Minnesota Football’s Visible Partnership Highlights the Growing Value of Sponsorship Inventory

Sports sponsorship inventory is evolving.

Minnesota Football and Visible recently announced a first-of-its-kind partnership for the Gophers, making Visible the program’s first-ever helmet bumper partner. The brand will appear on the back of every Minnesota football helmet, creating a new form of visibility for the wireless company and one of the newest sponsorship opportunities in college athletics.

The partnership is another example of how sports organizations are finding new ways to create value for corporate partners.

But as the number of sponsorship opportunities grows, so does the importance of managing everything that happens around them.

New Assets Create New Opportunities

For brands, new sponsorship inventory means more ways to connect with an audience.

A helmet placement puts a brand directly into the game-day experience. Other sponsorship assets can create opportunities through signage, digital content, hospitality, tickets, events, community programs and employee engagement.

The more ways a partnership can be activated, the more valuable it can become.

But activation also requires coordination.

A sponsorship may involve multiple internal teams, different types of inventory and numerous guest experiences throughout a season. Without a centralized process, it can become difficult to keep track of what is available, who is using it and whether those assets are generating the intended value.

The Ticket and Hospitality Connection

Corporate tickets are often an important part of a broader sponsorship strategy.

A company may use tickets to entertain clients, reward employees, engage prospects or bring business partners closer to the organization.

That means the value of a sponsorship isn't limited to what fans see on the field.

It can also come from the relationships created through the experiences surrounding the partnership.

But those experiences only work when the logistics are handled effectively.

Who requested the tickets?
Who approved them?
Which guests are attending?
What inventory remains?
Were the tickets actually used?
What did the organization learn from the experience?

These questions become increasingly important as entertainment programs grow.

Managing More Without Adding More Administrative Work

Concierge Live gives organizations a centralized platform for managing their corporate entertainment programs.

Teams can manage ticket inventory, streamline requests and approvals, control access, organize guest information and create custom reports around utilization.

That gives organizations greater visibility into their entertainment assets while reducing the manual coordination required to distribute and track them.

Instead of managing sponsorship-related entertainment across disconnected spreadsheets, emails and processes, teams can create a more structured workflow from request through attendance and reporting.

Turning Sponsorship Assets Into Experiences

The Minnesota and Visible partnership demonstrates how sports organizations continue to find new ways to create value for sponsors.

For brands, that means more opportunities to be visible, engage audiences and activate partnerships.

For the organizations managing those partnerships, it also means more assets and experiences to coordinate.

The goal shouldn't be to simply add more sponsorship inventory.

It should be to make every asset easier to activate and more valuable to the organization and its partners.

Because when sponsorship opportunities grow, the systems supporting them need to grow with them.