July 2016
Sponsorship
19
Sponsorship trends
from Slingshot:
1. Sponsorship spend will continue to
surpass advertising spend. Forecasts
by GroupM project advertising spending to
increase by 3.8% while sponsorship spend
is set to increase by 4.1%.
2. People will continue to talk about
engagement, but not truly deliver it.
Attend a sponsorship conference and you
are likely to hear ‘engagement’ being the key
point of discussion; however, the activation
strategies continue to remain the same.
Just because you call something engaging,
doesn’t mean it actually is.
3. Growth in non-sport sponsorship
markets. We have seen a new appetite for
commercial innovation among governments
and venues. This is exciting when compared
to basic naming rights deals – allowing
significant creative impact to make a real
difference. This is the year that naming rights
will take on an entirely new meaning.
4. Online will become more prominent
with spend complementing onsite
sponsorship activation. Online
sponsorship is becoming more robust
and clients have become more educated
on how this drives brand ROI. Slingshot
recently partnered with technology ticketing
firm Billetto to introduce this concept across
events in the UK and Europe.
5. Brands take on the challenge of
becoming rights holders. I find this quite
exciting – brands revolutionising the space,
creating events themselves, and securing
brand sponsorship to fund their acti