Cobham Sports Sponsors - A Bit of Background

As a result of the success of the whole club, there has been an increasing opportunity for Cobham Sports to attract high levels of quality sponsorship.

To meet this opportunity, a Sponsorship Committee was formed in November 2004 with a specific remit to focus on how to maximise the sponsorship and specifically the relationships with our sponsors.

The Opportunity

The opportunity for all sports at Cobham is to develop the way we work commercially and to do this we chose to:

• Increase focus on Sponsorship

• Promote a 'professional' approach to commercial work (by providing contracts)

• Maximise the revenue to Cobham Sports whilst ensuring greater longevity with key sponsors

• Create greater financial stability for other projects

So although we wanted to get more 'dosh' into the Cobham Sports coffers, it shouldn't be at all costs - the relationships we build with sponsors need nurturing and feeding - building a longer term relationship that provides a greater benefit to the Club and to the Sponsor over time. Easy words to write but the proof of this policy has been the high levels of satisfaction amongst sponsors evidenced by their willingness to re-new their sponsorship.

How we do it

With the plethora of historical deals what has been created is a database of past and present sponsors and who the relationship is held by within Cobham Sports. Whilst a changing document, it's a great source of information as it also provides information on the Market Sector the Sponsor operates within so that we can control any overlap of interests.

As a result of this and a number of other initiatives, the Sponsorship income in the past season has increased, and arguably more important is the focus on signing longer term deals - such as the one with our Principal Sponsor Mundays, which covers a second contract for three playing seasons. This also means that we can guarantee more income for future seasons, which in turn means we can spend with more confidence on training or equipment or indeed to support loans for the clubhouse redevelopment.

What Next?

Well you'd have to be blind not to have noticed new Advertising Boards around the pitches and you'll see a more consolidated approach to Programmes for festivals or matches, whether that be a Minis or Vets Festival or a First team or Youth match. This gives our Advertisers a better 'bang for their buck', again maximising the revenue to your club.

Not surprisingly there needs to be some controls to ensure we get better at this commercial malarkey, so a series of easy 'Sponsorship rules' have been developed:

Sponsorship Rules

1. Contact the Sponsorship Committee to get some advice on what to do and how to do it. They must approve all sponsorship for the club to ensure 'fit'
2. Always best that the contact with the sponsor should be through the named club contact or someone to who authority is delegated
3. Avoid overlap of market sectors unless with agreement of all parties
4. Where ever possible we should get sponsors to give us money rather than goods in kind (helps with Sports Matched Funding)
5. Whilst the sponsorship committee will assist with finding sponsors - the onus is still on the age group / team to lead that process