European Sponsorship Association
Promoting best practice and raising industry standards in sponsorship activities
ESA benefits from the support of its longstanding partners that work with the Association to further enhance the Diploma.
The content of our course is greatly enriched by superb material, latest case studies and statistics provided by our content partners – Activative and SportBusiness SPONSORSHIP.
Thanks are extended to our content partners, as well as to marketing partners Flash Sponsorship and The Marketing Institute of Ireland, branding partner CSM Live, and venue partner Sport England.
The activation of sponsorship rights is more creatively and strategically complex than ever – but the potential rewards are far greater too. The challenge for sponsorship marketers is to keep up with the most relevant ways of maximising value and to stay ahead of the competition.
Activative provides intelligence and insight services that help our clients – rights owners, brands, agencies and professional services – remain at the forefront of this evolving landscape. We focus on emerging strategies and tactics, original and innovative ideas, future-facing media and new technologies across the sponsorship community – from sports, music, arts and culture, to education, ecology, cause and CSR.
Our role is to advise, analyse, explore, filter and stimulate marketers across the entire space – from traditional sponsorships, to brand tie-ins, strategic collaborations and commercial partnerships. Activative provides clients and subscribers with trends insights, activation stimulus, creative idea generation, competitor/sector analysis and strategic planning. Through our interactive trends and showcase magazine, online monitoring source and our research and consultancy we guide sponsorshipprofessionals through this changing space.
The old sponsorship model, based on one directional brand-biased claims, vanilla hospitality, badging brands with logos, eyeball metrics, cost per thousand, reach and frequency, is being replaced by one founded on authenticity, customisation, dialogue, interactivity and permissive engagement. Sponsorship is flourishing in this new communications environment as brands seek symbiotic and passionate platforms around which to build consumer conversations.
So Activative looks beyond the sponsorship stalwarts of logo rights, arena billboards, shirt sponsorship, celebrity spokespeople, on-pack ticket promotions and traditional above-the-line advertising, and focuses on original ideas and fresh initiatives that leverage new technologies and trends, including: ambush and guerrilla work; branded content and entertainment; blogs and social media; consumer creation and generation; experiential and interactive; gaming and video; utilities; word of mouth; and relationship marketing.
We seek out the unconventional, champion daring ideas and analyse breakthrough thinking. The team is committed to innovative thinking. We are not a mouthpiece for the profession, the rights holders or the sponsors themselves. The real value of our work lies in linking trends and making connections, exploring new ideas and identifying original approaches. We offer independent research and objective analysis and use this to make directional insights and actionable recommendations.
CSM Live (formerly ICON) creates and delivers award-winning brand and live experiences around the world. Founded in 1947, our work has been seen by over half of the world’s population. CSM Live is trusted by both regional businesses and global brands in sport, business and the public sector.
Flash Sponsorship is a specialist sponsorship marketing consultancy that focuses on commercial rights. We represent a handful of established well-respected rightsholders, and our purpose is to seek out and match them with like-minded partners that are looking to connect and engage with their fans and athletes.
Our strategic direction and creative solutions provide a fresh way of delivering on partner expectations for rightsholders and simplified commercial structures that are measurable. Rightsholder contract development and management play a crucial role in ensuring both our rightsholders and brand partners receive exactly what they need to deliver on their strategic goals and brand targets.
We are based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and our partnership with ESA allows us to make sponsorship education accessible to the South African sponsorship industry.
Sport England is the government agency focused on the creation of a world-leading community sport system. We invest National Lottery and Exchequer funding in organisations and projects that will grow and sustain participation in grassroots sport and create opportunities for people to excel at their chosen sport. Formerly known as the English Sports Council, we work in partnership with UK Sport, which has responsibility for elite success, and the Youth Sport Trust, which is focused on PE and school sport. Sport England is accountable to Parliament through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
We invest expertise, resources and both government and Lottery money into community sport. A large sum of our financial investment goes directly to 46 National Governing Bodies of sport and 49 County Sport Partnerships. We provide a wealth of expertise and advice on range of sports subjects including planning, facilities, coaching, volunteering and sports development and we have a statutory role in protecting playing fields and must be consulted if community playing fields are threatened by potential developments. Acting as advocates for community sport, we bring together a wide range of partners from local and national government, the commercial sector, higher and further education and the third sector to make the most of their investment in sport.
Sport England also has a remit to deliver the legacy for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The official legacy programme, Places People Play, is a £135m initiative that will bring the inspiration and magic of a home Olympic Games and Paralympic Games into the heart of local communities. It is being delivered by Sport England in partnership with the British Olympic Association, the British Paralympic Association and with the support of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games. We will transform the places where people play sport, making the benefits of London 2012 visible in cities, towns and villages across the country. We will inspire people to make sport happen at the local level, embedding the Olympic and Paralympic values in grassroots sport. We will create the sporting opportunities and challenges that give everyone the chance to play sport and become part of the mass participation legacy. We have also invested significant sums of money into many of the London 2012 sporting venues with our focus being on ensuring that these facilities can be adapted for use by the community after the Games.
SportBusiness is the most trusted global intelligence service, providing unique news, analysis, data, consulting and events with deliver competitive advantage to executives in the business of sport.
Headquartered in London, we also have operations in the Americas including an office in Miami, giving us proximity to many of the leading companies in sport. This enables our respected editorial team to glean insight into commercial strategies, as well as business-critical data, which our clients can action and use in their business. The depth, accuracy and credibility of our analysis and data is what gives us our reputation for market-leading services in the sports business sector.
A wide range of stakeholders in the sports sector rely on information delivered by SportBusiness including rights holders (teams, franchises, leagues and tournaments), sponsors, broadcast companies, agencies, venues, financial institutions and universities.
Our products – SportBusiness Media, SportBusiness Sponsorship and SportBusiness Professional – are delivered through our digital platform and online data tools. And we work in person too – by delivering insight at conferences and through our consulting practice working directly with clients on key strategic projects.
Marketing Institute events can highlight new marketing trends and prompt new ideas, and our network of contacts within the profession on a national and global level can ensure ‘best-in-class’ expert speakers. Our events connect members with each other, and to the right ideas at the right time. Our suite of professional training and education programmes are designed to provide the individual marketer with the means to impact the performance of their business and to build their own personal effectiveness in today’s fast-developing environment.