VICE is a youth media company. They were advising a Middle Eastern music company on how to become a broader entertainment business with global appeal and needed specialist commercial partnerships expertise to help their client understand how to create sponsorship value.

Strive was appointed to support the client given our proven expertise in creating commercial propositions for rights holders, our experience of working in the music industry, and our track record of working with new events/propositions.

Creating sponsorship value – scope of work

  • Educate the client on the role of sponsorship within brands, and in commercial rights holder best practices
  • Establish a clear positioning for the rights holder’s proposition that demonstrates how they can help brands solve their marketing/commercial problems and help them meet their objectives
  • Recommend a commercial proposition and structure for the music company to adopt, given the parameters, it is working within
  • Develop sponsorship assets/rights and engagement programmes that maximise commercial value
  • Build a master sales narrative and presentation to use as the backbone of new sponsor discussions
  • Provide a go-to-market strategy and plan

Results

Delivered all the elements within an extremely tight timeframe to a client with high expectations. The work was well received with little iteration needed. This enabled the client to go out to market quickly and successfully.

Need help creating sponsorship value?

If you’re looking for advice from an entertainment, sports, esports, or gaming agency, Strive Sponsorship can help. Contact us for marketing, commercial, content, media,  investment, and communications consultancy services.

Frequently asked questions

How is sponsorship value calculated?

Each company has a different methodology for calculating sponsorship value. All valuations are routed in tangible (e.g. cost of an advert) and intangible (e.g. value of being associated with a prominent brand) values. However, the amount attributed to each value will differ, as will all the elements identified as value by the valuation agency.  There is no better rate than the market rate i.e. what a buyer will pay. This requires a to-and-fro process to establish.

What is value-in-kind sponsorship?

Value-in-kind (VIK), also known as contra, is the substitution of a product or service in place of a sponsorship ‘cash’ payment e.g. instead of paying £10,000 to Wimbledon, Evian may provide £10,000 worth of Evian water for players to use. The benefit to a brand of doing this is both that their product is integrated into the sponsorship and that the actual cost to them could be lower than the value to the rights holder. Normally the product is marked at a price that is lower than the rights holder can buy it at, meaning they benefit financially too.

How do you determine if a sponsorship is worth it?

Value is specific to the parties involved. Value to one brand/rights holder won’t make sense to another. Ultimately it comes down to how well a partnership can help you achieve your objectives and if it offers a better solution to the alternatives available. This isn’t just a financial consideration (e.g. is it cheaper than the alternative), but if it delivers better outcomes across all key criteria.