Corporate sponsorship is a form of support non-profits receive from corporations for an event or a project. 

The benefits are twofold: non-profits receive the help they need to continue serving their missions while the company receives tax deductions and a positive boost or mileage.

Corporate sponsorship is the oxygen, which sports depends on to survive. Many sporting disciplines depend on sponsors to be able to operate fully and to survive.

In Western countries, sponsorship is key to any sporting entity. 

Corporate giants such as NIKE, Adidas, Puma, Hyundai, Toyota, Apple, Microsoft, etc… sponsor big sporting entities such as football clubs, athletes and events.

Clubs and athletes

In sports sponsorship, 50million dollars a year can quickly cross the table for big clubs such as FC Barcelona or athletes like LeBron James.

The European Football Championship also showed that an investment like that of TikTok, booking.com & Co. can be worthwhile – because sport not only receives a lot of attention from an entertainment point of view but also has enormous social relevance.

At the beginning of 2021, a rather unknown company caused a stir: TeamViewer – the software company from Göppingen in Swabia – became the new main sponsor of Manchester United.

And thus casually joined the ranks of big brands such as Adidas and Chevrolet.

TeamViewer invests over 10 per cent of its turnover, which was about $456m in 2020 in a single sponsorship commitment.

Thus, they show great confidence in this partnership, even if it has been short-term after the company announced it would not renew its current agreement when it comes to an end in 2026. 

Sports struggles

In Ghana, sponsors are very hard to come by. The Ghana National Petroleum Authority, Puma, MTN Ghana, and Melcom are some of the corporate giants that have thrown their weight behind the Black Stars and sponsored their activities over the past years.

The Black Stars can count themselves very lucky as they appear to be the only sporting entity with such number of sponsors. Needless to say, the Black Stars is the most popular sporting brand in the country.

Sponsors want entities that can give them mileage, engagement and attraction to their products and customers.

But sports disciplines also need these sponsors to enable them to grow, nurture and develop into national and global businesses, which the sponsors can derive the necessary benefits from.

Some sporting disciplines lack the needed finance to grow and develop into the stature of the Black Stars that all corporate agencies wish to sponsor.

Presently, corporate giants in the country must sacrifice their mileage and the intended benefit to grow and develop these sporting disciplines in the country for future grandiose mileage when they develop.

It is a shame that corporate giants in the country pay little attention to other sporting disciplines aside from soccer.

This neglect and failure by these business entities to sponsor sports in the country have stymied the activities, progress and growth of these disciplines.

Way Forward

Sports is what unites this country. This is echoed when the Black Stars take centre stage during international and national competitions. It is incumbent on sports authorities to lay a solid foundation and position sporting disciplines so well for it to catch the eye of these corporate giants.

It is said that Heaven helps those who help themselves; the various sports associations and federation heads must take steps to nurture and grow their sporting talents, create platforms for their entities to engage corporate bodies and make their disciplines attractive to sponsors from corporate giants.

Source: Graphiconline