advanced theory and practice in sport marketing - Marshalls University

perception of their company, increasing community involvement in the target
area, and enhancing personnel relations by offering opportunities for employees
to attend sponsored events, including attendance at hospitality areas. The
goals of sport brands as a result of sponsorship include taking in additional revenue
from the agreement, and increasing target market awareness, image sales,
and market share.
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
Dean Bonham, Chairman and CEO
The Bonham Group, Denver, Colorado
As President of the Denver Nuggets in the late 1980s, I was charged with
putting a price on the team’s sponsorship inventory at McNichols Arena.
Ownership’s approach to this valuation process was “need-based”: they
needed a certain amount of money to meet their financial obligations, so
I was told to charge that amount for the team’s sponsorships. I disagreed
with this approach and, instead, formulated a “value-based” approach
linked to empirical criteria that included the location of sponsorship exposure,
the number of impressions it would generate on an annual basis and its
integration with other sponsorship elements. The result was a revenue figure
that was substantially higher than the one initially requested.
After leaving the Nuggets, I formed The Bonham Group in 1988, offering
sponsorship-evaluation services, as well as advice on the sale and negotiation
of sponsorships. The goal from the beginning was to provide properties with
a defensible basis for marketing their sponsorship inventory. This led to the
development of the TBG Property Analysis ® , a document designed to identify
all of a property’s relevant sponsorship benefits; to calculate the total
number of impressions and value that would be generated through these benefits;
and to create sponsorship packages based on the benefits. Because it
involved proprietary methods of valuation, the process for arriving at these
values would later be trademarked. Early users of this service were colleges
(Syracuse), national governing bodies (USA Wrestling) and entertainment
entities (House of Blues, Motown).
As the era of accountability in sponsorship activity gained steam in the
early 1990s, corporations became enamored with “media analyses,” the
quantification and evaluation of their in-broadcast corporate exposure (logos,
signage, and audio mentions). Other agencies enjoyed success in marketing
this service, despite their simplistic methodologies that led to inflated valuations.
Sensing a desire for a more conservative and “real world” approach, we
began offering media analyses. Early clients were IBM and FedEx.
It also became clear that a sophisticated method of identifying a property’s
sponsorship value, such as that used in the TBG Property Analysis ® , would
also be useful to corporations who wanted to evaluate existing or potential
268 ADVANCED THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SPORT MARKETING