Global Campaigns

Sponsorship outlook 2026: The trends and market forces shaping the year ahead

Regulation, shifting fan behaviour, challenger formats and new market entrants. 2026 is shaping up to be a year of opportunity for brands and rights holders that understand how the marketplace is changing, where budgets are moving and how value is created. The result is a more active but competitive environment. One defined not by fewer deals, but by savvier buyers, greater...

Why IBM’s Wimbledon renewal is the sponsorship all brands should envy

IBM and Wimbledon have just extended their partnership for another multi-year term, taking one of sport’s most enduring commercial relationships beyond 35 years. In an industry obsessed with novelty, few sponsorships survive a single leadership cycle, let alone three decades. Fewer still are renewed because they continue to do exactly what both sides...

Behind closed doors: What sponsors really think about measurement

On 27th November, The Sponsor hosted a Leaders Roundtable debate at the St James’s Club in Mayfair, where senior brand and marketing leaders gathered to tackle one of the industry’s most persistent measurement questions: how do you credibly demonstrate sponsorship returns? The ambition was straightforward. The reality, as anyone in the room will attest, was anything...

Inside Audi F1’s new sponsorship: Exclusive interview with Perk CMO Jada Balster

Audi’s future F1 team has added Perk as its second sponsor, agreeing a multi-year partnership that will see the intelligent travel and spend management platform take a prominent place across the car, team kit and driver helmets once Audi joins the grid. Perk, formerly TravelPerk, recently rebranded to reflect its evolution from a business travel specialist into an...

Has SailGP overtaken F1 as the best client hospitality in sport?

I received a press release this week announcing Blueberry as the latest sponsor of the Australia SailGP Team. On its own, it’s a perfectly solid partnership: a growth-minded financial trading platform aligning with a fast-rising global sports property. But it landed at an interesting moment. In recent weeks, two separate sponsors have told me that SailGP now offers the...
Data driven sposnsorship