Funds are essential in the management of every sport team at all levels, some of the common ways of acquiring funds by local sport team are by individual donations, payments of team and membership dues, selling game tickets and seeking financial supports from notable members of the community. Another effective way of generating funds for a local team is to get sponsors. Every team either at the grassroot level, local level, state level or international level requires some degree of sponsorship, and this can come from local business organisations or international companies. Donations by sponsors might not always be monetary, it could be in goods or material forms, some sponsors may donate food items and refreshments after games, other bodies may offer sponsorship in form of services.
Many articles online and in the newspapers would describe how to attract sponsors to your local teams, but only very few of them would explain how to keep and retain this available sponsors, this is the purpose of this particular article. Sponsors are not only in the giving business, they usually require something in return because sponsorships are mostly marketing investments. Sponsorship are offered to gain publicity, to create awareness about a particular brand of good or service that the company offers( thereby increasing their sales and profits) and to increase customers loyalty. Local teams can help to increase their sponsors publicity by wearing their names and logos on their jerseys and banners. Soccer team banners contain sponsors names and logos can be made by local soccer teams to aid publicity of their sponsors, basketball team banners could be made, baseball banners, softball banners, almost every kind of sport that are played locally can offer some level of publicity and can gain and retain sponsorship, it is left to the team to show their potential sponsors how partnering their team would improve their businesses.
As stated above, the major thing that a local team can really offer a sponsor is effective publicity. Without this, the sponsorship packages may be withdrawn or terminated by the sponsors. So how can these local teams market their sponsors? Creating sport team banners by this local teams is an effective way to to do this, banners of different shapes and sizes ranging from the pocket size banners to the big billboards are made by the management of the team and sold to their fans or they could be displayed in their stadium. This banners would contain the names or the logo of these sponsors, some banners would even contain the product or service that the sponsor company renders for example, a sponsor that just introduced a new beverage into the market would require the team to wear that particular brand alongside their name or logos. The club fans and supporters are essential in the publicity of this sponsors, they could either contribute directly by purchasing products and services from this sponsors or they could contribute indirectly by carrying this sport team’s banners around most especially during away games hence aiding effective publicity.
Creating sport team banners serve purposes other than creating publicity for sponsors, it helps the team get extra funding through purchases by fans. Sport team banners are also an effective means for boasting the team spirit of the local side, the sale and the use of sport team banners would improve the teams performance and help them play better in their competitions.
Printing sponsors logos and names on the game tickets is also an effective way of creating publicity. Effective publicity of a sponsor would open the team to other sponsorship from other companies and businesses thus, increasing the team’s income and revenues.