Sports sponsorships are great ways for leagues to bring in revenue to support their teams. Companies will sponsor youth sports to get their name out in the local community, making it a win-win situation.
If you’re running a soccer league, you might be looking at how you can bring in some revenue for equipment, facility maintenance, uniforms, etc. Registration fees will only get you so far—and that’s where a good youth soccer sponsorship package comes in.
Throughout this article, we'll walk you through creating your own soccer sponsorship package and outline a few ideas for finding potential sponsors.
How to create youth soccer sponsorship packages
A youth sports sponsorship package showcases the perks that businesses can receive based on different payment tiers. For example, a basic sponsorship package may include just a website ad, while a much larger package might include displaying a banner on the field.
As you can guess, the cost of those two sponsorship packages would vary greatly, as the larger package reaches a wider audience than the smaller package.
It's important to offer several different sponsorship options to increase the number of sponsors you can work with and the likelihood that different businesses will be interested in your offer.
Follow these six steps to create the perfect youth soccer sponsorship package for your league.
1. Define your objectives
First of all, why do you want sponsors? Other than more money, of course—we all know that sponsorships are one of the best fundraising ideas.
What are you hoping to do with those funds?
- Funding for nicer uniforms
- Travel expenses for your travel soccer club
- New equipment
- Bigger facilities
- Upgrading the existing facilities
- Hiring more staff
When you have a clear idea of what you hope to do with the additional funding that sponsorships can offer, you can calculate how much money you need to raise in order to meet that goal.
2. Determine sponsorship levels
Create different sponsorship levels or tiers. You can name them Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum, or you can come up with your own names.
As you can imagine, the Bronze level packages will be cheaper and come with fewer perks than the Gold or Platinum packages. Once you decide how many sponsorship levels you're offering, start outlining the perks associated with each.
Common sponsorship perks to choose from are:
- Shoutouts or highlights in monthly newsletters
- Website advertisements
- Logo placement on physical marketing materials
- Mentions in social media posts
- Field signage
- Team sponsorship
A breakdown that might make sense could look like this:
- Bronze Sponsorship Tier
- Website advertisements
- Silver Sponsorship Tier
- Website advertisements
- Newsletter and social media shoutouts
- Gold Sponsorship Tier
- Website advertisements
- Newsletter and social media shoutouts
- Field signage
- Platinum Sponsorship Tier
- Website advertisements
- Newsletter and social media shoutouts
- Field signage
- Team sponsorship
While you don’t have to include lower-level perks in your higher-level packages, it is a way to stack benefits for your sponsors and make the more expensive packages seem even more valuable.
3. Outline sponsorship benefits
It's time to think about your sales pitch. Businesses are always looking for promotional opportunities, so you need to show them why becoming a sponsor makes sense.
Put together a list of benefits that your sponsors could get access to. Things like:
- Visibility and exposure: How many website visitors do you get each month? What’s your typical participation rate and match turnout like? What kind of visibility can you offer to a sponsor?
- Engagement opportunities: How will you work to get the business in front of locals? Will they have any opportunities to engage directly with their audience?
- Sports team impact: Other than just providing a list of benefits for the companies, let them know how much their sponsorship will impact your league and the young boys and girls participating in the soccer program directly.
- Exclusive perks: Will your sponsors get VIP access to games? Free merch they can wear? Additional perks that only your sponsorship program offers?
- Tax deductible: Some sponsorships can be considered tax deductible. Let companies know if theirs falls into that bucket.
Showcasing additional benefits that your sports organization can offer to team sponsors will help solidify your pitch.
4. Create a professional presentation
Put your pitch into presentation form. This makes it easier to share with potential sponsors and helps you showcase your sponsorship levels, benefits, and other key information in a digestible way.
You can also put your pitch in different formats. For example:
- Embed an actual presentation onto a sponsorship page on your website
- Create a landing page on your website
- Put together a brochure to hand out
Practice your presentation so that you can give any interested sponsors a quick run-down of exactly what they can expect through their sponsorship, why it’s such a valuable investment, and all of the key information they need to know.
5. Write a soccer sponsorship letter
As your league becomes more popular in the area, you may have businesses start coming to you about sponsorship opportunities. But in the beginning, it’s a good idea to reach out to local companies by using a sponsorship letter.
A sponsorship letter reaches out to businesses in the area to ask for financial support and share information about available sponsorship slots.
The format of a sponsorship letter often follows this outline:
- Introduction and purpose: Start by introducing yourself and your league, followed by a quick segue into the purpose of your letter—to let local businesses know about sponsorship opportunities for the upcoming season.
- Overview of your soccer team or league: Share more about your organization, how long it’s been around, player registration numbers, and other key achievements.
- Explain your need for sponsorship: Now it’s time to get to your main ask. Let the company know you’re writing to them because your league is in need of sponsors. Talk about how the sponsorship funds will be used and why it’s important to help these young athletes get access to better equipment and facilities.
- Sponsorship details: Share information about each of your sponsorship packages alongside the benefits that come with it (we outlined these in the last two sections).
- End with a call-to-action: Let recipients know how they can learn more about sponsoring your league and who they can contact to get started.
Use our sponsorship letter template as a starting point for your own letter.
6. Share the package
Aside from writing sponsorship letters, there are other ways to get the word out about your new sponsorship offerings and find companies interested in supporting your soccer players.
Start by reaching out to your network and your most involved soccer families. Parents and community members may have some ideas of companies that would be interested—or might even own a company that is interested.
Then, you can present your sponsorship package via email, phone calls, and in-person meetings to maximize your potential sponsors.
Where to find potential sponsors
Other than looking within your immediate network, where can you find potential sponsors? Not every company you reach out to will be interested in this type of promotional opportunity, so it’s important to try your luck with companies that are more likely to be open to it.
You can typically find businesses and organizations that are likely to align with your team's values and goals by:
- Looking to your local community: Business owners that are already involved in some way or another with your league (i.e., their kids play, they volunteer around the facilities) may be interested in supporting you further.
- Checking with professional leagues: Professional organizations, like U.S. Soccer, might be interested in helping support youth leagues to make the game of soccer accessible to more kids.
- Getting in touch with local professional teams: Your local professional soccer team might also be interested in getting involved with a local youth league.
Finding national companies that have youth sports sponsorship programs: Some national companies, like Coca-Cola, Nike, and DICK’S Sporting Goods have programs for sponsoring local leagues. Find a full list here.
Get started on your youth soccer sponsorship package
Best of luck finding sponsors for your youth soccer league! By putting together enticing sponsorship packages, providing key benefits, and reaching out to the right people, you should easily generate the funds you need.
To create a youth soccer website that can host more sponsorship information, look no further than Jersey Watch’s easy sports website builder. Making sure your information is front and center can help streamline the process and make finding sponsors even easier.
