Advice needed - sports sponsorship
Advice needed - sports sponsorship
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HolyMoly

Original Poster:

45 posts

137 months

Thursday 20th October 2022
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Looking for a quite a bit of help here from those in the sports sponsorship arena, if possible.

I have been sitting on a, hitherto untried, sponsorship service for the past 7-odd years. When I first contacted people in the industry in 2015ish, one of the first agents (ex-marketing manager for famous rugby team) that I emailed was super enthusiastic about it, but that enthusiasm was quickly curtailed due to the strict rules by the governing body at that time. It also felt like what I was offering was a bit ahead of its time so I didn't really pursue it much thereafter.

Fast-forward to today and I decided to throw a couple of emails out again. I was quite surprised to have a reply from the Chair of a national Golfing body who seems very interested in my service and has also mooted the possibility of a joint venture.....

Now here is where I am stuck. The service that I can provide is very unique and, if it is adopted how I envision, could be very lucrative and applicable to a range of sports (I assume the aforementioned Chairperson also sees it that way too), but my issue is that I have ZERO experience of sports sponsorship and what it involves. In addition, I am not a person that has any corporate experience (wife and I have run our own business for the past 20 years) and don't feel that it's an environment that I would feel comfortable in.

My dilemma is this (this is all hypothetical) - I could be a service provider and that's it - I charge a fee what what I can do and then leave the rest to whomever is my client. On the other hand, a joint venture sounds financially much more attractive and looks to have a greater scope for growth, but as I have no experience of being in that realm, I don't want to get in to a car that I can't drive, if you see what I mean.

Looking for any advice - happy to speak offline as well.

dirty boy

14,784 posts

225 months

Thursday 20th October 2022
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I don't know what you do or how you do it and can't help.

However, I'm the treasurer of a small swimming club with about 180 members (it used to be two clubs, both having 150+ members but covid decimated it) and if you can give back to the club in any way whatsover, something is better than nothing if you tihnk we have any benefit whatsoever, even as a guineapig lol!

Probably a waste of your time tbh but i've learnt over the last year to keep asking as you don't get anything by not!

Good luck otherwise :-)

StevieBee

14,277 posts

271 months

Thursday 20th October 2022
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It comes down to two things:

The first is risk. The standard rule of thumb is the higher the likelihood of something being lucrative, the higher the financial risk to attain that success. So you need to consider your tolerance level for financial risk.

The second is to know the end game. Are you looking at something interesting and meaningful from which to earn a nice living or do you see this is something you want to build and exit from ASAP?

A joint venture may reduce your exposure to risk and may well accelerate you to the point of exit – the trade-off being that you’ll share the spoils with others and you can’t assume any arrangement will result in you maintaining a majority share or even a 50/50 split. Whereas if you DIY, the risks are higher but you get to keep the lot!

If it were me, I’d go it alone…at least initially. You’ve had two very good and credible bits of feedback that you’re onto something. That should give you the confidence to press ahead. Find out about and learn the stuff you don’t know and/or hire people to fill in the gaps. If you do see the need to go the JV route later on, you will have a greater influence on the dispersal of shares.

You say that you don’t know the corporate world but you’ve been running a business for 20 odd years. You know what a balance sheet looks like, the legislations that prevails and the rest of it. The only real difference is the number of zeros that apply.

HTH.