Communications teams rightly play an ever-greater role in sponsorships. From proposing partners to setting strategy; from controlling announcements to crafting key campaigns and reacting to unpredictable moments – the role of earned storytelling has immense importance to cut through, connect emotionally in culture and drive commercial impact.  

With the agreement aligned, the executives excited and internal teams drawn ever closer to your new sport sponsorship, here are seven steps to planning communications success.

1. Treat fans with the care they deserve

Your brand is now communicating to an audience via something they love, through the topics they are most passionate about, amongst habits engrained since childhood and alongside rituals bordering on the religious.

It is their precious escapism, so you need to enter the field of play with care and remember your role. Feel the roar of a crowd, read the reddit forums and listen to the podcasts.

Remember they are there to support, to enjoy their passion and to escape. And they will likely be there longer than any brand.

You must understand the emotional behaviours of the audience as fans rather than a consumer archetype, and your communications should not interrupt the culture around their fandom.

Find your authentic role in culture, stay out of the way of the action and ask yourself if you can enhance fan enjoyment and entertainment.

1. Build with your partner

You are no longer communicating from your brand directly to a consumer, and this may be a step change for the brand and business.

As such, it pays to truly consider the views, ambitions and overlaps you share with your partner’s communications plans. 

For some this may be simpler or more natural than others, but whichever way you get there, find that common ground. The greater the alignment and the stronger the shared purpose, the better chance you have of going beyond badging and unearthing deeper emotional connections.

This is not to say you should do their job for them – or stumble into that other major pitfall of acting like the rights holder – but if your communications share some DNA it will work harder.

If you supplement this by taking the time to build strong interpersonal relationships with the partner, you may just find you can unlock mutually beneficial opportunities beyond the rights list.

1. Flex your brand communications campaign

This communication strand needs to exist as part of your overall brand communications strategy.

Some sponsorships can slide right in without too much tweaking, but however well-aligned, there will need to be a platform that complements your brand to consumer campaign but is adapted to the context of your sport.

As with any communications strategy, all your activations need to ladder back to this.

Whilst sport sponsorships have the ability to flex and stretch across a range of your communications and initiatives, it is tempting to view it as a panacea.

Crowbar it too widely at your peril; it will lose its edge.

Stay focused. Stick to your strategy and keep it simple, as by its very nature there are already additional layers to your communications. 

1. You’re not the first or only brand in sport

Yes, you should hype the partnership internally. Yes, you should feel empowered by the unique potential it has. Yes, you should set your ambitions on achieving the iconic. But it also pays to take a reality check.

Whilst this can sound defeatist or uninspiring, it can be one of the earned communications team’s trump cards. As the experts on third-party storytellers and connecting with influence, the ability to remind everyone that the real world out there may have a different lens is no bad thing.

Being humble enough to know that you are not the only brand operating in the space whilst retaining huge ambition will enable you to find an ownable space that is truly unique, to leapfrog the well-trodden low-hanging fruit and execute in a way that feels new and delivers.

1. Timing is key – go early and stay ready

Sport is unpredictable and does not always go to plan. The underdog wins, the champion can be floored and a new talent can burst on the scene. This is why we love it, but this also means the team or player you are sponsoring may be misfiring or injured by the time you come to talk about them.

So, do consider that the period before a ball is kicked, a race is run or a game played is when anything is possible. Time your communications so that they land when anticipation, hope and optimism are running high, whilst being close enough to the action to be relevant to the agenda.

Secondly, when the action starts it will be harder to cut-through as a brand, the action becomes the story, but there is still opportunity. You need to have a process in place that enables you to react at the speed of the action to capitalize quickly and be part of the conversation where relevant.

As with a lot of sports skills, it's often all in the timing. Combining earned, reactive activations with paid and partner support will only enhance the potential of cutting through. 

1. Creativity as a differentiator

Sport sponsorship rights such as branding on the sidelines, access to athletes and hospitality hosting all have their role, but to deliver emotional connection and cut through to shift brand metrics it will come down to how you apply creativity to them. This is where creative communications executions can set your brand aside.

Partnership announcements are a great example of this. Too often it’s a group of middle-aged, C-suite men in a boardroom with pen poised whilst espousing the power of the sponsorship to communicate with Gen Z, when with a little thought you can step above this and deliver cut-through and ROI from the start.

In a world increasingly driven by data-led decision-making and AI models, creativity in how this is interpreted into innovation and ideas will be an ever-greater commercial differentiator for communications around sport sponsorships.

1. Expand your storytellers

Your sport sponsorship may open your brand to a new group of influencers, content creators, journalists, talent (including athletes as influencers) and storytellers. Lean in.

Integrate your storytelling. The more lifting you can do in-line with your colleagues in other marketing disciplines, and the oft-overlooked internal audience, the better chance you have of cutting through.

Whilst your core advocates should be brought along and potentially into the sport, redefining the third parties you need to connect with and not being afraid to build new relationships is key.

After all, you are taking the sport sponsorship to connect with an audience, so invest the time in developing rich relationships; they will pay off in the long run.

In summary, these are just seven steps to keep in mind when taking those first steps or revisiting how to develop your communications strategy around a sports property. Each business will have its own unique set of circumstances and ambitions, the main mantra to remember is, like sport, you get out what you put in. Prepare well and play hard – and that cut-through and ROI will be more achievable.