2025 Unwrapped: 12 Sponsorship Trends to Watch for in New Year
- December 20, 2024
- SponsorPulse Staff
Over the last few weeks, we’ve unwrapped the 🎁 12 Sponsorship Trends to Watch for in 2025 🎁 - your exclusive preview of what's coming in the world of sponsorship, fan engagement, and brand activation. From innovative strategies to emerging opportunities, we’ll be diving deep into the trends that will shape the future of sports marketing. Here's a deeper dive into each trend:
1. Connecting with foreign born and newcomer audiences
As brands continue to refine their marketing approach to these growth segments, we will see further emphasis on connecting with foreign born and newcomer audiences. While the NFL in the US and NHL in Canada are dominant leagues across almost every demographic segment, the FIFA World Cup is already bigger than the NHL (in Canada) and comparable in size to the NFL (in the US) among this high value and important target. How will brand investments shift? Will they go deeper than just looking at soccer and look at other alternative properties.
How will brands balance their presence with global sports properties, which offer established fandom in these audiences (namely soccer & cricket), versus connecting with these consumers as they onboard into domestic leagues or alternative sports gaining momentum? The evolution will cross passion points into music and lifestyle events that are diverse in theme and nature.
2. The battle for North American soccer fans is heating up ahead of FIFA 2026
The Premier League’s Summer Series and recently launched You’re in it now campaign paired with LaLiga’s announcement of “El Partidazo”launching a series of activations across North America, are a sign of what’s to come as international football leagues vie to build fandom across North America.
How will this focused effort pay off for international leagues, and how will local leagues including Major League Soccer, National Women’s Soccer League, Canadian Premier League, and the forthcoming Northern Super League respond? Is soccer becoming too fragmented, or is it more-the-merrier for the world’s most popular sport? Time will tell.
3. Sponsorships measurement will evolve to include impact on employee retention and satisfaction
The post-covid work era has seen some employers offer ultimate flexibility with work-from-anywhere mandates, while others demand in-person attendance. In either case, most employers have an employee engagement challenge. According to Gallup, the US hit an 11-year low in employee engagement in 2024…and the US result is 10+ pts higher than that of Canada.
The good news is that sponsorship is a significant driver of employee attraction, favorability, pride, and retention. This is particularly true for charitable partnerships, that on average deliver the following benefits to partners:
Brands will start to place a greater emphasis on activating internally with employees, while beginning to measure awareness and impact of their sponsorships internally to ensure they’re maximizing the full benefit of those investments.
4. Entertainment brands will accelerate monetization through sponsorship
More than 1 in 5 North Americans do not engage with any sport league or team and that’s a sizeable market that brands are still looking to connect with. There’s a growing emphasis on pairing entertainment with sport to drive reach and relevance.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen entertainment properties get more involved in the world of sponsorship. Whether it was Deadpool’s partnership with KraftHeinz, Marvel’s partnership with Coca-Cola or MLS, Barbie’s 100+ brand partnerships, Star Wars partnering with the Los Angeles Kings for a themed night, Tim Hortons partnering with Justin Bieber or its owned musical, these are just a few indications of where the market is heading.
Entertainment properties are still largely untapped, yet offer mass reach, a passionate audience, and significant potential for impact. We’ll see more of these in 2025, and from organizations who own major IP…think Paw Patrol and the pet food category.
5. Momentum for cricket will be tested
While a flurry of brands have placed a bet on the growth of cricket, be it Cognizant sponsoring Major League Cricket, or TD Bank and Coca-Cola striking deals with Cricket Canada, the pace of its growth will be tested in 2025.
Working in its favor is a passionate audience, growing participation, and the forthcoming reentry to the Olympics in LA 2028, but will it be able to breakthrough the noise around the corner or will its momentum stagnate until it can claim some air. Will the sport find an audience beyond those with roots in cricket-loving nations, and capture share of attention with those who haven’t grown up with the sport?
6. Women’s sports on the rise, commercial commitment and progress will be tested
Progress is the name of the game, and there’s been lots of it across the world of women’s sport. In Canada alone, we’ve seen the PWHL take flight, Northern Super League prepare to hit the pitch, a new W team coming to Toronto, and a recent announcement of a new professional women’s baseball league in the past 12 months. We believe the leagues, teams, and tournaments who take a more conservative let’s grow together approach will be the ones who thrive long-term.
Women’s sports have proven to deliver strong conversion to impact on favorability and purchase intent for brands getting into the game. While average sponsor awareness lags men’s sports, a continued focus on improving visibility and exposure highlights upside for brands getting in now.
The sponsorship industry continues to be plagued with outlandish valuations, and although there’s nothing wrong shooting your shot to maximize revenue, selling at inflated valuations creates a whiplash when renewal seasons comes. Anyone remember the flurry of investment into esports?
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7. IP Rights, Media Value Banks, and Rightsholder premiums will come under fire
The old school mentality of selling based on what you think you can get is going out of style. While some rightsholders may continue to get away with charging premiums, including line items in deals with outrageous dollar figures tied to IP rights, and offering assets like ‘media banks’ without commitments, the market is shifting. Just because an entity can deliver tens of millions of dollars in media value, does not warrant that is a wise investment for a brand to make.
The tightening of brand budgets paired with a greater focus on getting value to investment and a positive return will force some uncomfortable renewals for those unprepared. Here’s a fresh take. What if the deal value was based on the rightsholder’s fan base and potential to drive sponsor impact? What if then you could build a package of assets to a mutually agreeable value? What if part of a brand’s investment was tied to mutually agreed performance kickers? Seem like pretty reasonable concepts…that’s why they’ll continue gaining momentum in 2025.
8. Charitable sponsorships will see a lift in the market
Consumer data continues to support that activating with a leading charity produces some of the strongest results in sponsorship marketing. Let’s look at two unique examples in MS Canada and A&Ws Burgers to Beat MS, and Special Olympics Canada and Tim Hortons Donut Day, both initiatives driving best-in-class sponsorship impact.
While it may take a brand’s commitment to activate to ensure that the partnership gets much needed visibility, the payback is clear. These partnerships allow brands to do good, build brand equity, drive meaningful consumer outcomes – win, win, win.
9. Exclusivities will continue to fade, forcing an important question on sponsor impact
oWe’ve started to see leagues and teams adopt the non-exclusive model of going-to-market. The general idea being that more partners per category can deliver incremental revenue; however, this can also come at a cost. Of course, there’s the cost of delivery, execution, and partnership management, but there’s also the cost of whether brands will realize the full benefit of the sponsorship.
In a recent study, we measured several partners within the same category for a sport team that has gone non-exclusive, and then compared those results to the previous year when it was in an exclusive environment. While it’s early, the results highlight that sponsor awareness is being diluted across the category.
10. Music will lean deeper into money-can’t (but, really it can)-experiences
Anyone else notice that the average concert ticket price seems to have skyrocketed in recent years? We're not just talking about the price of a ticket to the highest-grossing tour in history – Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. We're also talking about a concert for an up-and-coming band that used to run you a $20 dollar bill, but now with taxes and fees is approaching four of those.
In 2023, 1 in 2 North American consumers stated that they attended a concert recently, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Concerts appear to be one of those things that are so deeply rooted to an individual that price sensitivity exits stage left. We anticipate that brands and music festival and concert organizers will dig deeper into activations that provide access to events and artists.
11. The pickleball and padel hype will boom or bust
Now we don’t want to get into a debate over the growth of pickleball and padel across the globe. The data suggests that more consumers are participating in these sports, and there’s no doubt there’s an intense passion for these sports. That said, the jury remains out on whether these sports have real commercial viability as entertainment properties.
At some point in the past year, a publisher referenced that pickleball would become bigger than the NHL in the US…let’s just sit with that for a second. Sure, it’s possible, but the NHLs fan base is 37MM+ people stronger in the US today, so we’re just saying let’s be reasonable in our projections.
We’ve seen brands like Partake Brewing – perfectly fit for the space – strike up strategic partnerships, but will these leagues be able to build commercial models that demand major premiums from brands around the globe?
12. The power of celebrity goes to the next level
From micro-influencers to global celebrities, the world of influencer marketing has taken off. The industry is expected to grow to $24B this year, and that growth stems from its ability to drive reach and impact – often at more affordable price points to major sponsorship deals.
Being able to pair media metrics with consumer awareness, likeability, and potential to impact metrics provides a holistic picture of the opportunity that awaits brands in the celebrity endorsement space. A recent study showed just how strong some of the US Olympic athletes were coming off Paris 2024.
🏆 Paris 2024 Sponsorship Outcomes & Celebrity
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We're diving deeper into the 12 Top Sponsorship Trends shaping 2025 in an exclusive webinar hosted by SponsorPulse's Adam Mitchell and Neal Covant on January 28th at 1pm EST.
Join us to take a deeper look at what's coming in the world of sponsorship and gain actionable insights to stay ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving landscape. ⬇️
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