Sponsorship Administration: Financial Year or Season?

Why choosing between a financial year or a season matters for insight and reporting

The choice between working with a financial year or with a season goes far beyond administration. It directly affects your accountant, your reporting, and the way you measure success. Without clear agreements, organisations risk confusion, misleading conclusions, and unnecessary internal discussions.

Your accountant does not automatically follow your sponsorship logic

Many organisations think in seasons, while their accountant reports in financial years. That is perfectly logical, but not without risk.

That is why this choice needs to be made explicit. In a system such as Sponsorvista, this is already handled during onboarding. You simply indicate:

• whether your organisation works by financial year or by season

• and, if you work by season, when that season starts

From that moment on, sponsorship contracts, reporting and insights are aligned with that structure.

Without this alignment, problems quickly arise.

If you talk about:

• this season

• last season

• growth compared to the previous season

while your accountant reports in:

• calendar years

• financial years

• year-over-year comparisons

then you are effectively speaking different languages.

The result:

• figures that do not match in practice

• unclear reports

• incorrect interpretations of growth or decline

Insight requires comparability

One of the most common questions organisations ask is:
are we performing better than last year?

But that question can mean two very different things:

• did we perform better this calendar year than the previous calendar year

• or did we perform better this season than the previous season

That distinction is crucial, especially for organisations where a large share of sponsorship revenue is concentrated in a specific part of the year.

Comparing half a season to a full financial year inevitably leads to distorted conclusions.

Why everyone needs to speak the same language

Effective sponsorship administration requires alignment between:

• the organisation

• the accountant

• the board

• commercial or partnership teams

Not necessarily the same reporting period, but the same definitions.

For example:

• what exactly is considered a sponsorship year

• when does a season start and end

• how interim reporting is handled

• which figures are used internally and externally

Without these agreements, steering based on data becomes impossible.

Season-based thinking requires adapted reporting

If your organisation operates in seasons, your reporting must reflect that reality.

This means:

• season-based reports alongside financial year figures

• clear allocation of sponsorship contracts across periods

• insight into performance per season

Only then can you make statements such as:

• this season performed better than the previous one

• sponsorship value increased

• certain sponsor types dropped off

with confidence.

Structure prevents discussions after the fact

Many discussions are not caused by poor performance, but by unclear measurement methods.

By defining in advance:

• which period you work with

• how comparisons are made

• which figures are leading

you prevent interpretation issues later on.

One source of truth for sponsorship administration

Organisations that manage sponsorship professionally work with one central structure where:

• sponsorship deals are linked to seasons

• financial processing aligns with the financial year

• reports can be viewed flexibly per period

That is why more and more clubs, associations and event organisations choose a system where sponsorship years, seasons and financial years can coexist without losing clarity.

Not to add complexity, but to remove it.