Authenticity and credibility are at the heart of effective messaging in sports sponsorship.
And as the ISC 2025 learned on this day one session on the main stage at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, that is especially true where brands are trying to communicate their brand purpose and support social change.
“Gone are the days where brands come into a sponsorship to drive awareness,” said Standard Chartered’s Erica Kerner. “You have to think about purpose.”
For Aviva’s Tom Whiteside, that means pursuing activities that make sense for a business, aligning with its activities as well as those of its rights holder partner. Aviva – a sponsor of football club Norwich City and Dublin’s Aviva Stadium – looks at climate action, social action and sustainable business returns on all of its marketing activities. Armed with those projections, it can move forward with more meaningful partnerships in sport.
Food delivery startup Foodhub and telecoms giant Virgin Media O2 naturally approach their partnerships differently. The latter recently celebrated 30 years of sponsorship of England’s Rugby Football Union – a high-profile national collaboration that connects smartly to its customer base, 80% of which is in England.
Foodhub, on the other hand, is prioritising community connections between fans, its platform, and local restaurants and catering businesses. It has launched more locally focused partnerships as a result, including deals with English Football League clubs like Stoke City, who are based near the company’s UK headquarters.
When it comes to major global partnerships – like Standard Chartered’s front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with Premier League champions-elect Liverpool – activations must be calibrated to meet audiences where they are.
Standard Chartered does not have a retail banking operation in the UK so its community-facing activities are mostly based in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Liverpool’s huge worldwide fanbase gives them the reach and relevance to sustain their campaigns in those territories, while regional sponsorships like city marathons provide further support.
At a corporate level, the Liverpool partnership helps Standard Chartered drive its Play On programme. This is an initiative developed to keep girls in sport longer, based on the insight that women who played sport further into adolescence and young adulthood are overrepresented in C-suite roles, having improved their confidence and leadership skills.
In many cases, the real potential of a partnership only really emerges over time. Virgin Media O2 will centre its marketing around the Women’s Rugby World Cup in England this year, benefiting from a growth in the women’s game that has mostly unfolded in the latter years of its relationship with the RFU. The panel agreed, meanwhile, that audiences and partners will also recognise a proper commitment to a deal.
“The work gets better the further you go into a partnership,” said Whiteside.
Brand purpose is also better expressed when rights holders and their partners take the time to learn more about their fanbase. The participants agreed that data, sentiment analysis and two-way conversations with audiences are non-negotiable for sponsors in 2025.
