- The six Ps of sponsorship strategy: Passion, People, Participation, Purpose, Partnership and Profit provide a framework for building stronger, more effective sponsorship relationships.
- Authentic fan engagement drives purchase intent: Nielsen research cited in the article indicates that fans who believe a brand genuinely cares about their team show 67% purchase intent, compared with 54% for brands perceived as logo-focused.
- Sports audiences are more diverse than brands assume: Brand Finance figures cited in the article indicate that women account for 53% of cricket and rugby fans in South Africa, challenging traditional assumptions about sports audiences.
- Participation creates stronger sponsorship engagement: Deloitte research cited in the article suggests that sponsorships enabling fan participation achieve engagement of around 80%, compared with 40% for more passive approaches.
- Long-term partnerships improve sponsorship value: Effective sponsorship goes beyond logo placement to shared investment, audience experiences and brand building. Gartner research cited in the article indicates that 84% of CMOs struggle to prove sponsorship ROI, highlighting the need for better measurement over time. *
Remember when Facebook made everyone publicly declare where their relationship actually stood? Single. Dating. In a Relationship. And then, for anyone not ready to commit to an answer: It’s Complicated.
For most of the last decade, that’s basically been sponsorship’s status too. A logo near a jersey. A cheque exchanged for proximity. Brands showing up, audiences noticing, nobody quite agreeing on what any of it meant, or whether it was working.
Getting to “in a relationship” means working through six stages, same as any relationship does. Call them the six P’s: Passion, People, Participation, Purpose, Partnership and Profit. Here’s the whole status update, stage by stage.
Passion: The spark
The fan brings the passion. It was there long before any logo turned up near their team, and it’ll be there long after the sponsorship ends too. A brand’s real job is simply matching that energy.
You can tell inside four seconds who’s matching it and who’s faking it. The faking version is the son-in-law laughing a little too hard at a joke that wasn’t funny, hoping enthusiasm passes for actually caring. Everyone at the table clocks it, and fans clock it in brands just as fast.
Nielsen’s numbers back the instinct up: fans who believe a brand genuinely cares about their team show 67% purchase intent, against 54% for one that’s clearly just there for the logo. Thirteen points, for showing up like you mean it.
People: Getting to know each other
Once the spark’s real, the next move in any relationship is getting to know the person actually standing in front of you. Sponsorship’s version of that mistake is still picturing one guy in a replica jersey with strong opinions about the ref.
Brand Finance’s numbers say otherwise: 53% of cricket and rugby fans in South Africa are women. If that’s not who comes to mind when you picture “the fans,” you’re dating a memory.
Participation: Doing things together
Getting to know someone is step one. Doing something together is step two, and it’s the step most sponsorships quietly skip.
Nobody in the history of romance has ever fallen for someone by watching them eat dinner alone. Closeness comes from doing something together, and Deloitte’s research shows the same pattern in sponsorship: brands that let fans participate see engagement running at around 80%, against 40% for the ones still just handing out wristbands at the gate.
Move beyond just letting fans spectate and actually get them to play. They will remember the brand that brought them into the game a lot longer than the one that ran the ad break during half time.
Purpose: Do we believe the same things?
Every relationship eventually has the values conversation. Sponsorship’s version runs the background check live, on social media, with receipts attached.
Fans want brands that actually believe in the causes they sponsor, not just show up for the photo. Purpose-led sponsorship took off because of that. But 2026 also gave us a word for when brands fake it: purpose-washing. It’s the brand equivalent of someone telling you on the first date how important their health is to them, then lighting a cigarette the second dinner’s over. Fans spot that gap from a mile away.
Partnership: Moving in together
Get the values right, and the next stage is moving in together properly: shared risk, shared lease, actually building something.
That’s the shift happening in sponsorship right now. The old model sounded like landlord and tenant: rights fee in, logo out, see you next season if it went well. The new model sounds more like co-founders. IBM and The Masters are the clearest version of this.
IBM doesn’t just put a logo on a banner, it builds the tournament’s entire digital experience year-round, the scoring technology, the app, the AI-driven insights fans actually use.
The Masters gets a better product for its audience. IBM gets to prove exactly what its technology can do, live, on one of the most-watched stages in sport. Neither one’s doing the other a favour. They’re just actually building something together.
So, where does this leave us? Profit
Which leaves the question everyone wants answered on day one and can only honestly answer further down the line in the relationship: was this actually worth it? Gartner found 84% of CMOs struggle to prove sponsorship ROI, and WARC’s research shows sponsorship’s brand-building effect outweighs its direct sales effect by roughly five to one.
You can’t measure love on the first date. You measure it over time, in someone who keeps showing up. Sponsorship works the same way: the proof shows up later, once enough time’s passed to actually trust it, and only if you knew what to look for before you went looking.
So, where does most South African sponsorship actually sit right now? Mostly in the liking-a-few-posts phase, sliding into the DMs every renewal season, technically together, but nobody quite sure if it’s actually working.
Getting out of that status takes the six P’s, done properly, one stage at a time. That’s the work that gets a brand all the way to the status it actually wants: not just seen together, but officially in a relationship.
* Summary created by AI
Sean Bracegirdle is a senior strategist at Levergy.
