Prove the partnership moved fans, not just the logo count
Shirt, stadium naming, league, event and athlete partnerships are bought on reach, screen time and media value. None of those tell you whether fans now connect your brand to the club, the league or the athlete, or think better of you for it. Feather measures exactly that, with the same exposed vs control method we use for every brand lift study.
Request DemoWhat sponsorship reports leave out
Most sports sponsorship reporting counts exposure. How often the logo appeared on matchday, how many seconds it was visible in the broadcast and what that screen time would have cost as advertising. Those numbers show the club or league partnership was seen. They don't show whether it changed anything.
The questions a sponsor actually needs answered are simpler and harder. Do fans know we are the partner? Do they link us to the club or league? Do they think better of our brand because of it?
Partnerships we measure
Shirt and kit sponsorship
Stadium and venue naming rights
League and competition partners
Events and tournaments
Athlete and ambassador deals
How it works
1.Agree the objective before anything fields.
Partnership awareness and brand image need different questions and sometimes different timing. We settle this with you first.
2.Run the survey alongside the activation campaign.
Short surveys run on mobile in the same environments as the campaign, split into people who saw it and a control group from the same environment who didn't.
3.Ask sponsorship-specific questions.
Alongside standard brand KPIs, we ask an aided sponsor question, for example "Which company is the official partner of [club]?", with the real sponsor among plausible alternatives.
4.Read the lift per KPI.
Each result is the difference between exposed and control, reported as Significant or Directional.
What we measure
Ad Recall
do people remember seeing the campaign.
Sponsor awareness
do they know who the sponsor is.
Brand Recall
do they know the sponsor brand.
Attribution
do they credit the advertising to the right brand.
Favorability
their overall impression of the sponsor brand.
Fan affinity
whether fans feel more positive towards the brand because of the club or event.
Timing matters, and we check it up front
Partnership awareness can only lift once the creative actually names the partnership. If a campaign runs a teaser phase before the announcement, measuring partnership awareness during the teaser returns close to nothing. We check the creative and the flight plan before fielding and recommend the phase that can answer your question. We time fielding around matchday, season start and tournament windows.
Proof
Our first sponsorship lift study measured an energy services brand's stadium naming partnership with a Bundesliga club in Germany in 2026, delivered with our media partner YOC.
Who it's for
Sponsors
who need to show the board what a partnership delivered beyond media value.
Clubs, leagues and rights holders
who want measured brand outcomes in their renewal conversations.
Agencies and sports marketing agencies
planning activation campaigns around a sports sponsorship.
FAQ
Can you measure a sponsorship before it's announced?
You can measure a baseline. Partnership awareness only lifts once the campaign tells people about the partnership, so we time the main measurement to the announcement phase.
Does this replace media value reporting?
No. Media value tells you how much exposure you got. Sponsorship Lift tells you what that exposure changed. Most sponsors use both.
How many responses do we need?
It depends on the decision the result has to support. Our article on sample size explains how we set it. Read the article
Which markets?
We run studies across Europe through our media partners. Ask us about your market.
Can you measure a whole season?
Yes. We can run reads at key points across a season and show how sponsor awareness builds.
Find out what your next campaign changed.
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