caytoo analysed nearly 290 sponsors across 50 world sport federations and competitions to reveal which sectors are the most common sports organisations sponsors and where the gaps are for rights holders to exploit.

Consumer Goods is the most dominate sector when it comes to sports organisations sponsors  – accounting for 21%. This is driven by Clothing/Apparel manufacturers, particularly footwear-led brands, and watch brands, the latter being strongly associated with sport due to the importance of timing.

Consumer Goods is followed by Food & Beverage (10%) and Automotive (9%). Food & Beverage’s prevalence is driven by Alcohol and Soft Drinks while Automotive is led by car and tyre manufacturers.

In terms of the gaps to exploit, the key hypothesis of a gap analysis is that a rights holder should prioritise targeting sectors that are (a) the most likely to sponsor your competitors but in which (b) you don’t currently have a sponsor.

Thus, the most opportune sectors for rights holders to target for potential sponsorships are Clothing/Apparel manufacturers, watch brands, car manufacturers and logistics providers as these sponsor the most entities, yet at least 58% of the rights holders covered don’t have a sponsor in these sectors.

Most dominant and over-indexing of sports organisations sponsors

In terms of sectors that have the biggest share of deals in particular sporting groupings: Consumer Goods account for 38% of sponsors in Equipment sports (such as cycling, archery and skate sports) – compared to the 21% the sector accounts for across all sports.  This is also the case in Watersports (36%), Athletics/Exercise and Equestrian sports (both 33%).

When it comes to over-indexing (how a sector performs in a particular sporting grouping compared to the average), the most pronounced of these is Travel & Tourism among Equestrian sports organisations sponsors (an index of 600). In other words, T&T accounts for 6x the share of sponsors in Equestrian (33%) than it does across all sectors (5.5%).

This is followed by Consumer Services in Esports (31% vs 6.25% overall) at an index of 492.

Most common sports organisations sponsors

There is relatively little duplication of individual sponsor companies: 244 companies account for the 288 sponsors covered in the report, with 215 companies only sponsoring one entity and only 29 sponsoring more than one. This shows there’s plenty of opportunity for rights holders to target sponsors of other entities.

Two of the three most prevalent sponsors are watch brands – Tissot (5 sponsorships) and Rolex (4) – alongside DHL (4). A further eight companies sponsor three rights holders each.