When sponsorship starts to work as an acquisition channel and changes the commercial conversation for rights holders.”

In our last article, we looked at how AI is moving sport from a one-to-many experience to something far more individual. And with 85% of fans in IBM’s 2025 global study¹ seeing value in AI being part of their sports experience, the direction of travel is clear. And of those 20,000 fans, across 12 countries, personalised content was among their leading priorities.

But for sponsors and rights holders alike, the more pressing question is this: what does it mean for the value of a partnership, and for the ability to win new customers through it?

The efficiency trap

Much of the early conversations around AI in sponsorship have centred on doing things faster and more efficiently: automated reporting, logo detection across broadcast and social, quicker content production and responsive analysis. All useful. All increasingly accessible. But all rapidly becoming standard.

But when every rights holder and every brand has access to the same tools, efficiency stops being an advantage. It simply makes it easier to produce more of the same content and activations, that add to the noise.

The opportunity lies elsewhere.

From exposure to relevance

For years, commercial value in sponsorship has been built largely around reach and exposure. But increasingly, the more important question is becoming: who did we actually move?

Fan data is becoming an important part of how sports organisations create and demonstrate commercial value. Instead of simply delivering an audience, rights holders can increasingly understand who that audience is, what interests them and how they engage – giving sponsors more targeted and measurable ways to create value.

AI takes this further.

From audience to customer

The shift becomes most valuable when personalised AI-enabled activation shortens the path, and a sponsor can identify engaged fans, understand what they respond to and offer something relevant at the right moment. And this is when sponsorship starts to work as an acquisition channel with measurable steps along the journey: attention, opt-in, first interaction, conversion and loyalty.

It also changes the commercial conversation for rights holders. Rather than selling inventory such as boards, bibs and broadcast slots, they can start to sell outcomes: qualified leads, app sign-ups, first-time buyers and lasting customer relationships.

Proving what it’s worth

Personalisation also has the potential to tackle one of sponsorship’s oldest challenges: proving value. When activity is tied to individual fan journeys rather than blended audience estimates, sponsors can connect investment to behaviour: who engaged, what they did next and what that was worth.

This does not make attribution simple – sponsorship rarely operates in isolation from other marketing activity of course – but it can create a more useful evidence base for understanding contribution, optimising activity and planning future investment; making renewals easier to justify and giving both sides a shared, credible basis for planning.

The commercial proposition becomes less about the size of an audience and more about the quality of the relationship that can be built with it.

The trust test

None of this works without trust. Our previous article noted that fans’ acceptance of AI depends on it delivering something genuinely useful and personal, while concerns about authenticity remain. The same applies to sponsors. Personalisation that feels intrusive, or that is built on data fans didn’t knowingly share, can undermine and damage the very relationship sponsorship depends on.

The brands that succeed will:
• Earn consent openly, giving fans a clear reason to share their data
• Be relevant, not intrusive, using insight to be useful rather than simply demonstrating how much they know
• Keep the human element, leveraging AI to scale authentic connection rather than replace it

Storytelling is still the differentiator

AI can identify the fan, the moment and the message. It can’t make that message matter.

That remains the job of storytelling. And the sponsors that stand out won’t necessarily be those with the most data, but those that use insights to create stories and experiences that feel genuinely relevant to each fan and true to the sport they love.

Where to start

For sponsors and rights holders alike, the starting point is simple:
1. Define the outcome first, whether awareness, acquisition or loyalty, before choosing the technology
2. Audit what you know about your fans, and where the gaps are
3. Start small: one platform, one fan segment, one measurable goal, then scale what works
4. Build the consent and data foundations early, because everything else depends on them

AI will make many aspects of sponsorship faster, more scalable and more measurable. That’s the easy part. The lasting advantage will go to those who use it to make partnerships more personal, more human and more provable.

For further insight into how to shape sponsorship storytelling to drive acquisition and loyalty, please contact us.

¹ IBM Newsroom https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-08-18-ibm-study-sports-fans-demand-more-dynamic-digital-content,-powered-by-ai