There’s something slightly irrational and emotional about how we perceive value in sponsorship rather than in media or other marketing platforms. It’s rarely just about the ‘sponsorship assets’.  It’s about context, comparison, timing, and, perhaps most powerfully, what someone else just paid and there is emotion involved.

I’ve always come back to one moment. The day Chevrolet signed the front-of-shirt deal with Manchester United. I was at Chelsea FC at the time, and almost overnight, the perceived value of our own front-of-shirt tripled. Nothing had changed. Not the fanbase, not the inventory, not the reach. The only thing that shifted was the benchmark. One deal reset the narrative for everyone else.

That’s the thing about sponsorship value, it’s not created in isolation. It’s socially constructed. Competitors, peers, and headline deals act as anchors. If someone pays £X for a shirt, suddenly £X becomes “reasonable,” even if the underlying fundamentals haven’t moved an inch and the business decisions don’t necessarily stack up.

But the reverse is just as true, and arguably more brutal.

You can spend six / twelve months taking an opportunity to market, carefully positioning it, building the story, holding firm on price. Then, two months out from an event, reality creeps in. Budgets are already committed. Conversations stall. Urgency replaces optimism. And suddenly, the same opportunity, the very same one, starts to look like a tactical short term campaign. The price drops, not because the asset has changed, but because demand hasn’t materialised in the way you had hoped.

It’s a stark reminder: price is a function of demand, not just inherent value

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Which brings me to an interesting and personal inflection point. With betting brands set to come off front-of-shirt (an £80m hole according to The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/apr/05/premier-league-new-season-no-shirt-sponsor-gambling-ban) sponsorship in the near future, there’s a looming question, what happens next? Does another category step in to fill the gap at the same level? Or does the absence of an historically aggressive spending category create a vacuum that recalibrates the value of football sponsorship in the UK?

Top-tier properties will likely weather that shift. They always do. Their scale, global reach, and competitive tension between brands tend to sustain value. But further down the pyramid, things get more nuanced. Lower-tier teams often benefit from the halo effect created by the top end of the market. When the biggest deals go up, everything beneath them stretches accordingly. But when that pressure eases, it exposes a more uncomfortable question: can you really price a collection of sponsorship assets on their own merit?

Because ultimately, value isn’t just what something is “worth.” It’s what someone is willing to pay for it. And that willingness is shaped by brand priorities, emotion, internal politics, timing, and opportunity cost just as much as audience numbers, fan engagement or media exposure.

That’s why we’ve always believed in a more grounded, multi-dimensional approach to sponsorship valuation. We’ve spent over 20 years valuing sponsorship opportunities for clients across sectors.

At Reg&Partners, we think about sponsorship pricing in 3 parts;

First, we break everything down. Every potential sponsorship asset has a value, each newsletter, perimeter board or venue presence, digital presence, brand ambassadors/players, opportunity for retail, sampling, ticketing, hospitality the list is comprehensive. We then look at quantity, reach, and visibility to give us a starting point for a valuation we then benchmark against comparable opportunities in the market. We also sense-check what it would realistically cost a sponsor to acquire similar exposure independently. We do this across multiple sectors to build a composite baseline. It’s structured, methodical, and gives a clear starting point using realistic comparable values.

But a baseline is just that, a starting point.

The second layer is contextual. We compare the opportunity against similar sponsorship or partnership campaigns and packages currently in the market. Having spent over 20 years selling sponsorships, we’ve built a strong instinct for where things should sit, not just in theory, but in practice. Sometimes it’s about the individual assets; other times it’s about the strength of the platform as a whole. Both perspectives matter.

And then there’s the third piece, the most important one.

We sanity-check everything with potential sponsors.

Because no matter how much data you have, no one understands market reality better than the buyers themselves. They’re the ones being pitched to constantly. They see the breadth of opportunities, the pricing spectrum, the trends. They know what feels realistic, what feels fair, and what feels like an opportunity for a sound business decision.

When you bring those three lenses together, asset-level analysis, market benchmarking, and real-world brand feedback, you start to arrive at something more meaningful. Not a single “correct” number, but a credible range. A reflection of both intrinsic value and market appetite.

And maybe that’s the real takeaway.

Sponsorship value isn’t fixed. It moves. It flexes. It responds to signals, some rational, some not. Big deals can inflate it overnight. Lack of demand can erode it just as quickly. Categories can prop it up or pull it down.

In the end, it’s less about what something is worth, and more about what the market believes it’s worth at any given moment and the ability for a good sales-person to understand the nuance of sponsorship and the opportunity for long term meaningful mutually beneficial partnerships and negotiate a good deal.