Winning with sponsorship: Insight-led strategies for 2026 and beyond

Sponsorship is big business and it’s growing fast. PwC figures estimates global spending is currently rocketing in value from $63.1bn a year in 2021 to $109.1bn by 2030, a 73% increase. With this surge of new investment, though, comes heightened expectations.

Savvy marketers now expect an investment in an event, competition, stadium or team to deliver more than the instant brand fame of being seen by spectators and television audiences. Fans’ expectations around experiences are evolving too. They expect deeper engagement in the sports and teams they love. Marketers realise this provides an opportunity to leverage brand partnerships to build stronger bonds with both engaged fans and the wider general public.

The five sponsorship strategies shaping brand equity in a fast-evolving 2026 landscape

To deliver brand equity improvements through sponsorship deals, there are five key areas brands should be exploring.

1. Amplify Sponsorship Impact with Immersive, Mixed-Reality Experiences

Modern brands build long term growth through forming a more emotional connection with consumers. To do this, many organisations are turning passive spectators into active participants through immersive experiences which builds a more emotional bond that creates positive brand memories.

This can be a physical interaction or it can be an engagement driven by immersive technology. Adidas offers a good example of a face-to-face deeper interaction with a brand, and other fans, with its NBA sponsorship work. It brought the joy of basketball to a London store when challenged in-store customers to see if they could slam dunk like Derrick Rose into a real hoop.

In terms of technology, the immersive VR experience recently launched by Boss as part of its sponsorship of the Aston Martin F1 team. In multiple locations, including London, Paris and Las Vegas, the public can put on a headset and become immersed in the world of F1, guided by Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso. After deciding strategy and solving 3D puzzles, participants get to feel the thrill of taking the car on a test lap. Boss decided on an immersive experience because less than 1% of F1 fans have ever attended a race. VR technology can bridge that gap, allowing the public to get a feel for the excitement of being at the heart of the action while empowering Boss to extend the reach of its team sponsorship.

2. Use Data to Deliver More Personalised, High-Impact Fan Experiences

Businesses know data lies at the heart of understanding customers’ changing tastes and that adapting those insights helps them offer personalised offers. That is why data and sports sponsorship are now synonymous. Rather than merely providing a logo, high tech companies are combining data points to add new ways for fans to get more fully immersed in their favourite sport.

Golf has been a sport to watch in this space, both on screen as well as at tournament courses. WHOOP heart monitors used its deal with the 2025 Ryder Cup to have golfers’ heart rates displayed on screen. Needless to say, it featured heavily on screen and in commentary when a decisive shot was being taken. In the UK, for The Open, NTT Data has been adding a huge amount of extra detail, such as shot trajectory, direction, spin and loft, which is being displayed on fan zone screens as well as online for fans not at the course. Fans are offered a way to delve deeper into each stroke to understand how each player approaches a similar range of challenges on every hole. At the same time, NTT Data is offered a high-profile showcase to demonstrate how its AI and data analysis tools can be used to modernise how an organisation, such as the R&A, interacts with customers.

The company even went so far as to use those tools to collate and compare data points over the past 50 years of the competition to run a virtual tournament. In the Open for the Ages the winner was decided by data as well as a public vote in which more than 10,000 fans revealed their favourite Open competitor of all time. It was an interactive event that tapped into fans’ emotions over the years. It highlighted the power of the brand’s tools to crunch mountains of current and historic data to form meaningful insights for an audience the PGA describes as high net worth, highly educated, business decision makers.

The power of data was taken a step further recently by IBM using its Wimbledon sponsorship to allow, what it calls, ‘cognitive highlights’ to be created automatically. The technology uses AI to pick out great shots and important points, judged by player expressions and crowd noise. Tennis fans can then pick their favourite players and are then offered personalised cognitive highlights automatically built around their preferences.

3. Cultural Partnerships That Deepen Brand Connection and Drive Long-Term Loyalty

Sponsorship is not just about sports. Cultural partnerships empower brands to move beyond marketing to embrace meaning by aligning with the societal values embodied within arts, music and grassroots movements. These associations allow brands to build longer lasting, deeper bonds with consumers by showing they share the same values. These sponsorships spark conversations, building emotional connections that link a brand with consumers who hold a similar set of values

The Pride movement provides a good example. It celebrates LGBQT+ communities around the globe and features regular events, such as Pride Month during June in the UK. The diversity values embodied by the movement are a perfect fit for brands seeking to demonstrate they embrace inclusivity. This support takes on a wide variety of initiatives. Skittles has famously dropped its ‘all the colours of the rainbow’ sweets during Pride Month and produces just one colour to focus attention on the rainbow flag that matters more. LEGO has similarly launched 11 gender neutral mini figures in the colours of the rainbow flag to show its support. Aviva has taken a slightly different approach. It emphasises what it terms ‘a long term’ commitment to the cause through a brightly decorated double decker bus that tours Pride street events across Europe throughout the year.

In arts, The Tate gallery’s long-term relationships with multiple brands provide an opportunity for companies to align with the creativity of the art on display for culture-loving audiences. Louis Vuitton launched its Young Arts Project to encourage disadvantaged youths to express themselves artistically. Hyundai sponsors an annual arts installation at the gallery’s turbine hall and EY sponsors regular exhibitions throughout the year. Each of the many brands partnering with Tate can show art lovers they share their passion for expression and creativity. It also provides a long term, year-round opportunity for each sponsor to reach an affluent audience that enjoys going out and so is more difficult to reach through tv and online advertising.

These are just a small selection of the power of moving beyond sport and backing a movement, a passion, an event that aligns with a company’s corporate values. It allows shared values to resonate and form deeper emotional connections with consumers.

4. Storytelling Drives Emotional Connection and Amplifies Sponsorship Impact

Sponsorship works exceptionally well at engaging fans during a game or tournament. However, brands want to go further by using great storytelling to widen the reach of their partnerships to reach both fans and non-fans. This means going beyond company messaging or product offerings to focus on stories that develop an emotional bond between consumers and a brand.

P&G has done this well with the “Thank You Mum” campaign it has run since its first Olympics Games as a sponsor, Vancouver 2010. The campaigns, which have run alongside each Games since, show athletes talking about their mothers and thanking them for the support that helped them become an Olympian. It builds a connection with audiences that goes beyond sport and cleaning products to build an emotional resonance that no logo and a strapline could ever deliver on its own.

5. Measure the True Brand Impact of Sponsorship with Smart Analytics

Sponsorship requires a significant budget and so brands need to know the impact those huge investments are earning. Sponsorship can be evaluated in multiple ways from awareness to media equivalent value and ROI. At Hall & Partners, we also believe it crucial to measure the true brand impact of sponsorships, as we know that a strong brand is a catalyst for long term growth.

Many brands fail to accurately measure the true brand impact of their sponsorships. Basic aware vs. not aware analysis can produce spurious, biased results impacted by pre-disposition. To overcome this, we use smart Sponsorship Mapping Analytics to isolate and quantify the true brand impact of your sponsorship. Our approach uses smart analytics to control for any pre-disposition and bias (e.g. controlling for customer and demographic differences), helping us measure a more accurate brand impact.

Evaluating the brand impact of sponsorship across a range of brand equity metrics, can help to identify how the sponsorship is shaping brand equity and perceptions, and help guide opportunities for brand and campaign messaging. For example, we evaluated the brand impact of a sports sponsorship for a global financial services company, revealing a positive impact on Emotional Brand Connection and image perceptions linked to societal impact.

Sponsorship success checklist: Five ways to strengthen brand equity

How to use sponsorship to improve brand equity

• Create immersive experiences – explore ways to use technology and face to face events to offer fans and consumers memorable mixed reality experiences
• Bring data to life and personalise – use data to heighten fans’ enjoyment of an event, explore how it can tailor experiences to individual preferences
• Partner with culture – cultural events are a great way to associate a brand with an apt interest or movement and to keep conversations going for months or even years
• Use storytelling to drive emotion – find the human experiences linked with a sponsorship deal and tell those stories across multiple channels
• Measure sponsorship’s impact on brand equity – use smart analytics to isolate and quantify the true impact of your sponsorships on brand equity to measure its ROI and growth potential