Sponsors

Sawdustguy said:

I am hunting for some sponsors in a shameless attempt to keep out of pocket costs down next year. What would be a fair amount to ask a sponsor to fork over for a single event which would include us displaying their sign and including their link and a little blurb about them on a sponsors page on our website?

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That's the way I did things this season for just the last two contests. However, I'm planning on doing it differently for 2006. My thought is to have different levels of season-long sponsorship. Top would be our signature sponsor. The sponsor that wants this title gets their own banner at our events, Web site link and whatever else we determine in our sponsor packages. That will be $1000. Then the thought is to have platinum sponsors for $500 each, maybe 2 if I can find them. Next silver sponsors who donate $250 (3 of these) and finally bronze sponsors for $100 each (five of these). If we can fill all these sponsorships and find different benefits for each, that would give us a little over $3000 for 2006. That would be $375 per contest if we do eight of them, in almost all instances that's plenty for entry fees and meat purchases. Then the only out-of-pocket expenses are fuel, food for meals and miscellaneous supplies. If we only did 6-7 contests, probably everything is covered.

I may be over-stating our abilities to obtain sponsors but we seemed to do pretty decent in the short time we had this season. We might find we drop down and give fewer large sponsorships and more $100 opportunities. I've got a lot of marketing expertise so I'm hoping to put that to good use personally now.

Question - I did some reviewing of old threads...and need some clarification...

A potential sponsor opportunity for KCBS Grill Kings contest came our way. We did not solicit this or have any thoughts of doing so. Sean works as a pharmacist in one of the stores and word got out that he was competing. His pharmacy district mgr. took it upon himself to see if he could get corporate to assist in any way. I have no idea what is being offered as the boss does not want to tell Sean anything unless we have a green light. My guess would be cash or a store gift card that would pay for some supplies etc.

My only question right now is if there is anything that would prevent us from hanging a company store banner at our site. I don't have details, but they do not appear to be looking for any kind of free meals at the event or after, just some publicity of their logo and trying to help out an employee that they like very much. I would not do it if it involved interfereing with our cooking on contest day .

If this is the case, am I required to get any pre-approval from the contest organizer to have a banner that may be considered an advertisement that the contest organizer is not getting money from ? I don't think this is the case as many teams have sponsors.

Vinny, we've never had a problem with our sponsor banners. This even includes last month when we had my company, a real estate company, sponsor us when the contest itself was sponsored by a local competitor in the real estate market. I've yet to see a contest where you can't put out a banner for anything you want. They might be out there but we just haven't seen them ourselves.

Hang any sponsor sign you want.. It all about the money .. tell em Jacks ole South said that

BobberQer said:

Hang any sponsor sign you want.. It all about the money .. tell em Jacks ole South said that

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SOme sponsors might consider a conflict of interest

we are super small ( Just me and my wife) and launched a new product this spring - some of you may have tried it in our sponsor program - we dont have money to shell out to teams but I learned a lot about what goes into getting a sponsor or being a sponsor. In our case most teams have more moeny to work with then we do! So we supplied product to 2 teams. Thats not the sponsorship for every one but its an option for teams on the circuit. I have yet to see a BP banner on a smoker.

I understand where you are coming from asking for money - but you gotta ask yourself if it was you paying for your product to go on someone else rig what would you want in return? Would $250 a one time fee be worth your money to have your banner on their website, a banner hang on their rig for the weekend?
Why should they spend $250 to advertise with you versus spending that money to advertise some where else? Its a 2 way street. That being said there are a bunch of good sized companies willing to drop $250 on a weekend in a heart beat.
We look for teams that have something to offer more then what we ask for so hopefully we can build a long term relationship that gets better over time for all parties involved.

It is my understanding that banners are fine. Vending/selling is not.