Matthew Leopold
ESA Awards Chair of Judges
If you take a look at the last two winners of ESA Sponsorship of the Year, a clear pattern emerges. Neither was the biggest sponsorship deal in the market. The Breathing Space by Gjensidige (2025 winner) and World Unseen by Canon and RNIB (2026 winner) both won by pairing a genuine social or cultural contribution with evidence that it mattered to the business.
The entries won because the evidence felt real, not manufactured. The story of the partnership was told with clarity and conviction.
Judge feedback
As ESA Awards Chair of Judges, I am privileged to chair the annual ESA Sponsorship of the Year judging call. We invite all the judges to read the category winners and debate which sponsorship deserves to win the ESA Sponsorship of the Year crown. It is never a short call and never an easy one to shepherd. But it gives me unique insights into the minds of the profession’s leading practitioners and what makes an outstanding sponsorship outstanding.
Judges called World Unseen a “category-leading example of purpose-driven sponsorship”. It was celebrated for using Canon’s “core technology to remove real barriers and deliver results that were independently credible and aligned to its objectives”.
One judge described it as addressing “a clear challenge around brand purpose understanding… to place accessibility, inclusion and empathy at the heart of the work”. What stood out most was the ambition in its future plans: judges saw a clear path for the work to drive lasting industry change. It was that forward view which that clinched the win.
The Breathing Space earned similar praise for the strength of its evidence. Judges pointed to “verified increases in help-seeking behaviour and national help-chat usage” as proof the work was changing real behaviour, not just building brand awareness.
One judge described it as “combining cultural insight, service design and measurable impact”, exactly the kind of language that shows how far a credible, well-evidenced story can carry an entry. Another summed it up as “a scalable model for how brands can safeguard life through action”.
The real pattern
Purpose alone has never been enough to win an ESA Award. If it were, every charity partnership would take the prize. What wins is a clear articulation of a business problem and a demonstration of how a sponsorship can work towards resolving that problem.
Judges love to see sponsorships with a clear purpose supported by evidence that is specific, credible and tied to a real change in behaviour or perception, told through a partnership that feels genuine rather than opportunistic.
That’s the most useful lesson from both winners. Judges reward clarity and conviction. They want to see a well-defined problem, a partner whose involvement makes the story credible, and results reported honestly enough that the judges trust them.
What it means for 2027
Lead with a clear, well-defined business need and be explicit about why this specific partner or package of assets was right for it. It’s the credibility of that relationship that judges responded to most strongly in both winning entries. Report your results with honesty and specificity and use your future plans to show where this work is heading next.
The 2027 window spans a number ofnumerous significant sport and cultural events. That’s plenty of raw material to build a case with genuine substance and evidence that judges will find as compelling as they did with these two winners.
- Entry for the 2027 ESA Awards is open until 16 October, with an early-bird deadline of 25 September. Enter now.
