Imagine what your organization could accomplish with an extra $5,000 a year. Even better – an extra $10,000 a year!
Many youth sports organizations are bringing in additional revenue annually via website and other online sponsorships.
How does your organization compare?
Does your organization fall above/below the average number of sponsors? Are you meeting the average amount of financial income from sponsorships? Which methods have proven to be the most successful?
To answer all of these questions and get to the bottom of online sponsorship statistics for youth sports, Demosphere International, Inc. asked for your input.
The Results Are In!
Before we begin, it’s important to know who you’re comparing yourself against. Every organization approaches the subject of online sponsors differently. Whether you’re an organization on the smaller side or constrained by budget, these results are designed to give you an idea of where you compare to other youth sports organizations of varying sizes.
The majority of survey participants were Administrators, Board Members, and Directors from Soccer organizations with over 250 members.
Actively Seeking Sponsors?
When asked if actively seeking online sponsors, the results were almost an even split down the middle. Only 58 percent of respondents admitted to actively taking steps to attract website sponsors, while 42 percent denied putting forth an effort at the time of the survey.
Website Sponsors Section
An overwhelming percentage of respondents also responded “No” when asked whether they had a page on their website dedicated to sponsorship details.
Even though 58 percent are actively pursuing sponsors, only a little over 31 percent of respondents are including a page on their site to market towards potential sponsors. A whopping 69 percent don’t have any information listed on their website regarding sponsors.
Out of those who did include a sponsorship page, 83 percent are using that page as a way to showcase images and a list of their current sponsors. Advertising and pricing options for potential sponsors are displayed by 33 percent of respondents. Only 17 percent include the appropriate contact information for website visitors to reach out to. Surprisingly, no one shares the links to outside, printable documents like a Sponsorship Packet or PDF Forms.
Offline Material Available?
Even though the majority of respondents decided not to use a page of their website for sponsors, almost half of them did have sponsorship materials available for offline use. Over 47 percent did provide offline documents.
Of those organizations using offline material, surprisingly 56 percent said they had Sponsorship Packets readily available. An additional 22 percent use Flyer marketing materials.
As noted in the previous section, 0 percent of respondents listed links to offline materials on their website – including the 56 percent with Sponsorship Packets and the 22 percent with Flyers.
Website Visitor Statistics
With Google Analytics and other statistic-gathering sites rising in popularity, it might surprise you that only 32 percent of survey respondents felt it was necessary provide their prospective sponsors with website visitor statistic information. Over 68 percent of respondents choose not to share that information.
When an organization did share statistics, they typically chose to reveal multiple stats, rather than just one. The most popular visitor statistic shared was Pageviews, followed closely by Unique Visits.
Not only do the majority of organizations choose to not share their visitor statistics, only 21 percent provide email statistics such as Open Rate, Click-Through-Rate, and Number of Subscribers/Members.
Out of the 21 percent of participants sharing email stats, only 25 percent advertised Email Open Rate and 25 percent shared Number of Club Members. The remaining 50 percent did not disclose which statistics they advertised.
Contacting Sponsors
When it came to determining the most popular form of contacting potential sponsors, responding when interested sponsors initiate contact (79 percent) and contacting potential sponsors with an existing personal relationship (68 percent) were the winners, with most respondents using both methods concurrently.
Cold-calling companies that might be a good fit (16 percent) and mass emailing local organizations (11 percent) fell short.
Current Active Sponsors
The moment most of you have been waiting for: What is the average number of online sponsors for youth sports organizations?
The results show that the number of active sponsors that organizations obtain as a result of their efforts ranges on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Approximately 44 percent of respondents reported averaging over 7 active sponsors at the time of the survey. However, 31 percent reported ranging from zero to two sponsors, and 25 percent had three to four.
The missing piece is the mid-range. Zero survey participants reported having five to six active respondents on their website at this time.
Annual Income
Although the average number of active sponsors is inconsistent, the approximate annual income from sponsorships is anything but.
$0 – 1,000 annually – 19%
$1,000 – 5,000 annually – 25%
$5,000 – 10,000 annually – 19%
$10,000+ annually – 38%
Close to 38 percent of survey participants reported averaging $10,000+ in income from their online sponsorships.
Conclusion
Monetizing your site is incredibly important. With a large portion of the survey respondents receiving over $10,000 from their online sponsorships, the results speak for themselves.
And yet most participants admitted that they aren’t actively searching for sponsorships, they don’t have a page on their website dedicated to sponsors, and they don’t see the need to share analytics information with potential sponsors.
The only logical conclusion: most of us didn’t realize the full effect that sponsors can have on our organizations. The thought of placing an image on your website may seem small, but $10k a year for that advertisement can make a huge impact for the future of your club.
Now is the time to analyze your organization’s approach to online sponsors and make the necessary improvements to increase your revenue.
How To Increase Your Sponsorships
If your organization has information readily available, share it! With over half of the survey respondents spending the time to create Sponsorship Packets and Flyers, why not share them with potential sponsors on your website! You’ve already put in the work, now it’s time to enjoy the reward.
And what better place to share that important information than on a page of your website specifically designed to attract potential website sponsors. Create a space where interested sponsors can look to for information, contacts, and forms to speed up the process. Do most of the heavy lifting before even being contacted!
For more great tips on how to attract a larger number of website sponsors, and how to successfully display them on your website, check out Demosphere’s Complete Guide To Sponsors resource center.
