Corporate Sponsors

[Prefab]

Anyone have one at the club level? Can you? How would it work? I belong to a small club that could use more electrical scoring equipment and thought a corporate sponsorship would help. Softball teams, soccer teams and runners have sponsors, why not fencing clubs? To further complicate things, in the city I live in, if you want to fence more than one time a week you must work out with multiple clubs, so getting a lot of people to wear a sponsor’s logo would be tough because many of us work out with multiple clubs. Any ideas?

Thanks.

[lochinvar]

I have never heard of a corporate sponser as such for a fencing club. (This is, I gather, a separate issue from a club that is owned by an individual or group.)

Local businesses sponsor softball teams, soccer teams, and the like for one of three reasons: 1) The sponsor likes to play whatever sport it is;
2) The sponsor thinks its good advertising;
3) The sponsor thinks publicly supporting the sport in question is good for his/her/its community--the 'civic pride' angle.

I don't see how a sponsoring a fencing club fits under any of the three reasons mentioned, with the possible exception of the first. I'm not saying they can't, but my experience both as a fencer and a past corporate sponsor of sports teams leaves me at a loss as to how to combine the two.

Most sponsored sports teams have a set roster, a set (limited) season for competing, and a regular schedule for competitions. Fencing clubs normally have none of these things.

Sponsored teams compete as teams against other teams; fencing is very much an individual sport.

Sponsored teams usually compete in highly visible venues, where the sponsoring company's name and/or logo will be seen by people who can reasonable be expected to do business with the sponsor. Fencing competitions do not normally draw lots of spectators, and many of the spectators might be from out of town, hence not in a position to do business with the local company. That means little exposure potential.

All of these factors mean it would be hard to convince a company to put advertising dollars into fencing sponsorship. Of course, if the CEO of the company is a fencer, that would influence the decision.

My recommendation: By all means approach companies with the idea; my mother used to say, "You don't ask, you don't get." Maybe you can think of an angle that will make it fly.

But don't be surprised if nobody signs up. It just doesn't fit the sponsorship model.

[Cutter]

Yes you can have corporate sponsorship. This is how it works at our club.

1. The club itself is a separate entity.
2. We have established a "team" within the club where certain quailifications have to be met to be a team member.
3. We have established a "team" sponsor (a national company) and are working on others.
4. What the sponsor gets is to use our "team" for advertising, we will wear their corporate logo as a patch on our uniform, they are listed and promoted as "sponsor" at our local events and for special events set up to raise additional fund for the team.
We have a plege for $30,000 from this sponsor for this year.

Yes it works, just takes the leg work and diligence to push it through. Fencing is becoming more widely known and respected in the US, at least in our area, and with the idea that our team travels all over the country, it is becoming appealing to big corporations to become a sponsor.

[graham]

Short of the 'big money' corporate sponsorship noted by Cutter (which I expect would be pretty hard to do in a lot of locations), there is a smaller-scale option that our club is considering pursuing. This is the idea of a 'Sponsorship Board', a portable, freestanding board (A-frame possibly) with the club logo and advertising spots that can be purchased for a one year time frame. The cost of the spots would reflect the size of the advertising area and the exposure you can give the board. The board can then be put in place at all public events club members attend (demonstrations, tournaments ...). Once we get ours up and running (after our new logo is complete) I will pass on the trials and tribulations of this approach. Has anybody else done this?

Graham