Rights Fees Rant
A large part of what keeps us busy each day at Desperado Marketing is reviewing, evaluating and negotiating sponsorship rights on behalf of our partner clients.
Surprisingly, some of the largest, most sophisticated, most professional of those rights holders look at sponsorship as purely a revenue generating proposition for their organizations.
We often explain to these properties, sometimes in blunt terms, that, on our clients’ behalf, we buy value in the form of sponsorship rights. We do not buy budget line items on a property’s profit and loss statement.
Occasionally, some unwitting rights seller will even tell one of our associates that the rights holder has determined their rights fee ask simply by dividing a sponsorship revenue target by a set number of sponsors.
Clear Talk
As a sponsor of your event, league, festival or venue – our client will partner with you and enhance your audience’s experience. Our client may provide you with access to their marketing communication channels, something you likely could never afford to buy. My client will give you credibility with not only your audience but with other potential sponsors. Our client can help you build your brand.
If we are looking at your property as a vehicle for addressing our client’s business and brand objectives, we will have calculated to the dollar, Euro, Pound or Yen what the basket of sponsorship assets you are offering is worth.
We will have projected the return on investment that our clients spend with you on rights fees, their spend on broadcast rights and their spend on property activation will bring to their business. In fact, we will have monetized it.
While Desperado Marketing has been a leader in the drive towards more sophisticated and more accountable sponsorship valuation and sponsorship measurement, we are not alone. If you are a property rights holder you are likely to encounter more and more sponsors, and their agencies, that have at least some protocol for placing value on the rights you are selling.
Shift Thinking
If you represent a property and you don’t fundamentally understand that your sponsors can be critical partners in building your brand and growing your business, than you are losing out.
If you price your assets without any inclination towards value, you’re reducing your chances of serious engagement discussion with prospective sponsors and you’re sending a message that your organization lacks grounded focus.
Change.
