6 Essential Steps to Master Sponsorship Measurement for Brands, Teams and Leagues

6 Essential Steps to Master Sponsorship Measurement for Brands, Teams and Leagues

May 30, 2024

Trying to determine the ever-elusive, true impact of sponsorship investments is the most sought-after quest amongst brands today, according to our recent industry survey. Both brands and rights holders face the complex challenge of measuring sponsorship performance to maximize ROI and drive strategic decisions. KORE’s extensive resources and State-of-the-Industry insights provide the essential tools and data to navigate this intricate process.  
 
In this article we aim to help: 

  • Demystify sponsorship measurement,  
  • Highlight its importance  
  • Offer a step-by-step approach to get started, supported by real-world examples and KORE’s expertise. 

What Partnership Data Matters to Measure? 

Determining what data matters to measure in sponsorships is a complex and ongoing process that involves a comprehensive team effort and cultural alignment within the organization. Here are the steps a brand should follow to effectively identify key metrics and ensure they align with both strategic objectives and stakeholder expectations: 

  1. Identify Key Objectives: Start by defining clear and measurable objectives for your sponsorships. These could include increasing brand awareness, driving sales, enhancing brand image, or engaging specific audience segments. Clearly stated goals provide a foundation for what needs to be measured. 
  2. Engage Stakeholders: Collaborate with all relevant stakeholders, including marketing, sales, finance, and partnership teams, to understand what they need to see or measure. Stakeholders will have different perspectives on what success looks like, so it’s crucial to gather their input. 
  3. Determine Metrics of Interest: Based on the objectives and stakeholder input, identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help measure success. These could include metrics such as brand visibility, audience engagement, lead generation, sales impact, and media value. 
  4. Cultural Alignment and Team Effort: Ensure that the entire organization understands and is aligned with the importance of these metrics. This cultural shift involves training, regular communication, and a shared vision of what sponsorship success looks like. 
  5. Data Collection and Analysis: Implement tools and processes for collecting data consistently and accurately. Use platforms that integrate various data sources to provide a holistic view of sponsorship performance. Regular analysis of this data will help in making informed decisions. 
  6. Regular Review and Adjustment: Measurement is an iterative process. Regularly review the effectiveness of your chosen metrics and make adjustments as needed. This ensures that the metrics remain relevant and aligned with evolving business goals and market conditions. 
  7. By following these steps, brands can develop a robust framework for measuring sponsorship performance that is tailored to their specific objectives and stakeholder needs. For more detailed strategies and tools for effective sponsorship measurement, refer to our comprehensive guide here.  

Solutions to Sponsorship Measurement 

Recognizing the need for a new approach is crucial. Whether you are a brand, rights holder, venue, or agency, the objective often comes down to finding efficiencies, alignment, and collaboration within the business to create more performance and value from partnerships. From a technical perspective, this translates into using a single platform that provides total visibility of investments and rights, smarter integrations, data aggregation, and real-time custom reporting and insights. 

Option 1: Single Sponsorship Platform  

A single platform can revolutionize how you manage sponsorships by offering a comprehensive view of all investments and rights. This approach allows for smarter data integrations and the aggregation of information from various sources, resulting in more accurate and timely reporting. Real-time insights enable businesses to make data-driven decisions that enhance performance and maximize the value of partnerships. 

Option 2: Social Media Analytics to Measure Value 

The power of social media cannot be understated. For instance, earlier this spring Lionel Messi’s monthly social following hitting 500 billion exceeds the TV audience of the 2024 Superbowl by nearly four times. By leveraging social viewership and verified engagement metrics, brands can achieve reach and engagement levels that traditional TV cannot match. Integrating elite athletes into your sponsorship strategy can significantly boost visibility, credibility, and ROI. Tools like KORE Social (formerly Hookit) can help identify top athletes who drive value for brands across various sports, offering deeper insights into social media impact and engagement. 

Sponsorship Measurement Conclusion 

In conclusion, both a single platform for comprehensive sponsorship management and leveraging social media analytics are critical in today’s sponsorship landscape. Each provides unique advantages that, when combined, can drive unparalleled visibility, performance, and ROI for your sponsorship investments. 

Ready to take your sponsorship management to the next level?  

Download Our State of the Industry Report: Gain deeper insights into the latest trends and data in sports sponsorship.

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Request a Demo: Learn how KORE can help you measure your partnership’s value and maximize ROI.

 

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Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

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Real Salt Lake Taps KORE to Enhance Partnership Management & Measurement 

April 30, 2024

New York City, NY, 05/01/24 – KORE, the sports and entertainment business solution, and Utah-based soccer club Real Salt Lake (“RSL”), which includes Major League Soccer’s RSL side, Utah Royals FC of the National Women’s Soccer League, MLS Next Pro team Real Monarchs and the trio’s America First Field and Zions Bank Stadium venues, are excited to announce the first ever partnership between the two organizations to utilize KORE’s industry leading partnership platform, Sponsorship + Activate to drive deeper efficiencies and insights for RSL.

RSL was prepared to make the move to a Partnership platform that could manage the needs of a professional sports team trying to measure every element of its partnership portfolio. The platform includes a native integration into RSL’s CRM environment for enhanced pipeline management, and in application advance inventory valuation and management, proposal creation and analysis, post-contracting operations such as billing, revenue recognition, and reporting. Finally, the Activate platform will provide RSL asset activation management and ROI measurement for each partner.

Like a growing number of teams, RSL have also engaged with KORE’s advisory group, KORE Planning & Insights (“KPI”), in addition to KORE’s technology platform. KPI will help RSL leverage the KORE Partnership Platform to maximize adoption while driving advanced insights to help the club think more strategically about pricing, packaging, and valuation. Leveraging KORE’s unique set of data, RSL can leverage unique data points to help better understand the industry landscape and market trends.

The partnership highlights key items for both organizations: Union Sports & Entertainment commitment to driving the most advanced insights and processes, and KORE continuing to be the solution of choice for the industry.

John Kimball, President of Real Salt Lake, comments, “KORE is the clear industry leader when it comes to sports business technology and leveraging the data to drive true organizational change. We look forward to utilizing their platform and knowledge of the market to take our Partnership program to the next level.”

KORE’s COO, Adam Grow responded, “This has been a long time coming for KORE, as we have had numerous conversations with RSL over the years. To finally bridge the gap, and become partners, is exciting for all of us. We look forward to helping drive RSL’s partnership group to new heights and deliver immense value into the Club.”

The newly formed partnership between Real Salt Lake and KORE highlights KORE’s ongoing growth within the North American ‘Big 5’ Leagues, and specifically, Major League Soccer (“MLS”). KORE now works with over 70% of all MLS Clubs helping deploy the most advanced data driven practices in the industry for fans, partners, and stakeholders’ insights alike.

About KORE:

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions. More than 900 brands, venues, and sports organizations trust KORE’s tools and platform as a source of truth to manage assets and measure partnership impact, with real-time insights, across all channels.  Through Sponsorship Management and Evaluation, Ticketing and Fan Engagement, and Data Management and Analytics, KORE’s two-sided network unites corporate sponsors, sponsorship properties, and their fans with solutions that help enhance the fan experience, drive smarter decisions, and enable marketing and operations teams to spend time where it matters. Learn more at KORESoftware.com or follow us LinkedIn or Twitter. 

About Real Salt Lake / Utah Royals FC:

During the first week of January 2022, the RSL compendium of properties was acquired by global sports entrepreneur David Blitzer – who boasts interests in the Philadelphia 76ers (NBA), the New Jersey Devils (NHL), the Cleveland Guardians (baseball) and the Washington Commanders (NFL) – as well as several European soccer entities, including Crystal Palace (England), FC Augsburg (Germany), Estoril (Portugal), ADO Den Haag (Netherlands), Alcorcón (Spain), SK Beveren (Belgium) and Brøndby IF (Denmark). The Blitzer group partners with Utah-based Smith Entertainment Group (SEG), which owns the Utah Jazz (NBA) and the soon-to-arrive Utah Hockey Club (NHL), led by Ryan Smith and including Dwyane Wade, among others.

For the 2024 season and beyond, Real Salt Lake’s Blitzer / Smith ownership groups have partnered to bring the National Women’s Soccer League back to Utah, as Utah Royals FC return in the Spring. Led by Head Coach Amy Rodriguez, President Michelle Hyncik and Sporting Director Kelly Cousins, URFC aims to seize upon the success the NWSL enjoyed during its first iteration on the Wasatch Front from 2018-20 and grow the game to even greater heights going forward. Led by visionary sports business entrepreneur Jess Gelman – the founder of the Sloan Sports Analytics Institute, along with innovative NBA executive Daryl Morey – Utah Royals FC blazes new trails in 2024.

Real Salt Lake recently kicked off its 20th Major League Soccer season, its third full season under Head Coach Pablo Mastroeni, who led the Utah side on an interim basis for the final 100 days in 2021. RSL is the lone Western Conference side to have advanced to the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs in each of the 2021, 2022 and 2023 campaigns, amassing 13 postseason appearances in the last 16 years, as well as on five occasions in the last six seasons.  

RSL’s MLS Cup 2009 victory marked the state of Utah’s only major professional championship in nearly 40 years, the title preceding an historic run to the 2010/11 CONCACAF Champions League Final. Buoyed by a passionate base boasting several thousand season ticket holders and opening its permanent home in Sandy just over 15 years ago; since October, 2008, RSL’s 167-60-76 (W-L-T) mark at America First Field – home of the “RioT” Supporters Group umbrella – equates to a 1.90 points per game average and a 0.677 win pct, one of the truly amazing value proposition in North American sporting landscape today.

In 2015, the club expanded its development pyramid with the addition of Real Monarchs SLC, one of several MLS-operated clubs playing in the USL Championship, the United States’ Division II setup.  The Monarchs boast a pair of titles in its brief history, as the 2017 USL Championship Regular-Season champions, later winning the USL Championship title in 2019. For the 2022 season and beyond, Real Monarchs compete in the newly-launched “MLS NEXT Pro” as part of a joint United States and Canada endeavor to complete the professional player pathway by connecting youth academies in MLS NEXT to first teams in Major League Soccer.

The entire competitive RSL setup, which includes nearly 70 players representing the RSL Academy’s U-15 and U-17 teams, calls the expansive Zions Bank Training Center in Herriman, Utah their daily training home. With five world-class grass fields, two indoor turf fields, a residential dormitory, the STEM-based RSL Academy High School and the 5,000-seat Zions Bank Stadium located on a 42-acre campus, Utah’s sporting future is bright.

The RSL Community Foundation was established in 2016, created with the goals of being active in the community year-round, utilizing the popularity and reach of RSL, the Royals, the Monarchs and the Academy in promoting health and wellness in children throughout the region, engaging supporters of soccer to raise funds and volunteer time for various local initiatives.

For more information, please contact:

Mandy Savage
Content Marketing Manager, KORE
amanda.savage@koresoftware.com

Trey Fitz-Gerald
VP Communications, RSL/Utah Royals FC
trey.fitzgerald@RSL.com

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

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Bristol Sport Ltd. Transforms Sponsorship Management with KORE’s Cutting-Edge Platform

March 11, 2024

London – 12 March 2024 –

KORE, the premier provider of partner, fan and business intelligence solutions for the sports and entertainment industry, is pleased to announce Bristol Sport Ltd. as the latest UK client to adopt the Sponsorship and Partner Engagement platform.

This milestone reinforces KORE’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions to sports organisations worldwide.

This is a direct result of KORE’s recent acquisition of Sports Alliance, a digital marketing solutions provider, as Bristol Sport has maintained a successful partnership with Sports Alliance since 2015, using a data-driven approach to engaging fans and developing insights.

Bristol Sport is a multi-sport organisation comprised of five professional teams – Bristol City men and women’s football, Bristol Bears men and women’s rugby and Bristol Flyers men’s basketball. The group was established by Stephen Lansdown CBE in 2012 to inspire participation in sport in Bristol and the wider communities.

In 2023, recognising the need for a new approach to sponsorship management, Bristol Sport Ltd. integrated KORE’s Sponsorship and Partner Engagement platform into its operations. This strategic move signifies the organisation’s commitment to staying at the forefront of sports technology, leveraging and building on their existing data-driven insights to enhance their sponsorship strategies.

“The Bristol Sport group model is unique in the UK. Our objective is to move towards a more data-focused operation and adopting KORE’s Sponsorship and Partner Engagement platform was a natural progression as we strive to streamline our sponsorship processes and maximise revenue potential,” said Bristol Sport Commercial Director, Sarah Farrar.

Matt Roberts, KORE’s Sr. Director of Customer Strategy & Success (EMEA) said: “Bristol Sport Ltd. will use the Sponsorship and Partner Engagement platform as a centralised source of truth for all their assets, rate cards, contracts, and payments. This partnership will not only enhance their sponsorship management but also empower them to sell more sponsorships and contribute significantly to their overall success.”

This collaboration between KORE and Bristol Sport Ltd. is a testament to the transformative power of data-driven solutions to optimise results and streamline business processes and both parties look forward to continuing to develop and grow the partnership.

About Bristol Sport:
Founded in 2012, Bristol Sport Ltd. stands as a prominent force in the sports industry, with a commitment to excellence and innovation. As a part of the stable of sports companies owned by Stephen Lansdown CBE, Bristol Sport has made significant strides in promoting professional sports access and encouraging participation across diverse age and capability ranges. Since its inception, Bristol Sport has grown into a dynamic conglomerate, comprising five teams in professional football, rugby, and basketball. Notably, the company officially launched its headquarters at Ashton Gate Stadium in 2014, solidifying its presence in the sporting landscape.

About KORE:
KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions. More than 900 brands, venues, and sports organisations trust KORE’s tools and platform as a source of truth to manage assets and measure partnership impact, with real-time insights, across all channels.

Through Sponsorship Management and Evaluation, Ticketing and Fan Engagement, and Data Management and Analytics, KORE’s two-sided network unites corporate sponsors, sponsorship properties, and their fans with solutions that help enhance the fan experience, drive smarter decisions, and enable marketing and operations teams to spend time where it matters. Learn more at KORESoftware.com or follow us LinkedIn or Twitter.

For more information, please contact:

Mandy Savage
Content Marketing Manager, KORE
amanda.savage@koresoftware.com

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

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KORE's Formula One Season Social Media Recap

Who Won the Fan Engagement? KORE’s Formula One Season Social Recap

December 21, 2023

Taking a moment to look back at another thrilling season of Formula One, it’s not just about the live action that’s captivated fans worldwide—social media has been abuzz with every turn of the wheel, whether it’s live-streamed, behind-the-scenes outtakes, posts and videos shared online, or following the Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive.’ Our comprehensive infographic dives deep in the digital race tracks where the top F1 teams and drivers competed for one of the most valuable currencies today: fan engagement. 

Who topped the charts on social media? Which drivers earned podiums for their digital presence? And which brands climbed the the ranks in fan engagement or value earned from teams and drivers’ posts? We crunched the numbers in our Evaluate Social tool, used by top teams and brands around the world, to reveal the numbers and the posts that fueled F1’s social presence. 

Are you looking to drive your brand’s social media presence to pole position? With our proprietary ‘Evaluate Social’ tool, you can gain unparalleled insights, steering your strategy to the winner’s circle. contact us to set up a demo, or to discover more insights like these.  

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Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

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Sponsorship Management Mastered with KORE tools

Sponsorship Management Mastered: 6 Ways to Gain an Edge with the Right Tools

December 5, 2023

What do the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, McLaren, Formula 1, and the Chicago Bears have in common? A powerful secret weapon: advanced sponsorship management tools. This article uncovers how elite sports organizations harness cutting edge tools to drive monumental growth in their sponsorship.

  1. Grow Sponsorship Revenue, Renewal Rates, & Efficiency

Read: How the Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) Increased their Renewal Growth by 22% 

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation achieved remarkable success through its partnership with KORE, by optimizing their sponsorship operations, resulting in a 22% spike in renewal growth. By implementing deal sheets and the deal manager from KORE’s Sponsorship platform, the AGPC can now:

  • Quickly tell which assets have been sold, such as naming rights or popular activation spaces at events.
  • Pitch assets with concrete data, and demonstrate asset performance with comparisons to market standards.
  • Share near real-time tracking and comprehensive reporting with stakeholders.
  • Tools Used: Sponsorship Platform

With sponsorship revenues growing across the series, McLaren needed new ways to stay on top of the competition and capitalize on the expanding market. To capture new opportunities, McLaren first needed to demonstrate how their social media and digital content campaigns would benefit current and potential sponsors. Using the Evaluate Social tool (formerly called Hookit), McLaren became a top 3 team in F1 measured by total social media followers, fan engagement on social media posts and sponsorship value generated on social media for brand partners by the end of 2021. They accomplished this with Evaluate Social’s:

  • Adjusted Ad Value model which assigns a dollar value to a social post based on various factors such as
    • Clear, quality logo visibility
    • Audience data and watch-through rates
    • Built-in computer vision for authentication
  • Impressions-based models for current and new partners
  • Ability to benchmark against competitors

Tools Used: Evaluate Social

 2. Measure What Matters to Partners

Read: How the Chicago Bears Evolved Their Partnership Evaluation Process to Grow Sponsorship Revenue

Established in 1920, the Chicago Bears are one of the most storied American sport franchises with a vast and fiercely loyal fan base. As of April 2023, they have 8.5M followers across five social media channels and saw a 2.6% growth in followers since the beginning of the season. It’s clear why brands are attracted to the Bears considering their social reach and nearly 100% retention rate for season ticket holders.

The Bears increased partnership revenue by uncovering what mattered most to their partners through a variety of KORE solutions. These tools allow them to:

  • Understand objectives of four key partners through an OKR survey
  • Upload the data needed to measure and evaluate performance with a custom data submission portal
  • Use social data in their evaluation framework with the Evaluate Social tool
  • Create near real-time access to reports and dashboards with their key partners

Tools Used

“We’re getting help flagging assets that are underselling on the rate perspective based on the value that they’re delivering, which is helping us generate revenue with other partners.”

Corey Ruff, VP of Business Strategy & Analytics, Chicago Bears Tweet
 
3. Prove Value

Read: How Forsberg Racing Quantified ROI & Doubled its Partnership Investments. 

Forsberg Racing builds additional revenue by offering full-service digital marketing solutions for brands of all sizes. Despite their coverage generating high engagement, proving ROI was difficult. Since partnering with Hookit, a KORE company, for full social data evaluation and reporting in January of 2022, Forsberg now has the ability to put a dollar value on the content they create. As a result, they doubled their adjusted ad value (AAV) within the first year of using the tool. They accomplished this through:

  • Identifying social posts that drove incidental value and optimized with deliberate mentions.
  • Ensuring capture and positioning of content with clear logo visibility for the tool to recognize.
  • Measuring and growing AAV through their own, and their partner’s account handles with deliberate keyword strategies.
  • Monitoring of measurement and near-real-time reporting, shared with partners

Tools Used: Evaluate Social

"Our investment into the social tool has paid for itself ten times by now."

Brandon Bolling, Chief Partnership Officer, Forsberg Racing Tweet
  
4. Improve Efficiency & Boost Revenue

Read: How Minnesota United FC (MNUFC) Improved Lead Tracking & Ticket Sales. 

Minnesota United FC has only been in MLS for six full seasons, and yet they have already established themselves as one of the league’s most exciting teams. To continue their early momentum their business intelligence (BI) team wanted to improve the speed of data sharing and automate and improve lead tracking to improve the customer experience. Here is how KORE’s Planning & Insights (KPI) group helped them develop a better fan experience.

The KPI team:

  • Developed matching logic functionality and contact/person account creation into Salesforces via Flows.
  • Built a custom workflow in Salesforce that allows the user to create opportunities and activities based on the type of form a customer submitted and automates assignments to sales reps.
  • Customized integrations between MNUFC’s three main platforms, form provider, CRM and email marketing.

The new workflows and integrations eliminated a massive amount of manual work, and duplication, ultimately improving speed and efficiency for a better experience.

Tools Used: KORE’s Planning & Insights (KPI) group

“Since working with the KPI group on our custom integrations, the BI team has eliminated the need to manually create leads. The ticketing team has improved their follow up time, and we’ve increased the rate at which we’re adding engaged fans to our database”

Taylor Van Oosbree, Director of Business Intelligence, MNUFC Tweet
  
5. Gain a Competitive Edge with Sponsorship Tools that Help Increase Your Speed & Efficiency

Read: How the Shell V-Power Racing Team Achieved Real-Time Asset Tracking & Data Transparency Across Their Organisation.

The Shell V-Power Racing Team (operated by Dick Johnson Racing) had multiple tools and untracked data spread out across multiple platforms making it difficult for their team to navigate, even losing track of assets. Now they use KORE’s Activate product to organise their partnership information, specifically assets, into one source-of-truth to create more time for strategy and achieve data transparency across their organisation. With KORE’s Activate tool they:

  • Can view all their data from 33 partners and suppliers in one place and make better decisions accordingly.
  • Can access previous and current records from one source of truth which provides a consistent brand experience to all partners
  • Gained a competitive edge on the speed and efficiency in which they deliver on every asset developing response agility to any changes in contracts.

Tools Used: Activate for Rights Holders

  
6. Bringing it All Together

Read: How the Seattle Sounders Built a Best-in-Class CRM Ecosystem to Drive a Better Fan Experience. 

In the spring of 2021, the Sounders implemented one of KORE’s 2nd generation CRM-integrated products, Ticketing, to take advantage of Salesforce’s built-in functionality and incorporate their web chat and text third-party apps. They also began working with KORE’s Planning & Insights (KPI) team to build these customizations within their CRM. These two operational shifts enabled the Sounder to more than double their expected engagement with season members, compared to past seasons.

Tools Used: Ticketing & Fan Engagement

Summary

The sports sponsorship landscape is evolving rapidly, and only those equipped with the right tools thrive. As showcased by McLaren, Forsberg Racing, the Chicago Bears and more elite sports organizations, leveraging data-driven sponsorship platforms can amplify revenue and efficiency and fortify relationships with partners. In the end, it’s not just about having the tools but mastering their potential that leads to the wins. Learn how KORE can help you optimize the leading sponsorship management platform for your own success.

Request a Demo

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

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Understanding All Aspects of Sponsorship Value: How to Identify and Quantify Your Investment for Maximum Impact

November 28, 2023

Finishing up the final quarter of the calendar year serves as an ideal time for introspection regarding your organization’s goals and the strategies around sponsorships. It’s important to identify what worked this past year, what didn’t and what changes to make to set up a strong 2024. If you aim to enhance your sponsorship returns, you first need to ensure you’re leveraging the right tools. Let’s delve deeper into maximizing your partnerships next year. 

1. Sponsorship Objective Setting: Tailored Strategies for Concrete Outcomes 

Brands, inherently diverse, harbor distinct goals. Pinpointing these goals is paramount. For instance, a well-known bank that may be aiming to augment revenue from well-established MLB partnerships could be at a crossroads initially. However, a roadmap of clear objectives identified can help hit targets. Here’s how you can forge ahead.  

PRO TIPS: Objectives should always be tangible, be achievable, and encapsulate a definitive timeframe. [How to Define & Measure Your Brand’s Partnership Objectives in 3 Steps]  

2. Adopt a Single, Secure Information Source 

A unified platform that combines data, insights, and communications instills transparency. This centralized system facilitates enhanced communication, collaboration, and consequently, results. Real-time insights breathe life into partnerships, making the journey more dynamic and responsive [Sponsorship & Fan Data is Overwhelming: How to Support Dynamic Partnerships]. 

3. Boost Brand Value & Secure Financial Support 

A central data hub simplifies the task of justifying budgets for sponsorships. When stakeholders witness tangible outcomes, they’re going to invest more. With KORE’s Portfolio Optimization Platform, teams are equipped with the arsenal to propel value, aligning with both organizational and partners’ visions.

4. Cultivating a Competitive Edge 

In the fluid landscape of sponsorships, data-driven insights are the compass. For instance, if you’ve invested in an action sport league that is a star performer in terms of value but lacks social media traction data can help guide your partner. Social insights, when probed deeper, can reshape activation strategies across diverse sports segments, making them more fruitful. Read highlights from the 2022 Global Football Market Intel Recap for insightful social analysis that can redefine a brand’s biggest moments such as the Louis Vuitton campaign in the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Navigating the vast sea of data, optimizing it, and aligning it with each partnership molds your competitive silhouette. Cohesive team endeavors, underpinned by strategic decisions, amplify ROI or ROO, cementing long-term success.

Successful Sponsorship Evaluation Examples 

KORE has been instrumental in aiding various brands and teams in optimizing their sponsorship value. Let’s delve into a couple of case studies from KORE that emphasize its effectiveness in the industry: 

1. McLaren Formula 1 Team 

The McLaren Formula 1 Team faced challenges as sponsorship revenues were growing across the series. To keep pace with top-tier teams, McLaren required innovative strategies to boost their revenues. Utilizing KORE’s Evaluate Social insights and tools, the McLaren Formula 1 Team was able to pinpoint areas for revenue growth and solidify its position among the top teams in the series [McLaren Formula 1 Team Case Study]. 

2. Vans 

The footwear and apparel brand, Vans, sought to quantify the return on investment (ROI) from their sponsorships. With KORE’a Evaluate Social (formerly Hookit), Vans was able to demonstrate a whopping $13M in earned media value, generated through the interactions of athletes, fans, and media. This case showcases the potential of KORE Software in helping brands capture the tangible value of their sponsorship endeavors [Vans Case Study]. 

These examples underline KORE’s pivotal role in offering brands and teams data-driven insights, optimizing sponsorship strategies, and ensuring maximized returns on their investments. 

KORE remains at the forefront, offering a plethora of solutions tailored to nurture profound fan relationships and optimize partnerships. Whether it’s CRM integration, sales software, or media value quantification, KORE ensures adaptive tools for evolving brand needs. 

Reach out for personalized assistance in sculpting your sponsorship landscape.

 
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Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

Read More

The Pulse of Your Brand: Why Monitoring Sponsorship Performance is Essential for Brand Health

November 3, 2023

In today’s fast-paced digital era, brand image and reputation can change in a heartbeat. Amidst this ever-changing landscape, sponsorships have emerged as a significant tool in the brand management arsenal. However, for a sponsorship to be truly impactful, it’s vital not only to choose the right partner while safeguarding your brand’s reputation through sponsorship governance practices but also to monitor the performance of the sponsorship over time. Let’s delve into the intricacies of why it’s critical to manage and measure your sponsorships correctly to ensure they contribute positively to your brand’s health.

The Foundations of Brand Health

Before we dive into the importance of monitoring sponsorship performance, let’s establish the foundations of brand health:

  1. Customer Perception: Brand health is intrinsically tied to how your customers perceive your brand. Positive associations, trust, and loyalty are the cornerstones of a healthy brand image.
  2. Awareness and Recognition: High brand awareness and recognition are strong indicators of good brand health. When your brand is easily recognizable and memorable, it’s a clear sign of a positive brand image.
  3. Customer Engagement: Healthy brands have engaged and satisfied customers who actively interact with the brand. This interaction happens through various channels, including social media and customer feedback surveys.
  4. Market Competitiveness: A robust brand can maintain or increase its market share and competitiveness. It can adapt swiftly to market changes and shifting consumer preferences.
  5. Metrics & Monitoring: Measuring brand health involves the use of specific metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer feedback, social listening, and surveys. Monitoring brand health is essential for identifying areas for improvement, measuring the impact of marketing efforts, and adapting to change.
  6. Consistency and Differentiation: Healthy brands consistently deliver memorable and differentiated customer experiences. Brands with less satisfactory health struggle to maintain these qualities.

Now, let’s explore how sponsorship performance ties into these foundational elements of brand health.

The Role of Sponsorships in Brand Health

Sponsorships are a powerful tool for shaping brand health. They have the potential to create a cascade of positive effects.

  • Positive Buzz: Well-executed sponsorships can generate tremendous buzz and conversation around your brand. For example, partnering with an influencer, athlete, or celebrity can ignite conversations, getting people to talk about your brand in both online and offline platforms.
  • Positive Impressions: Sponsorships offer a unique opportunity to showcase your brand in environments that resonate with your target audience. This leaves a lasting, positive impression in the minds of consumers.
    • Online, each time your brand logo or message is displayed in conjunction with an event or a personality, it creates impressions. These impressions translate to brand visibility and recognition.
  • Positive Quality: Partnering with entities that share similar values or have a reputation for quality can enhance your brand’s perceived quality. It’s a powerful way to elevate your brand’s image.
    • Online, the quality of your sponsorship promotions plays a significant role. Factors like position, clarity, and viewership affect the perceived quality.
  • Positive Value: This is where KORE’s methodology for quantifying sponsorship value through Adjusted Ad Value (AAV) comes into play. It involves three critical steps:
      1. Identify Brand Promotion: Understand where and how your brand is promoted through the sponsorship.
      2. Calculate Max Ad Value (MAV): This involves multiplying total engagements with Cost Per Engagement (CPE).
      3. Determine Adjusted Ad Value: The MAV is adjusted based on promotion quality factors like position, coverage, logo clarity, competition, crowding, and viewership, as shown in the provided KORE image.

Why Social Listening Text-only social listening tools miss significant visual attribution.

  • Evaluate Social can capture a brand’s social value through:
    • Clear, quality logo visibility
    • Audience data and watch-through rates
    • Built-in computer vision for authentication

These features create a robust data story. We can track the AAV of any content created on social media that displays clear logos, deliberate tags, and keyword mentions. Other social listening tools do not capture the promotion quality that the AAV model provides.

Leveraging KORE’s Technology to Track and Optimize Sponsorship Performance

To maximize the performance of your sponsorships, it’s crucial to have tools that can measure, analyze, and monitor their impact. Here’s where KORE’s state of the art solutions can elevate your partnerships.

  1. Evaluate Omni: With KORE’s Evaluate Omni, brands can drive more valuable partnerships by collecting essential data across social media to assess performance against key metrics, thereby quantifying ROI. This platform allows brands to unify diverse data, apply universal metrics, and adjust their partnership strategy for maximum performance.
  2. Maximizing Performance: KORE offers tools to demonstrate the value of your partnership investments easily. With real-time reporting and analytic tools, showcasing the ROI of sponsorships to partners and executives becomes a breeze.
  3. Smarter Investments: KORE’s tools allow brands to identify high and underperforming partnerships, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and invest smartly.
  4. Value Throughout the Partnership Lifecycle: KORE offers solutions designed to unlock a brand’s potential, right from the research phase to activation, helping brands invest in the right partners.

Sponsorships are no longer just about your brand’s logo being placed everywhere. It’s about strategic placements, quantifying the performance, and optimizing for better results. By effectively tracking and analyzing sponsorship performance, brands can ensure they remain at the forefront of their industry, capturing audience attention, and driving brand health to new heights.

Are you looking to elevate your brand’s partnership strategy and performance? Don’t fall behind industry trends. Schedule a demo with KORE today. As the global leader in engagement marketing and data intelligence in sports and entertainment, we are committed to matching you with the right solution tailored to your brand’s needs.

Request a Demo

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

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2023 Sponsorship Governance Series: Part 3; FAQs & Key Components

July 20, 2023
FAQs to Understanding Sponsorship Governance 

Use these FAQs and key components to gain a clear understanding of the basics of Sponsorship Governance.  

What is the definition of sponsorship governance? 

Sponsorship governance can be defined as the framework that governs the planning, implementation, and evaluation of sponsorships within an organization. It encompasses the processes, structures, and policies that guide sponsorship decisions and activities. 

What is the role of sponsorship governance in managing sponsorships effectively?  

Sponsorship governance plays a pivotal role in managing sponsorships effectively. It provides a structured approach to identify and evaluate sponsorship opportunities, select the most suitable partners, and define the terms and conditions of the sponsorship agreements. Additionally, it ensures compliance with legal and ethical standards, manages conflicts of interest, and facilitates ongoing monitoring and evaluation of sponsorships.

What are the key components of sponsorship governance? 

Effective sponsorship governance involves several key components. These include: 

  • Governance Structure: Establishing a clear governance structure with defined roles and responsibilities for sponsorship decision-making and oversight. 
  • Policies and Guidelines: Developing comprehensive sponsorship policies and guidelines that outline the organization’s objectives, criteria for sponsor selection, evaluation mechanisms, and ethical considerations. 
  • Accountability and Transparency: Ensuring accountability and transparency in the sponsorship process through clear reporting and disclosure mechanisms. 
  • Monitoring and Evaluation: Implementing mechanisms to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of sponsorships, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and regular reporting. 
  • Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging relevant stakeholders, both internal and external, in the sponsorship governance process to gather insights, build relationships, and enhance decision-making. 
  • Effective Communication Channels: for collaboration between the sponsorship team and other relevant departments. 
  • A Centralized Management System: Find ideal matches using a weighted scoring system based on governance policies and guidelines and generate reports for full transparency. 
  • Metrics and Measurement Mechanisms: to assess the success and impact of sponsorships through, ideally in a centralized management system like Intake  
How do I begin building a sponsorship governance framework for my organization?  

To start get the framework started it is recommended to: 

What tools or resources can aid in effectively managing sponsorship governance? Various tools and resources can assist in managing sponsorship governance effectively, such as: 

  • Sponsorship management software platforms like Activate or Evaluate for tracking and evaluating sponsorship activities.
  • Templates and guidelines for sponsorship agreements, performance metrics, and reporting.
  • Industry publications, case studies, and best practice guides for staying updated on sponsorship trends and strategies.
  • Collaboration tools and project management software for streamlining communication and task management within the sponsorship team. 

At KORE, we understand the importance of sponsorship governance in optimizing the needs of the largest footprint of teams, leagues, brands, and agencies. Our comprehensive services cater to your sponsorship requirements, ensuring success at every step. Let us guide your team towards effective sponsorship governance and elevate your sponsorship strategy. Reach out for a demo anytime. 

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

Read More

2023 Sponsorship Governance Series: Part 2; How to Steer Clear of Chaos & Maximize Partnership Success

July 20, 2023
Partnerships never go out of style 

We can all recall instances where an artist, influencer, or athlete’s personal life turns into a brand partner’s nightmare or a shiny new partnership ends in bankruptcy within a year (cough, FTX, cough). With global spend on sponsorships expected to grow to $116B by 2027, partnerships will only continue to evolve. You can avoid the mayhem (thank you, Allstate) by implementing a 3-step airtight vetting process that saves your team time and surfaces the right sponsorship opportunities. 

It’s Like Data Governance but for Sponsorship 

Analysts, partnership managers, brand managers, and rights holder’s data scientists use sponsorship data. Systems can be put into place to create and change data for usable purposes such as reporting, research, identifying the right partnerships based on a certain set of criteria, highlighting value, marketing and beyond. But everyone needs to abide by a set of rules and reporting standards to follow for using the data. Simply doing things with data is the easy part, but only if the data is of good quality and is useful. Often, organizations that have sponsorship data don’t have a way to manage it in a useful way. For example, an internal portal designed to vet sponsorship applications based on customized criteria set by your stakeholders or governance polices will surface the data that you can use to make the best decisions for the brand.  

Effective sponsorship governance is crucial for organizations aiming to maximize the benefits of their sponsorship investments. It helps: 

  • Establish clear guidelines and accountability measures 
  • Mitigates risks 
  • Ensures transparency in the management of sponsorships 

By implementing robust sponsorship governance practices, organizations can enhance their ability to build successful partnerships and achieve their desired outcomes. 

How Brands Benefit from Sponsorship Governance 
Ensuring alignment with organizational objectives 

One of the primary benefits of sponsorship governance is its ability to ensure alignment between sponsorships and an organization’s objectives. By defining clear criteria and evaluating sponsorships against strategic goals, organizations can select partnerships that are most likely to contribute to their success. Sponsorship governance enables organizations to prioritize sponsorships that align with their brand values, target audience, and overall mission. 

Maximizing return on investment (ROI) 

Effective sponsorship governance helps organizations maximize their return on investment (ROI) by ensuring that sponsorships deliver measurable value. Through careful evaluation and monitoring, organizations can assess the impact of their sponsorships and make informed decisions about ongoing or future investments. Sponsorship governance facilitates a data-driven approach to sponsorship management, allowing organizations to optimize their strategies and allocate resources effectively. 

Mitigating risks and managing conflicts of interest 

Sponsorship governance provides a framework for mitigating risks and managing conflicts of interest that may arise in sponsorships. By establishing ethical guidelines and due diligence processes, organizations can identify potential risks and ensure that sponsorships align with their values and legal obligations. Additionally, sponsorship governance helps manage conflicts of interest by implementing transparency measures and clear decision-making protocols. 

Enhancing transparency and accountability 

Transparency and accountability are vital aspects of successful sponsorships. Sponsorship governance fosters transparency by establishing reporting mechanisms, disclosure requirements, and guidelines for managing relationships with sponsors. This not only promotes trust and credibility but also helps organizations demonstrate their commitment to ethical practices to stakeholders and the public. 

Implementing Effective Sponsorship Governance 
Establishing a clear governance structure 

To implement effective sponsorship governance, organizations need to establish a clear governance structure. This involves defining roles and responsibilities for sponsorship decision-making and oversight, such as creating a sponsorship committee or appointing a sponsorship manager. By clarifying decision-making authority and lines of communication, organizations can streamline the sponsorship process and ensure accountability. 

Defining roles and responsibilities 

Clearly defining roles and responsibilities is crucial for effective sponsorship governance. Each stakeholder involved in the sponsorship process should understand their responsibilities, from identifying opportunities to evaluating sponsorships and managing relationships. This clarity ensures that everyone involved is aligned with the organization’s objectives and can contribute to successful sponsorship outcomes. 

Developing sponsorship policies and guidelines 

Comprehensive sponsorship policies and guidelines provide a framework for consistent decision-making and accountability. These documents should outline the organization’s sponsorship objectives, criteria for sponsor selection, evaluation mechanisms, and ethical considerations. By establishing clear guidelines, organizations can avoid ad hoc decision-making and ensure that sponsorships align with their overall strategy. 

Implementing monitoring and evaluation mechanisms 

Monitoring and evaluation are integral parts of sponsorship governance. Organizations should establish mechanisms to track key performance indicators (KPIs) and regularly evaluate the impact and effectiveness of sponsorships. This data-driven approach allows organizations to make informed decisions about ongoing or future sponsorships, adjust their strategies if needed, and demonstrate the value of sponsorships to stakeholders. 

Best Practices for Sponsorship Governance 
Conducting due diligence on potential sponsors 

Before entering into sponsorship agreements, organizations should conduct due diligence on potential sponsors. This process involves researching the sponsor’s reputation, financial stability, alignment with the organization’s values, and any potential conflicts of interest. By assessing the credibility and compatibility of potential sponsors, organizations can make informed decisions and establish successful long-term partnerships. 

Negotiating and documenting sponsorship agreements 

Clear and well-documented sponsorship agreements are essential for successful sponsorship governance. Organizations should engage in thorough negotiations to define the terms, rights, and obligations of both parties. This includes specifying the duration of the sponsorship, promotional activities 

At KORE, we understand the importance of sponsorship governance in optimizing the needs of the largest footprint of teams, leagues, brands, and agencies. Our comprehensive services cater to your sponsorship requirements, ensuring success at every step. Let us guide your team towards effective sponsorship governance and elevate your sponsorship strategy. Reach out for a demo anytime.

Read FAQs & Key Components. 

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

Read More

2023 Sponsorship Governance Series: Part 1; Why Governance is Essential for Your Sponsorship Strategy

July 20, 2023

What You’ll Learn  

  • The concept and significance of sponsorship governance for brands 
  • How brands can minimize risk, and safeguard their reputation while maximizing sponsorship value  
  • How to avoid athlete sponsorship pitfalls  
  • Ways to mitigate negative impact, and ensure compliance with brand values in response to reputation risks  
Introduction  

Sponsorship is an essential aspect of many organizations’ marketing and branding strategies. When we think of Michael Jordan, we think of a champion, basketball, the Chicago Bulls, Air Jordans and Nike. Partnerships provide financial support and resources to events, campaigns and initiatives, or athletes, influencers, artists, teams, clubs and leagues in exchange for brand visibility and association with the sponsored entity. Sport and entertainment unify people through emotional connection like Proctor & Gamble’s “Thank you, Mom” campaign featuring the childhood journey of Olympic athletes and the unwavering support from their moms. Sponsorship lies in the core of engaging with audiences that may result in loyalty and even passion. How do you assess that value, all while safeguarding your essence: your brand, reputation, assets, and beyond? Sponsorship Governance aids in elucidating this undertaking. 

While the concept of sponsorship is widely understood, the role of sponsorship governance is often overlooked. Through this series, we will explore what sponsorship governance is, why it is critical for a successful sponsorship strategy, and how organizations can implement effective sponsorship governance practices to ensure aligned brand values and avoid costly mistakes or harm to their brand reputation. 

What is sponsorship governance? 

Sponsorship governance is like any other governance. You have probably heard of corporate governance or more recent terms like data governance. Sponsorship governance refers to the set of processes, policies, and structures that guide the management and oversight of sponsorships within an organization. It involves the strategic planning, decision-making, and monitoring of sponsorships to ensure they align with the organization’s objectives and deliver measurable value. 

Importance of sponsorship governance 

Sponsorship governance is crucial for organizations involved in sponsorships. It reduces risks, safeguards brand reputation, and maximizes sponsorship value. Let’s review some ways that sponsorship governance can prevent or minimize expensive errors and reputational damage in certain situations that involve high profile athletes and partnerships between organizations.  

An Athlete or Brand Partner Sponsorship Blunder 

Through the years we’ve all read the headlines when a prominent athlete becomes involved in unethical conduct like performance enhancing drug use or allegations of abusive behavior. Often the athlete loses high-profile sponsors resulting in significant losses for the athlete, influencer and their sponsors. Sometimes the ethical concerns over conduct involve a brand partnered with an organization under fire. With proper protocols and approval processes in place, organizations can conduct thorough due diligence on athletes, artists, influencers and other organizations and then implement clauses to protect themselves from reputational damage in the event of ethical or legal violations. Here are some tips to follow when creating governance policies: 

  • Conduct rigorous assessments of potential partnership risks and align values regarding current public perception around relevant issues. 
  • Implement effective monitoring and reporting processes to ensure ongoing compliance with mutually agreed-upon welfare standards, as it pertains to each business. 
  • Establish regular dialogue and collaboration between the organizations to address emerging issues, make necessary adjustments, and provide transparent communication to the public. 
  • Have provisions in the sponsorship agreement that allow for termination or amendment in response to significant reputation risks related to any welfare, ethical, or legal concerns within each business structure. 

By implementing robust sponsorship governance practices, organizations can proactively identify and address potential pitfalls, adhere to ethical standards, and protect their brand reputation from the adverse effects of sponsorship-related controversies. This is where our tools can help with your organization’s policies or governance smoothly, safely, and securely.

Read How to Steer Clear of Chaos & Maximize Success. 

Mandy Savage, Content Marketing Manager
KORE Software

KORE is the global leader in engagement marketing solutions, serving more than 200 professional teams and 850+ sports and entertainment properties worldwide, providing practical tools and services to harness customer data, facilitate sponsorship sales and activation, and create actionable insights.

Read More