A rights holder can have a strong property, a sizeable audience and a perfectly respectable sponsorship deck. The brand can still decide to spend its money somewhere else. Or not spend it at all.
That’s the starting point for Rene Valencia, whose commercial experience spans more than twenty years with major rights holders. Sponsorship is a choice. The seller has to give the buyer a reason to make it.
Rene draws a useful distinction with media rights; a broadcaster needs content for its business. That creates a conversation about live coverage, highlights, exclusivity, platforms and price. A sponsorship conversation starts further back: why should this brand want this association in the first place?
An audience figure doesn’t answer that. A large following may contain relatively few of the customers a brand actually wants to reach. A global package may be less useful than selected markets, events or even specific sportspeople. The competition for the budget includes those alternatives, not just another rights holder selling a similar package.
Rene sees rights holders both overvaluing and undervaluing what they have. The difficulty is understanding what the opportunity is worth to a particular buyer. What the seller needs to raise and what the buyer can justify are different questions.
That is why so much of his work at IPSEM involves qualifying leads, finding the right people and developing a story for each brand. The property stays the same. The reason to buy it changes with the company on the other side of the table.
For a rights holder, this means looking beyond a list of available assets. Which customers does the brand want? In which markets? What could it do with the partnership that it cannot do as effectively elsewhere? And which parts of the package would it actually use?
For a brand, the same questions help distinguish an attractive sporting association from a useful commercial investment. A big audience helps, but the proposal still has to explain what the sponsorship will do for the business.
Rene puts it simply: “Sponsorship’s always an option. It’s never a necessity.” The seller’s job is to make the choice worthwhile.