There are three main focuses for sports sponsorship, but only 17% of organisations deploy all three, research from IPA finds.
Sports sponsorship deals are expected to reach over £180bn in the next ten years with brands increasingly confident it will boost business results, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).
Research from the IPA has revealed over half of brands (54%), rights holders (41%), and agencies (36%) are assured that sales, profit, market share, and price elasticity will be delivered by sport sponsorships.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 saw revenue from sports sponsorship jump by 56% compared to previous competitions, illustrating their increased benefits.
Overall, confidence stands at 40%, with a further 29% reporting they are “somewhat confident”, which suggested a small sector shift could unlock higher value for brands, rights holders and agencies.
There are three fundamental factors that help brands excel: setting clear commercial objectives,measuring commercial impact to use at renewal and integrating sponsorship activity with broad brand communications.
Only 17% of respondents practice all three fundamentals, the IPA confirmed, pointing to a gap between ambition and evaluation.
In fact, organisations which set commercial objectives are twice as likely to be confident in their strategy compared to those that don’t (61% versus 24%). And those same organisations are four times more likely to say they have ‘strong’ measurement capabilities (48% versus 12%).
For most brands, sports sponsorship deals are used as a brand-building tool with 83% of respondents citing brand awareness and 69% stating brand image or perception shift as the main objectives.
Around half of respondents stated the main objectives centre around commercial targets such as acquisition and penetration (58%), B2B/ hospitality relationships (48%), retention (41%), and sales growth (45%).
There is a perceived disconnect illustrated in the findings, with revenue growth (28%) and market share growth (26%) remaining low.
Measurement is the second factor. The most common used approach is brand tracking (75%), which mirrors the fact brand-building is one of the main objectives.
However, the report highlighted there is a discrepancy between the objectives and these other measurement tools used.
Advertising value equivalency (65%) is nearly twice as likely to be used than customer acquisition data (35%), three times more likely than econometrics or marketing mix model (23%) and more than five times more likely than multi-touch attribution (12%).
Social media analytics followed closely behind brand tracking with 66% of respondents citing it as one of their measurement tools, while 45% said PR and earned media.
These figures, the report stated, show “limitation in measurement tools from a sales and business context in comparison to the demand they face at the objectives stage”.
With regards to the third factor to determine effective sponsorship, 55% of those confident in the deals performance agreed it was mostly or fully integrated with wider brand communications compared to other.
But full integrations are rare with just 4% of respondents stating this was reflected in practice.
Research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) (November 2025), found on average, respondents spent 1% or less of their sponsorship budgets on evaluation, with only 31% deploying a framework to assess commercial value.
The majority (82%) of respondents set commercial objectives, but fewer than half (47%) are using measurement capability features to determine whether the strategies are being achieved.
For agencies, those who are confident are almost four times more likely – 60% versus 16% – to say that clients’ objectives are aligned to wider business and brand strategy.
Laurence Green, director of effectiveness at the IPA said: “The IPA is committed to advancing effectiveness across every part of the marketing and communications industry, and sports sponsorship is no exception. Despite its remarkable growth, sponsorship remains underrepresented in the wider effectiveness evidence base. This research helps address that gap, bringing greater rigour and insight to a discipline that plays an increasingly important role in the marketing mix.”
