European Sponsorship Association
Promoting best practice and raising industry standards in sponsorship activities
In 2023 ESA introduced a new system of recognition for leaders who have made an outstanding contribution to the sponsorship industry. The first four recipients of the ESA Fellowship were honoured at the 2023 ESA Awards ceremony in London.
All future inductees will take pride of place alongside their distinguished peers on this page. Click below to find out more about the ESA Fellows…
Delphine Baise has built a strong experience in working on sponsorship projects in soccer, music, art and business within an international framework. She joined the bank ING in 2000 and has been a member of the communication management team for more than 15 years. Specialising in sponsoring, events and brand activation, the campaigns she put in place with her team were regularly awarded at Belgian level and competed at the ESA Awards.
Delphine’s job is her passion and her values of authenticity, curiosity and excellence are driving all her energy to continue contributing to the growth of the industry in her country.
For 7 years, Delphine was the President of the Sponsoring Expertise Centre of Union Belge des Annonceurs. Inspiring young talents, she is also a lecturer at IHECS (where the studied) in the Master in Event Management.
Delphine is married with 2 daughters and daily makes her personal purpose come true, which is to let people experience moments of magic.
Catherine is the Founder of Think!Sponsorship and in this capacity has developed and delivered a range of networking, conference & training tools for the sponsorship industry that have serviced more than 7000 individuals across the last 20 years. Outside of this, Catherine is a commercial specialist working with a broad range of clients across the culture, entertainment, environmental, sports & charity sectors on start-up ideas through to the execution and sale of large-scale sponsorship rights.
In 2016 Catherine became Course Director of the ESA Sponsorship Sales Certificate which accredits sponsorship practitioners in best-practice sales techniques and is fast-becoming an industry standard qualification.
Catherine is Chairman of the National Parks Partnership (NPP) board which represents the commercial interests of all 15 National Parks in the UK. In this capacity she has helped to support the creation and delivery of a sustainable commercial strategy that includes exploring innovative and progressive income-generation opportunities including the award-winning “Revere” programme.
Catherine is a judge for the UK Sponsorship Awards specifically reviewing young talent in relation to The Barrie Gill Award for Most Promising Young Sponsorship Executive, as well as co-founder of the Women in Sponsorship networking group (a group set up and designed to support the professional development of women working within the sector). She is also a Trustee of the Essex Wildlife Trust – a role she enjoys very much that also enables her to be hands-on in her home county of Essex!
Peter created, and is Course Director of, the much-revered ESA Diploma, which is the industry’s only professional qualification, seeing over 600 budding industry practitioners qualify since 2012.
Peter has had 35+ years working in sponsorship/sports marketing for a number of leading agencies and brands; most notably, for 8 years, as Head of International Sponsorship at Orange. Peter’s previous projects include Castlemaine XXXX and the Australian Cricket and Rugby teams, the Nutrasweet/Flora London Marathons, Lucozade Sport’s strategic entry into sports sponsorship, the British Athletics sponsorship portfolio, the ‘Orange BAFTA’s’, creation and implementation of ‘Orange Wednesdays’ and the ‘Orange Arrows’ F1 team.
Additionally, Peter has been a consultant for Camelot, Panasonic, Michelin, Blackberry, BAFTA, Film London and the Crafts Council on a wide range of partnership-related projects and recently co-founded a boutique strategy consultancy called Vibrato.
Paul Samuels, Executive Vice President for Global Partnerships at AEG Europe, is responsible for overseeing all Sponsorship Sales, Partnership activation and Premium Seating across all AEG assets internationally, outside of the US – including The O2 in London and Mercedes Benz Arena in Berlin, as well as festivals such as American Express presents BST Hyde Park and Luno presents All Points East. Paul is also responsible for the Global Partnerships team across Asia, with exciting new projects in development in Thailand, Japan and Korea.
Having been with the business since 2007, Paul came to AEG from O2, where he worked as Head of Sponsorships. It was here that he first encountered AEG Europe when he negotiated the naming rights for the now renowned The O2, arguably an example of one of the most successful and iconic naming partnerships to date. The partnership re-defined the traditional corporate sponsorship as a huge customer engagement opportunity and it continues to deliver ROI for O2 and AEG 15 years on. Under his role at O2, Paul was also the major broker in sponsorship deals with Arsenal FC and the England Rugby Team.
Paul left O2 in 2006 to serve as The Bonham Group’s CEO for Europe, subsequently overseeing the sale of the company to AEG Europe.
In his current role at AEG Europe, he oversees a team of 100 people across Europe and APAC, negotiating partnerships across AEG’s assets.
Paul sits on the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Silver Clef Awards committee. He is also actively involved with the Speakers for Schools charity, as well as a mentor for the Ort Jump Start programme.
On weekends, Paul can be found on the sidelines watching his three daughters playing football or ferrying them to and from their busy social engagements!
