MKTG Sports + Entertainment have released a series of key findings from their annual trends report, Frontier, which shows the continued growth of purpose-related marketing.
Now in its seventh year and, after a period of turbulence in the sector, the findings also reveal that the confidence in the industry of measuring the business return of sponsorships continues to wane.
The survey of 350 sponsorship professionals working for brands, rights holders and agencies spotlights three key themes:
- A swift return to growth with 59% of the industry expecting the market to increase year on year
- The use of sponsorship for purpose-driven objectives has more than doubled in the last seven years
- Low confidence in measuring the business return.
In 2020, a quarter of the industry was not at all confident or did not measure the return – this has risen in 2022 to a third of the industry.
MKTG’s Head of Insights, Sandra Greer, said: “A growing number of brands are integrating purpose into their partnerships to drive objectives such as consideration.
“Partnerships in sport, for instance, offer these organisations an opportunity to not only communicate around purpose but act around it, too, and this is reflected in the responses we received.”
MKTG Sports + Entertainment will be releasing a deep-dive Frontier report in September on Web3 after surveying the sector on topics such as NFTs and The Metaverse.
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