Should Your Business Support Or Sponsor A Local Sports Team?

If you own a small business, it could be a great idea to sponsor a local sports team to gain great publicity for your brand as well as create essential goodwill. Whilst many may think this would be out of budget for their business, that isn’t the case. You should receive some return on investment, but most importantly you will receive benefits such as increased brand awareness, opportunities to showcase your products, customer loyalty and goodwill. Therefore, it isn’t only the sports team that benefit, it’s your company too!

If, for instance, you decide to sponsor a local football team, you could consider investing in some promotional merchandise for them so that everywhere they play, your logo is taken with them for everyone to see. You could look at printing on footballs >> sports bottles >> and caps >> just to name a few. Check out our Sports and Fitness section for more inspiration >>.

Sponsoring a local team can help a community grow and it’s easy and fun. In fact, studies have shown that consumers are likely to switch from one brand to another or similar price and quality if that brand is associated with goodwill and a charitable cause. In fact, nearly 80% of consumers in a survey stated that they are more likely to purchase a product that supports a not-for-profit group. Therefore, your business could really thrive by investing in a local team and sharing your goodwill on social media and on your website or in store. It is essential that local customers know that you care about supporting the teams that they love so that your efforts aren’t wasted and so that you can increase sales whilst having fun.

We recommend measuring what your sponsorship has achieved by tracking the results. Whilst some things like brand awareness cannot be tracked, by giving out an offer code you can track some of the sales made through your sponsorship whilst encouraging people to buy from you. For instance, if you support a team called the ‘Leeds Pandas’ then you could offer 10% off your products using the code ‘LEEDSPANDAS10’ at checkout. Whilst this brings a return on investment, some of your return will be immeasurable but priceless as they come as long-term benefits such as customer loyalty and brand awareness. Local sponsorship is great not just for the team benefiting but for your brand too!