What 855 Sports Clubs Tell Us About Sponsorship (And Why There Is Room to Improve)

We asked 855 sports clubs across the Netherlands: what is the real state of sponsorship? After 31 questions covering policy, administration, and outreach, the answer is clear.

Sponsorship is essential. Sponsorship can be better. And most clubs already know it.

These are the key findings from The Big Sponsorship Study 2025/2026 — and what your club can do with them.

Sponsorship Is Not a Side Issue

For two thirds of participating clubs, sponsorship covers between 10 and 60% of total income. That is not a marginal amount. Every sponsor who does not renew or is never found has a direct impact on what a club can do for its members.

And yet most clubs treat it as an afterthought.

Only 39% say sponsorship will receive higher priority next season. The rest continue doing what they have always done: a round of calls to familiar businesses, hoping for the best, and moving on.

62% Operate Without a Professional System

Perhaps the most striking figure in the study: 62% of sports clubs have no professional system for sponsor management.

38% work with Excel or Google Sheets. 16% do not centrally record sponsorship information at all.

That means contracts sitting in someone's personal inbox, renewal dates that no one tracks, and invoices forgotten the moment the volunteer who sent them moves on. With every committee changeover, all accumulated knowledge disappears.

"When the board changed over last year, we completely forgot to send a few invoices. And two sponsors we could have kept simply fell off our radar." — Chair of sponsorship committee

Sound familiar? You are definitely not alone.

Sponsor Acquisition Is Difficult for 6 in 10 Clubs

60% of clubs find it difficult to very difficult to find new sponsors. Only 5% describe the process as easy.

What makes sponsorship acquisition so hard? Making the first contact tops the list (mentioned 192 times), followed by lack of time (105 times). After that: a limited network and difficulty demonstrating the concrete value of sponsorship.

"Approaching sponsors too often feels like begging. You invest a lot of energy, and then you still get a no." — Sponsorship committee member

The frustrating part: more time is what clubs wish for most (37%) when asked about solutions to their acquisition challenges. But more time is not coming. What is possible: working smarter with the time that exists — through better structure and the right tools.

The Good News: Sponsors Are Loyal

Not everything is bleak. 60% of clubs retain more than 75% of their sponsors each year. That is a strong foundation.

Yet 9% of clubs do not even know their own renewal rate. You cannot improve what you do not track — and you cannot approach sponsors at the right moment if you do not know when their contract expires.

Clubs that manage this deliberately — with a solid sponsorship agreement and a renewal calendar — see their renewal rates climb significantly. And retaining a sponsor costs five times less than acquiring a new one.

What the Top 7% Do Differently

Only 7% of clubs describe their own sponsorship policy as professional. That sounds low. But the data on that group is compelling:

• 4x more likely to have more than 50 active sponsors
• 53% achieve a renewal rate above 90%
• 82% find sponsor acquisition easy or manageable
• 69% saw sponsorship income increase over the past year

By comparison, among the remaining clubs those figures are 21%, 29%, 34%, and 38% respectively.

That difference does not come from a bigger budget or a wider network. It comes from structure: a central place for all sponsorship data, automated invoicing, and proactive relationship management.

What You Can Do Right Now

Based on findings from 855 clubs, five steps make an immediate difference.

1. Centralise your sponsorship data. Stop working with scattered files. Make sure all contacts, contracts, and deadlines live in one place — accessible to everyone on the committee.

2. Automate your invoicing. Manual invoices are the biggest time drain. Automated invoices and reminders keep your cash flow healthy and the relationship positive.

3. Set up a renewal calendar. Contact sponsors three months before their contract ends. Not with an invoice — with a conversation. Clubs that do this consistently achieve renewal rates of 85% and above.

4. Keep your sponsor page current. 81% consider online visibility important — but 29% have no up-to-date sponsor page. Potential sponsors search for your club before they decide.

5. Make sure knowledge is not held by one person. A system that distributes tasks and records agreements prevents everything from collapsing when someone leaves.

The Conclusion

For most clubs, sponsorship is too important to keep managing ad hoc — and too straightforward to structure to not try.

Clubs that make the move toward structure see the impact directly in their income, their renewal rates, and in the peace of mind it gives their volunteers.

The full study — with all figures, charts, and recommendations — is free to read at sponsorvista.com/en/research/sponsorship-research. Free to cite under CC-BY 4.0.

Ready to get started? With Sponsorvista you keep all contacts, contracts, and invoices in one place — and renew more sponsors with less effort. Try it free for 30 days.