A global look at sponsorship deal trends and lessons across Q3 2025 for anyone selling sponsorship or the insights teams that support them

caytoo analysed over 15,600 sponsorship deals signed around the world since the start of 2023 to see the latest trends around who’s spending, where and why across the third quarter of 2025 – and what organisations selling sponsorship can learn from this.

Most common categories signing deals in Q3 2025

From a pure ‘numbers game’ perspective, these are the most viable categories to approach about sponsorship as they undertook the most deals in Q3 2025.

For instance, Banks (which also includes the likes of Building Societies and Credit Unions) narrowly overtook Gambling firms as the most prolific sponsor category.

Specialist Professional Services, encompass a very wide range of micro-categories to target including waste management, office and media solutions and facilities management etc.

Categories with the biggest jump in share of deals

From a ‘trending’ perspective, the most viable (or fastest-growing) categories to approach about sponsorship were led by B2B categories. These saw the biggest increase in the share of deals they accounted for in Q3 compared to the previous 2 ½ years. This highlights the importance of looking beyond just consumer-facing brands.

The top two consumer facing categories are both health-related, reinforcing the global trend around health/wellness.

Full data and lessons in report.

How the main motivation for doing deals is changing

Brand Awareness remains the main reason sponsors do deals but it has become less of factor (e.g. it accounted for 28.7% of deals in Q3 compared to 36.0% in the previous period).

In contrast, Values Alignment (using a rights holder property to show and amplify key characteristics about the sponsor aka ‘values transfer’) and Fan Engagement have seen the biggest jumps.

Full data and lessons in report.

How the types of deals is changing

It was interesting to note a notable increase in share of deals for Title/ Headline/Naming rights deals.

Along with the slight rise in share of On Kit/Training deals, it points to the rising need of sponsors to stand out and maximise the chances of their sponsorship being seen.

Full data and lessons in report.

What should you be focusing on?

As well as looking at the overall sponsorship market to identify who to target for the best chances of success, it’s useful to look ‘inwards’ at your own organisation’s characteristics.

For instance, what field you are in (e.g. sports, entertainment, culture etc) or what benefits you deliver particularly well to sponsors (e.g. brand awareness, values transfer, fan engagement or social impact etc.) can affect which categories to prioritise.

For example, regarding your field, Gambling and Banks are the most common categories sponsoring Sports but for Entertainment its Alcohol and Car brands.

For example, regarding what benefits you deliver particularly well, let’s take Brand Awareness. This benefit (or reason for doing the deal) scores most more highly for Tourist Boards and Auto Components & Tyres brands.

In contrast, Values Alignment (thereby transferring values from rights holder to sponsor) scores most highly for Accessory/Watch manufacturers and Logistics companies.

All the data and the 5 key lessons are covered in the full ‘Q3 sponsorship deal trends & lessons’ report.