In an unprecedented achievement, four Belgian professionals – Delphine Baise (Spring Yellow), Wim Mathues (Wasserman Benelux), Neal Van Loock (UCLL) and Filip Waegemans (Skaut) – have been selected to serve as jury members for the 2025 ESA Awards. This landmark moment showcases Belgium’s growing expertise in sponsorship while shining a light on key challenges the market must address to reach its full potential.
Belgian Sponsorship Market: Untapped Potential and Emerging Opportunities
This milestone is not only a recognition of Belgium’s expertise but also a call to tackle the current
challenges within its sponsorship landscape.
Delphine Baise (above left), founder of Spring Yellow, who has over 20 years of experience in the field, highlights the opportunities: “Belgium has tremendous potential in sponsorship, but too often we underutilize it. While sponsorship is a powerful engagement tool, it requires both strategic insight and creative energy from our Belgian brands.
“Today, there’s a significant opportunity to demonstrate authentic commitments to social and environmental causes, transforming partnerships into deeper consumer connections.”
Filip Waegemans (above right), founder of Skaut, a sponsoring sales agency that focuses on maximizing sponsorship impact in music and sports, underscores the importance of exploring marketing and communication opportunities. He believes that, beyond financial backing, sponsorships should be leveraged to create deeper connections with audiences, using tailored marketing strategies and communication efforts to amplify brand visibility, commercial impact, and audience engagement.
As demonstrated by the winning international cases from the ESA, it’s clear that sponsorship is
back – leaner, more creative, and highly effective.
Neal Van Loock (above left), lecturer in event sponsorship at UC Leuven-Limburg, points to a key need for creativity in the industry: “Today, and even more so in the future, sponsorship needs creativity: creative activations at events to engage fans and offer mind blowing experiences through sponsorship.
“In this way, sponsors take advantage of the unique face-to-face contact with the target audience, the fans experience valuable extra fun at the event and the event organizer also comes off better. Clearly a win-win-win.”
Finally, Wim Mathues (above right), SVP Brands & Properties and Country Director Benelux at Wasserman, focuses on the future of the industry: “The future of sponsorship in Belgium depends on our ability to innovate, especially in digital activations. Younger, tech-savvy audiences demand personalized, data-driven experiences.
“Brands need to activate where the “new” consumers are watching, living, consuming, and therefore must embrace these trends or risk falling behind in the rapidly evolving sponsorship and marketing landscape.”
-ENDS-
