American Express does a great job with its golf sponsorships, using them to obtain benefits for Cardmembers and reward them for paying an annual fee. Though they may not have Tiger Woods as a spokesperson anymore, I don’t think this has hurt them much due to the wide variety of valuable offers they have for golfers. Here are a couple things they have going right now. Friend of a Cardmember program Book [...]

This was a HUGE week for MMA. The UFC gained a blue-chip corporate sponsor in Anheuser-Busch, making Bud Light the league’s exclusive beer sponsor for 3 years. ProElite and CBS announced a multi-year partnership to put EliteXC events on broadcast TV (though it reportedly was a time buy and not a rights-fee based deal), a huge breakthrough for the sport. Both of these developments signify that [...]

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit in New York, which was organized by Pat Coyle of the Indianapolis Colts and sponsored by by UserPlane, ExactTarget, Powered and Cantaloupe.tv. The event was a collection of bright minds from professional sports teams, leagues, sponsors, agencies and consultants who came together to discuss web 2.0 opportunities and challenges. [...]

By the numbers, sports sponsorship continues to grow, but by other indications (major teams failing to secure sponsorships, sponsors failing to justify their investments), the sponsorship industry needs improvement. This all boils down to poor sponsorship valuation. There’s an interesting article in this month’s issue of SportBusiness International that discusses the fact that poor research [...]

InterContinental Hotels Group’s Crowne Plaza has done a great job of aligning itself with golf and reaching golf travelers in the first year of its sponsorship of the PGA TOUR Crowne Plaza Invitational. Crowne Plaza launched its first ever national ad campaign in April with golf-themed ads featuring national golf commentator/journalist David Feherty attempting to moderate an unscripted conversation [...]

I’d like to thank Darren Rovell over at CNBC’s SportsBiz for making us aware of the phenomenal 19-year old Serbian tennis player, Ana Ivanovic. She happens to be a pretty decent tennis player, too. Starting with this post, Rovell calls Ivanovic the next Maria Sharapova, and not just because of her looks- Ivanovic dominated Sharapova at the French Open semis earlier this year. In his [...]