caytoo’s analyst team reveals their Top 5 sponsorship deals in March in terms of the ideas they provide for other rights holders

Our Top 5, in no particular order, aren’t necessarily the biggest or most high-profile. Each one has been selected as it represents best practice for other rights holders and brands or an important lesson it provides rights holders.

Making the most of rights access: Princess Cruises x Sydney Swans

This renewal sees Aussie Rules football team the Sydney Swans provide access to the team’s players and staff to sponsor Princess Cruises who will join the club’s fans on a special three-day cruise.

It’s part of an overall initiative to design immersive and unique experiences that really resonate with the club’s members and fans. The cruise includes a special Q&A panel and Swans’ members have access to a special discount.

This shows what can be done to engage sponsors (and in turn how sponsors can engage fans) when a rights holder makes the most of available rights access.

Lesson: ideate how you can go above and beyond in providing unique rights that can be used to engage potential sponsors with a compelling pitch that involves ideas about how they can really interact with your fanbase.

Innovatively targeting overlooked category:
Kings Features x Sport Lisboa e Benfica

This makes it into our top sponsorship deals in March for a few reasons.

King Features, a unit of publishing giant Hearst, provides content (such as  columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games) to newspapers around the world. It also creates franchises out of legacy entertainment and consumer goods properties and licenses the intellectual rights to other companies who may produce merchandise around those properties.

Publishing or licensing brands don’t do many sponsorships so this deal between Kings Features and Portuguese soccer team Sport Lisboa e Benfica is a great example of not targeting the usual categories favoured by rights holders.

It’s also involves a very interesting, creative and unique activation. One of Kings’ brands is cartoon franchise Popeye the Sailor Man, who has become the club’s official character along with his girlfriend Olive Oyl.

Activations include Popeye and Olive Oyl costumes debuting at Benfica’s sporting events and a co-branded line of clothing and accessories.

The parties have also had a good stab at ‘reverse-engineering’ the brand fit between a cartoon character and a soccer team: “strength and health [as well as] shared values of fitness, determination and resilience.”

It’s also nice timing: the partnership aligns with Popeye’s 95th anniversary and as the United States gears up to host the World Cup in 2026.

Lesson: think differently when it comes to targeting companies outside the most popular sponsor categories, particularly if you can pitch brands with novel ideas around selling product, values alignment and timing.

Meeting a specific business objective: Visit Maldives x Mumbai Indians

In 2023, a diplomatic row between India and the Maldives led to a noticeable dip in Indian tourist arrivals, pushing India to the sixth spot among Maldives’ tourism markets.

Since then the country’s tourism board has launched a concerted campaign to attract Indian travellers back and reclaim India as one of its top three tourism source markets.

The specific target is to get back to attracting over 200,000 annual Indian visitors that it did before the row.

To help achieve this, Visit Maldives sponsored one of India’s most successful and valuable cricket teams, the Mumbai Indians. A number of the players are the among the national team’s most celebrated stars – including a couple of captains – so it adds to the trust and credibility levels associated with the sponsor.

Lesson: monitor the news agenda to identify specific business targets so that you can approach relevant brands with a better understanding and idea about how you can help them meet these targets.

Ground-breaking deal to break stigmas: Snuggs x Manchester City Women

This makes it into our top sponsorship deals in March not only because its the first-of-its-kind deal featuring a period underwear brand but also that it’s compelling to the sponsor because it addresses a much wider societal problem that needs addressing.

Research from Nuffield Health suggested that 84% of girls quit sport after their first period. So Snuggs and Manchester City Women’s team have joined up to tackle the stigma surrounding periods in sports and to pave the way for a more supportive environment for young girls and female athletes through various activations. These include:

1. A co-branded collection of high-performance period underwear in Manchester City’s iconic colourways
2. The launch is backed by a bold campaign featuring player Alex Greenwood, who has also joined Snuggs as an official ambassador
3. Creating a Girl’s Academy Period Programme to engage and educate the next generation of players
4. Committed to donating period underwear to Girls Academy players to ensure they have the resources and backing needed to focus on their training

Lesson: caytoo is all about helping identify signals relating to a specific company, however, if you can identify one relating to an entire demographic or country, it gives you a whole group of brands to go after that can help address that issue through the nature of their product/service. Also, see January’s example of the protein gap in India.

Overcoming fan naming rights objections: West Home Shore x Penn State

Stadium naming rights are contentious due to the fallout among fans who object to their home being given a corporate makeover.

US university Penn State University and home improvement firm West Shore Home have tackled this in an ingenious way.  They agreed a $50 million 15-year naming rights deal to their stadium BUT it will actually keep its name (Beaver Field).

Instead the playing surface (i.e. the pitch) will get the rename. So, it will officially be designated “West Shore Home Field at Beaver Stadium“

The quote provided by the university’s athletic director Pat Kraft neatly and deftly sums up how the deal bridges the difficult gap between the financial reality of modern sport and honouring fan-important traditions:

“B.J. Werzyn (the firm’s owner) understands the critical role that Beaver Stadium plays in our community, as well as the importance of preserving the great traditions of Penn State while helping us build a strong future.”

It certainly makes it an easier ‘sell’ to fans because (a) the stadium keeps its name (b) the company is local, being founded and based in the state, and (c) the owner previously attended the university. It subtly says to fans that this financially-beneficial decision is down to ‘one of their own.’

Lesson: can you assign naming rights to a crucial element of your venue rather than the whole place – and start local if you can!

Summary

All these sponsorship deals in March provide an example of the great utility sponsorship provides which all rights holders and brands can look to emulate to benefit both parties. This is particularly the case for rights holders who can come up with their own version to spark a conversation with potential sponsors.