Wiland Blog

Sports franchises and leagues depend heavily on corporate partnerships to fuel their growth and fan engagement. Yet, many teams face a pressing challenge: understanding their fan base and its spending behaviors to create stronger connections between their audience and sponsors. Without these insights, teams struggle to deliver measurable value to their corporate partners and risk missing opportunities to attract new sponsors.

Corporate sponsorships are major investments. Brands spend millions to place logos on stadium signage, digital platforms, and team assets. They do this to tap into fan loyalty and boost their visibility. However, the missing piece in many sponsorship strategies is actionable data that tells franchises about their fan data, including audience demographics and spending behaviors, and how their audience aligns with key brand categories.

The result? Franchises often can’t answer critical questions about sponsorship value. Are fans engaging with the sponsoring brand? Do they spend in the sponsor’s category? How can teams prove the value of these partnerships, not just anecdotally, but with hard fan statistics?

The solution lies in leveraging brand propensity data to close these gaps, creating a bridge between the fans and the sponsors who support their favorite teams.

The What, Who, and Who Else Framework

Understanding and leveraging fan data starts with a straightforward framework:

• What: Identify the brands and categories that resonate most with your audience.
• Who: Pinpoint the fans within your audience list who actively spend with your corporate sponsors.
• Who Else: Discover potential fans outside your database who share the same spending propensities.

This approach provides a clear path to deepen existing partnerships and attract new sponsors by demonstrating alignment with audience statistics and spending behaviors.

Connecting You Fan Base with Sponsors

One story that exemplifies how data can transform partnerships comes from a professional sports franchise. A corporate partner wanted to know which fans owned their vehicles and who might be in the market for a luxury car. Using brand propensity data, the club pinpointed owners of that make within its database and identified fans likely to buy a luxury Japanese automobile. Beyond that, they modeled these insights to find additional individuals outside their CRM who shared these characteristics.

This allowed the corporate partner to create highly targeted campaigns, engaging fans with messaging that resonated. For the franchise, this insight strengthened their relationship with the partner and demonstrated the value of their sponsorship dollars.

Turning Insights into Action

The journey from insight to action involves three key steps:

1. Data Analytics: A Prescriptive Data Analysis (PDA) compares your fan data to a national sample, uncovering unique spending behaviors and providing actionable insights into fan demographics and fan engagement.
2. Data Appends: By appending attributes to your audience list, such as spending habits and audience demographics, you can identify segments of fans who align with specific sponsor categories.
3. Audience Modeling: Apply these insights to a broader database to find similar individuals outside your reach, expanding sponsor engagement and amplifying impact.

Delivering Value for Franchises and Sponsors

Data-driven insights revolutionize corporate partnerships by proving their value. For franchises, it means knowing their audience better and leveraging that understanding to attract new sponsors, strengthen existing relationships, and negotiate higher sponsorship fees. For sponsors, it ensures their investment reaches the right fans, delivering tangible ROI and deepening brand loyalty.

The benefits extend even further. By understanding fan statistics, including the behaviors of niche groups such as female fan engagement, franchises can tailor their offerings to provide even more value to corporate sponsors. Fan engagement directors can use these insights to create more meaningful connections between fans and brands, ensuring that sponsors see measurable results.

When franchises use audience statistics and fan demographics to drive partnerships, everyone wins. Sponsors see measurable results, fans enjoy relevant engagement, and teams unlock new revenue streams. Ready to strengthen your partnerships and maximize sponsor investments? Let’s get started.