Featured Articles

Understanding Your Admin Data with SQWAD

Whether you’re a seasoned SQWAD client or getting ready to launch your first activation, understanding your admin data can help you make strategic decisions around prizing and user engagement and ensure you meet your activation goals! Today, we’ll walk through some SQWAD...

Surviving a Recession in Sports Sponsorship

I’d like to say I’ve had a fair amount of experience in the professional sports and tourism world. But the other day I was reminded that I was graduating high school during the last recession… At that moment my mind jumped back...

The sponsorship economics behind the last recession & how we can learn from it.

As I’ve written about before, I was in college during the 08 recession. I wasn’t yet in the professional world & not yet selling sponsorship. By the time I got into the game, the economy was pretty well recovered and I rode...

Sponsorship post-pandemic is all about re-building habits, old and new.

Humans are creatures of habits. It is extremely hard once we’ve entered a habit to change it. In reverse, it takes a lot for us to build new habits. But there was a pandemic that rewired a lot of our actions as...

Close More Deals By Selling Benefits, Not Features In Sports Sponsorship

“People want a 1/4 inch hole, not a quarter-inch drill.” This quote (paraphrased) sits in the office of Rich Franklin as a reminder that our customers want solutions toward their goals…not the features that get them there. Sometimes we forget this in sponsorship...

Understanding the levels to sports sponsorship and how you can close deals with it.

In sports (and really most other) advertising & sponsorship the more interaction you can build with a consumer, the more valuable our assets can be to brands. In sponsorship, there are levels of value that a single asset will hit. Almost like...

The Great Pivot In Sports…What It Looks Like On The Other Side

There is a great quote from a 19th-century banker Nathan Rothschild that I love and keep coming back to. “Great fortunes are made when the cannonballs are falling in the harbor, not when the violins play in the ballroom.” In sports, cannonballs are...

The Inventory Illusion in Sponsorships

More inventory doesn’t mean more value. It usually means less. For years, sports sponsorship has operated under a quiet assumption: if revenue is the goal, inventory is the answer. Add more signage. Create more assets. Open more placements. Fill more space. On the surface,...

Latest Articles

SQWAD Partnership Announcement: SQWAD’s Interactive Suite Joins Tagboard’s App Marketplace

In the modern sports landscape, fan attention is the ultimate currency. We’ve seen a massive shift toward "playing along" in real-time, highlighted by major leagues leaning into predictive markets and interactive second-screen experiences. Fans don’t...

The Inventory Illusion in Sponsorships

More inventory doesn’t mean more value. It usually means less. For years, sports sponsorship has operated under a quiet assumption: if revenue is the goal, inventory is the answer. Add more signage. Create more assets. Open more...

What Sponsors Should Really Be Buying in Stadiums

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what sponsorships in sports have become...and what they were always meant to be. Not from the perspective of inventory or impressions. Not CPMs, logo counts, or “media...

Finding the Strike Zone Customer: The Art of Focus in Sports Partnerships

There’s a temptation in business—especially in sports sponsorships—to believe that reach is everything. The bigger the audience, the bigger the impact. The more logos, the better. The wider the net, the more fish you’ll catch. But...

Your Sponsorship Activation Needs a Pull Mechanism, or No One Will Care — And You’ll Waste Your Money

“The goal is not to fit in. The goal is to resonate.”— Rick Rubin The Misconception of Attention Most sponsorships start from the wrong place. We assume the audience will care.We assume the logo is enough.We assume that...

Everyone is Creative — A Mindset in Sponsorships

In the world of sports sponsorships, creativity is often boxed into a role: something that belongs to the agency, the graphic designer, or the "creative team." But what if creativity wasn’t a department—it was a mindset? What...

The Imperfection in Sponsorships

In sports, perfection is often the illusion. A perfect record. A flawless play. A pristine image on the jumbotron. But in the realm of sponsorship, where connection matters more than control, perfection can be a liability. It...

The Audience Isn’t the Target in Sponsorships—It’s the Compass

In the high-stakes world of sports sponsorships, where millions are spent on visibility, impressions, and association, a powerful truth often gets lost: fans don't show up for brands. They show up for the love of the...

2025 New Year’s Resoltions for the sponsorship industry

I'm always interested in the exact definitions of the words we use. Sometimes, they can be powerful in understanding the meaning behind the everyday language we use. The definition of the word Resolution is "a firm...