Signing the sponsor is the easy part

The fee was never the whole bill

For years the rule of thumb was that a brand should spend at least as much bringing a deal to life as it paid for the rights. In 2017, sponsors were comfortably clearing that bar: respondents to the IEG/ESP Properties Sponsorship Decision-Makers Survey reported spending an average of $2.20 on activation for every $1 of rights fees, the highest ratio in the survey's history.

More recent research suggests the discipline has slipped. In a 2023 study by the WFA and Lumency, 43% of brands said they didn't know what they were spending on activation, and almost as many (39%) were spending less on activation than on the rights themselves. Just 5% felt very confident their sponsorship portfolio was reaching the right audience, and most spent 1% or less of their sponsorship budget on measuring impact.

Now look at it from the rights holder's side. If a partner can't say what it spends bringing the deal to life, it can't say what the deal gave back either, so at renewal the only number on the table is the fee. That's usually when budgets get cut.

If a sponsor can't measure what it did with the deal, all it'll remember at renewal is the invoice.

What fans do when activation works

Getting it right pays off. Event Marketer's EventTrack 2026 research, drawn from more than 1,000 marketers and event attendees, found that 61% of consumers are more inclined to purchase after an event.

Live settings also change how people feel about the brands around them. When AEG Global Partnerships surveyed fans at BST Hyde Park in London, brands that fans recalled on site saw an average trust uplift of 36%. Perception of those brands as 'exciting and fun' rose by 61%, and the view that they were 'different from other brands' rose by 51%. AEG's wider Live Effect research found that 49% of fans have made a purchase decision based on a brand's association with a live event, rising to 73% among Gen Z. Pitching to a brand that wants younger fans? That last figure belongs on page one of your proposal.

The word doing the heavy lifting here is 'recalled'. A logo on a perimeter board gets seen, but a useful service, a moment of fun or a reward gets remembered, and activation is the difference. So the activation plan is part of what a rights holder sells, and leaving it to the sponsor's agency means giving away the part fans actually notice. Which ideas make the cut should come down to what your fans respond to, and that means knowing them properly.

Why the plan belongs in the proposal

Most sponsorship proposals list inventory: boards, shirts, hospitality, social posts. Very few show the sponsor what it'll do with any of it, what that will cost or how anyone will know it worked. If I could change one thing, I'd have the activation plan written before signature. The partner sees the full budget it needs, both sides get a baseline, and it's much harder for the deal to drift into a logo-only arrangement by month six. A sponsor that's already pictured the activation is buying an outcome rather than a list of assets.