often do I need to measure it? And then the one thing that comes up late, it always happens at the end, you're not thinking about as you go through is what does lift or recall really mean to your business when you say ROI, right? Exposure, we understand. Valuation, we understand. But impact, impact is the thing that's very variant depending on what your objectives are. So if you understand what lift means for you and you define that, then you can measure against it.

45:28If you can't measure it, though, it's sometimes not worth doing. And so if you say brand awareness is your play, then what do you measure for awareness? And that, you know, besides just impressions, viewership, you know, attendance. So what else is there in play that can have an impact of that? Daniel, thank you, Sam. Daniel, I don't want to take over your moderator duties, but like this is a question I always wanted to ask. And Elliot and Marquise, I mean, you know, sitting on the brand side and your experience, when you're asked the ROI question, this is probably good for the whole audience.

46:01But when you're asked the ROI question, is ROI something that the brands look at taking a while to prove out? Or are you looking at like a shorter window to prove out ROI every six months, every year? How's ROI? You know, what are you seeing with ROI in long-term partnerships, you know, like a multi-year NFL team deal? how do brands how do brands look at that what are some of the um the metrics that you're looking at in a short versus long-term window i think the first thing is uh chris you gotta know if it's like on the team set or whatever and you need it like who is like your ownership group and or because they dictate everything right if they are more like um if you're a new ownership group generally are new to the thing, they want to see immediate impact right away because they're coming in and they want to see change or they are changing things.

47:07Or you look at and say, I usually say this, sometimes depending on what it is, it will not show up on our balance sheet, right? Understand But Sam said this, and I know Elliott knows this, and what's the impact of the community, right? Especially when it comes to fans. If fans identify Elliott's company as premium, now that impact and that ROI, it may not show in this first two years of whatever deal that they're doing with the team or they're building a stadium. But now everybody else that tries to hire them or any fan that's going to come in that arena, they understand. Well, I understand why ticket prices are a little more because it's a better product.

47:59Right. So that's the ROI that like is maybe not immediate, but that it impacts the culture and community of fans and it lives on. Right. And so those are and it depends on who you're answering to. I can say we can do things for a quick push, whatever. You can manipulate numbers. If you are truly trying to do authentic partnerships, it usually is going to, you'll see the numbers, but it's going to take time to show the build. And I think with construction, I mean, ultimately, what are we trying to get at the end of the day? We're trying to get more work. The sales cycle on a construction project is so long.

48:39we have a we have a project that we signed a contract on with an owner in 2022 and it didn't start until january of this year so it tells you how long it takes for financing to go and them to get all their stuff together to start a project so that happens all the time and so some of the things that we could look at do we get more opportunities do more owners call us with legitimate opportunities to look at work and we can track that you know do we get more our employees generally more excited to be at work we can we can generally sense that um do we have more applicants coming to us versus us having to go you know pull applicants from other companies those are all things that we can track um and those are things that i i expect this partnership to produce those things and i would say within the first year or two i bet those things kind to show themselves.

49:38I mean, Chris, thank you for taking over the moderator duty for a second and asking a good question. I think it was a good question. So I think we needed to hear everybody's response to that. Sam, do you want to respond to that question or should we move to some of the Q &A that came through? I think we can hit Q &A. I will say, and what Elliot commented on and Marquise, you're talking. So the B2B play in sponsorship has a very different lens than the B2C play. And you can do both. I mean, what Elliot's doing right now is very much a B2B play with visibility and community impact in those pieces.

50:13During my time in NASCAR, I was working with Cessna. That is not a B2C play. That is very much a B2B or a B2 exclusive play. And it often happened on pit box and in boxes. There was never a physical place. There's a lot of branding, a lot of pieces, but it was very much like a very elite group that was using that for purchase. And so their approach to how they use their assets and their hospitality and their connections, their driver appearances, all those things was very, very different than what I did with McDonald's, for example. Like those two things matter. So as you think about building your partnerships or activating a partnership, understanding the brand's objective and how you can drive that for them matters.

50:52So on the rights holder or even agency side, that is such a lane that needs to be really clear. Because at the end of the day, you could think you're doing great work and you could be. But if it's not the work that the client was anticipating, then at the end of the day, you're not successful. And so making sure that's really clear up front is going to be crucial. I'll go to the first question, and it has to do with usage rights and IP. And someone said, I feel like the brand teams are always so cautious on asking almost like the juice isn't worth the squeeze. what are some of the asks you feel are most often left on the table?

51:32I feel like Marquise, you should be the first run here. And so the question is what an IP, what things are left on the table for brand rights? Yeah. I think Sam touched on it earlier. I think like if I'm, if you're doing a deal, like generally, can I like multiply it? Meaning if do I get other and if I did a deal and I'm on a brand side and say, OK, do I get in that usage of the team three times a year? Do I get access to the arena two times a year? Right. Not just for my signage, but if I want to hold something there that I can use it. Right. Because in this world of experiences, if I can then do content and tell stories in the space that I'm also sponsoring, now I can use it for execs.

52:28I can use it for other clients, VIPs. I can use it for add on giveaways with customers, clients, consumers or whatever the deal is. And that's like what we've been talking about. That's looking at the deal in a more layered thing instead of saying, oh, I've got the rights to the team. I have the jersey patch, but do I have the step and repeat? Do I have the things in the community to amplify that? It's not just about, like I read something the other day, and Sam, you probably have the better data than I, that only 28 % of all fans even know who their favorite team's jersey patch is because it's such a small patch on TV or whatever where you actually identify with it and know it's 74 % is through social or community activations.

53:23And that's how you actually get the value of a jersey patch. And so you have to know that going in. It's just not on the jersey. Yeah, Wakefield just published a study about it that I thought was fascinating. That entry for jersey patch oftentimes is new market too. So there's not already existing brand awareness. So you're almost doubling down on that investment in order to have visibility and recall over a period of time. So thinking about that in terms of rights and marks, which is a huge play in college. And so a lot of there was a question earlier that I answered in the Q &A about like, I only have 50K.

53:58Is sponsorship worth it for me, you know, in positioning? And, you know, my response is very much similar in this vein is, you know, colleges and local events can actually be a great place to go in that position. if you know what you're trying to achieve and you want to test the waters or you really want to leverage it in the community, there's not as many fish in that sea and they're not spending the same amount of dollars, especially if you're not going at like, you know, the biggest player at a power four, for example. So rights and marks matter. Banks do a really good job of using it, financial services, because they'll create a debit card, right?

54:29When they're using a logo, they'll have an initiative, but you'll find that like a lot of people just leave it on the table. And if you're an exclusive anything, you have the opportunity to throw that logo on something with approval and run. So one of the things that we've seen, we're talking construction, there's a roofing and exterior company in Chattanooga that is with UTC. And they actually have like their trucks have like the powered logo on them now with the Power C as the official roofing provider. When their signage in the front yard has it on the piece with their logo, like it built a combined logo for visibility.

55:00And that affiliation piece is something that they got the rights to do in that exclusivity play. And other people weren't using it, right? The pizza or QBRs or running through any of those kind of quick serve places, they'll create like meal bundles that I can use the logo on. They can call it a name, like a meal kind of positioning. Beers in the category of alcohol tend to create like a hoppy local if that fits and they can name it. Using that leverage for IP is really, really valuable and it's included in a lot of the deal. i i like that you you answered this sam because a lot of i think a lot of people are super scared of getting in because they want to test marketing dollars or um it's like they get a lot of approval for meta and google or other channels because they can prove roi but their test budget is this little 10 000 20 000 but you said with like those community events or nil or you're trying to, like we always said when we test on you, Jenna, when I used to run marketing ops, is like localization testing is the best because you can see uplift in localization.

56:06You can see deals come from local like deals. You don't get, national is really hard to track because it's like, did it come from, was it our meta spend in Texas or was it the national campaign we did? But if you do a single town or a single, you can see uplift from those those those spots and daniel also timing right like if you know what your budget is if you can't if you don't have millions of dollars to spend so you can't play in the olympics or the world cup you have to look and say what events are along those and in an area that like i can basically get the draft from right and it's like that's always local but it's saying oh, do I do a watch party for a suit and I do it three days?

56:57And, you know, if you're in Los Angeles and you say, OK, I'm going to do something in Venice because I know a lot of people work up and I'm a sponsor country. And it may cost me ten thousand dollars to do open bar for whatever it is or twenty thousand. You do that in a couple of spots. You'll know quickly if that will work. but you are a part of World Cup. You can do, now you can do content. They don't know if you spent a half a million dollars or 250 ,000 or whatever. You're just, you're in the mix. And now it's up to you and the right agency to craft that, you know, call Christian. He'll tell a great story for you.

57:35I love it. I've seen that a lot with the World Cup where you see watch parties on like lawns. You see like malls doing watch parties. You're seeing bars do watch parties. it's a super smart like i think sometimes like people mistake like actually sponsoring the team but and i think the the draft is a good point of like you could to test i think eventually you need to get into the teams to to do this but testing the draft is a good way of doing like a local event around it and then getting into the team all right chris i know you uh work with um all levels of brands. I'm going to, do you want to like pay back off?

58:16Like, I know people like small to big, what, like, what, what is like the smallest brand partnership you've seen to like the biggest brand partnership you've seen? And what are those both look like? Yeah, I think, you know, on the small side, I think teams, social medias are phenomenal ways to economically do a partnership. You know, it's really where the fans are going to go outside of the game. And there's a lot of content there. Teams are doing a tremendous job on their internal production and filming content for social media. So I think that's an economical way to do something to engage the fans on a one-to-one.

58:56I think on a grand scale, I mean, we work with a lot of national and international companies, international marketing rights, teams all have them. And you know, when you're going to tell a story, I mean, Marquise knows this on the NBA, NBA is a global sport. NFL is a global sport. You know, so doing, you know, international marketing rights outside the U.S. with content, with those marketing rights that the team have, you know, putting that as part of your deal, negotiating for that, very valuable because it just expands beyond north america to sports that you know like the nba basketball is enormous football is enormous um outside the us and um just adds a lot of layers onto a deal um i know we're at time and i know we have a i know there's a lot of questions but um you can always send us the questions and i'll i can forward it to sam i can forward to marquis and we could get these questions answered.

59:59But I want to thank Sponsor United for helping put this together. And you all need to check them out. They're really great with tracking deals and talking about this. And look at Sam. They have people like Sam on their crew who could talk about around the block about seeing every side of the deal. But I want to thank Marquise, Chris, Elliot, Sam. You all are great at what you do. and brought great insights to here. And so everybody in the chat, give a shout out to the panelists because they did a great job. Cool. Thank you, everybody. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening.

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