Every youth league, school athletic department, and nonprofit that starts building a sponsorship program runs into the same question first: what do we actually charge? There's no single right answer — a jersey patch for a 10-team rec league and a stadium naming right for a 5A high school football program aren't the same product — but the same handful of factors drive price in every case. Here's how to think through it.
Ignore "industry average" numbers you find online — they're almost always for a different type of organization in a different market. Instead, price against these five factors:
- Audience size and reach. How many families, players, siblings, and spectators does your organization touch across a season? A 200-family league reaches more households than a 40-family one, and pricing should reflect that.
- Asset type and visibility. A logo on a field banner seen at every home game is worth more than a small mention in a monthly newsletter. Jersey placements, worn at practice and every game, tend to command the highest per-unit value because they're the most repeated impression.
- Exclusivity. A sponsor who's the only auto dealer represented in your program will pay more than one competing for attention alongside five others in the same category.
- Season length and frequency. A sponsorship that runs a full season (or year-round, for a multi-sport club) is worth more than a single tournament weekend.
- Local market size. A sponsorship in a metro of 5 million people isn't priced the same as one in a market of 200,000 — not because the value to the sponsor differs in kind, but because the addressable local business budget differs.
Instead of pricing every asset individually and hoping a business does the math themselves, most successful sponsorship programs bundle assets into tiers — commonly Gold, Silver, and Bronze — each combining a set of benefits at a fixed price point. This does two things: it gives a business an easy decision to make ("which tier fits our budget?") instead of an overwhelming menu, and it lets you set a higher-anchor price (Gold) that makes Silver and Bronze look like clear value by comparison.
A typical structure looks something like:
- Gold: Exclusive category rights, largest signage placement, jersey or uniform patch, top billing in digital/newsletter mentions, and a title sponsorship of a marquee event.
- Silver: Shared category (non-exclusive), mid-size signage, digital mentions, and a season-long presence without the marquee event tie-in.
- Bronze: Entry-level signage or a single digital placement — the easiest "yes" for a first-time sponsor to test the relationship.
Most first-time sponsorship programs price too low, because they're anchoring off what feels "fair to ask a local business" rather than what the exposure is actually worth. Community sports sponsorships consistently outperform traditional local advertising on trust and recall — that's real, measurable value most organizations don't price in. Before you set a number, model out what your actual reach is worth compared to what a local business would otherwise spend on a comparable ad buy.
Zubie Five's free Asset Valuation calculator walks through your specific assets — signage, jerseys, digital placements, event naming rights — and builds Gold/Silver/Bronze pricing based on your organization's actual reach, not a generic template.
🧮 Try the Free Value Calculator →Pricing is only half the job — you still need to present it in a way that gets a response. See our Sponsorship Proposal Template for a section-by-section breakdown of what to include.
We build the valuation, the packages, and the pitch — then find and close your sponsors. No upfront cost, commission-only.
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