Sports Sponsorship ROI Measurement: The 4Ps Framework

76% of US marketing executives cannot tell you what their sports sponsorship is actually worth. That's not a gut feeling. That's what Forrester found when it surveyed US marketing leaders who spent on sports deals in 2024.

The global sports sponsorship market is now worth US$66.69 billion. Asia Pacific alone hit US$13.5 billion in 2024 and is growing faster than anywhere else in the world. Brands are writing bigger checks every year. But most have no reliable way to measure what comes back.

That accountability gap is what a leading marketing scientist is now trying to fix.

Brand Awareness Is the Wrong Goal

Professor Jenni Romaniuk, associate director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science, the world's largest marketing research center, argues that the industry's favorite measure of sponsorship success is also its biggest blind spot.

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According to MKTG research, 73% of corporate sponsorship executives say brand awareness is their primary goal. Fewer than 20% have any formal process to measure whether their spending is actually working. The Marketing Accountability Standards Board puts it even more bluntly: brands using poor measurement models average a 68% error in their ROI calculations. One academic analysis estimates that up to 88% of sponsorships fail to efficiently deliver against stated business objectives.

Bigger spend does not equal bigger return. A peer-reviewed study using 58,000+ observations of Major League Baseball fans found that brands spending between US$30 million and US$85 million on sponsorship often saw weaker brand differentiation, not stronger.

The New 4Ps for Sports Deals

Professor Romaniuk proposes replacing the vague "brand awareness" goal with a more concrete framework: People, Passion, Prominence, and Partners.

People is about reach beyond your existing customers. Sports events bring together audiences who would never seek out your brand advertising. That cumulative reach across different fan groups each week is a structural advantage that other media cannot replicate.

Passion is a double-edged sword. Sports fans are emotionally engaged, which helps brands cut through. But if an activation stirs too much passion for the sport and not enough for the brand, the brand disappears into the background. Professor Romaniuk cites McDonald's "Wanna go to McDonald's?" campaign during the 2022 FIFA World Cup as the closest example of getting this balance right. It displayed the full range of emotions fans feel about the game, while keeping McDonald's firmly at the center.

Prominence is about preparation. "During a sports sponsorship is when you should be using assets rather than building them," Professor Romaniuk explains. A packed sports environment has all the clutter of a supermarket shelf but none of the advantage of a buyer actually looking for you. Brands that arrive without strong visual assets get lost. "If you are not prominent, your current and future buyers will not even know they have missed you."

Partners addresses a question most sponsors never ask: does the sporting body's own logo actually mean anything to audiences? Ehrenberg-Bass testing found that the Olympics logo scores 94% recognition and 100% uniqueness in the UK. Some other sporting bodies score below 10% on recognition. Signing a deal with a low-recognition partner limits how much of their brand equity can transfer to yours.

What Good Measurement Looks Like

Nielsen Sports' Return on Sponsorship Investment model now tracks three dimensions: reach, brand equity shifts, and actual behavioral change. That third dimension matters most. PwC recommends investing one dollar in activation for every dollar spent on sponsorship rights. Most brands underspend on activation and then wonder why awareness numbers do not convert to sales.

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One figure almost no sponsor tracks: the long-term sales impact of a sponsorship, which one analysis estimates represents 47% of total sponsorship value. Most brands measure only the immediate return and declare the result underwhelming.

The bar for a defensible sports sponsorship is not low. Industry benchmarks put minimum acceptable ROI at 2:1. The top-performing deals consistently reach 3:1 to 4:1. Getting there requires measurement frameworks and activation budgets that most current sponsors simply do not have in place.