Esports Scotland promotes grassroots participation in esports, owns and runs events, manages national teams, and engages the Scottish esports community ongoing. Having established a national infrastructure they were keen to better understand, articulate and realise their commercial value and improve the skills and knowledge of their team so this could be delivered. They engaged Strive to deliver a sponsorship workshop to their partnership team to arm them with all the knowledge, tools, and techniques needed to attract brand sponsors.
Sponsorship workshop / Strive’s scope of work
- Deliver a workshop to help the team understand:
- The key elements in building commercial value
- How to increase and monetise the audience
- How to increase the commercial value
- How to better articulate the opportunity to maximise chances of success and commercial returns
- Recommend potential commercial propositions and partnership structures
- Develop assets and engagement programmes of value to existing, and potential, partners
Results
Overwhelmingly positive feedback on learnings gleaned. These are now being put into practice in live commercial discussions and have reaped some early rewards with a few new partners acquired. Future support will be provided once funding comes through.
Client comment
The commercial framework and strategy that Strive provided in the sponsorship workshop will be a key factor in delivering value for our existing Lenovo and IRN-BRU partnerships, whilst also helping us better explain the opportunity to potential new sponsors. Malph’s knowledge, passion and deep understanding of the sponsorship industry is second to none.
Looking for a sponsorship workshop?
If you’re looking for advice from an esports or gaming agency, Strive Sponsorship can help. Contact us for sponsorship, marketing, commercial, content, media, investment, and communications consultancy services.
Frequently asked questions
How do I create a sponsorship program?
The starting point in the building of any sponsorship program is to establish clear and measurable objectives, clearly identify and understand your target audience(s), and build a distinct brand identity applied consistently across all touchpoints that appeal to your target audience(s).
Using this as a basis you can create an investable proposition that features valuable assets that brands will want to pay for to use in their marketing. Combining these assets into engagement programmes valued by your target audience will drive value higher, both for you and prospective brand partners.
To make the opportunity understandable and attractive, pull together a clear and simple sales narrative.
How do you run a sponsorship?
If you’re working on the brand/sponsor side it’s about using sponsorship assets as catalysts for your existing marketing activity. It’s important the sponsorship lives outside of the sponsorship team and is understood and valued across marketing functions (e.g. PR, events, loyalty, CRM, advertising etc) so that they use the assets within their campaigns. Therefore communicating the value the sponsorship could bring to helping colleagues meet their objectives is key. Sponsorship shouldn’t just be leveraged by the sponsorship team.
How much money do you need to be a sponsor?
Technically, none. Some sponsorships are value-in-kind (VIK) / contra deals. Instead of using money, you can use products, services, or indeed marketing-in-kind. However, it’s advisable to have the budget available to spend on activating the sponsorship i.e. leveraging the sponsorship assets you’ve acquired as part of your marketing activity.
For context, however, sponsorships usually range from tens of thousands of pounds to tens of millions.
