Local business sponsorship: how much should a community club charge?

It's the question every committee wrestles with before sponsorship season: what do we actually put on the invoice? The honest answer is that there's no single "right" number — and any figure someone quotes you as the going rate should be treated with suspicion. What you can charge depends on your club, your reach and what you're offering. Here's how to work it out with confidence.

Why "how much" has no single answer

Sponsorship isn't a fixed product with a sticker price. A junior netball club with 60 families and a suburban footy club with 800 members and a licensed clubroom are selling completely different things, even if both offer "a jersey logo". Before you land on a number, look at what genuinely drives the value you're offering:

• Audience size and engagement — how many members, families and supporters you reach, and how often they actually pay attention
• Digital and game-day reach — a logo seen only on a fence one afternoon a week is worth less than one seen weekly in an app, a newsletter and at the ground
• Signage locations and quantity — a single boundary sign versus prime placement on the scoreboard, the clubroom wall and the team bench
• Exclusivity — being the only insurer, café or physio associated with the club is worth a premium over sharing the space with three others
• Length of term — a three-year commitment is worth more per year to you (and often to them) than a one-season trial
• Added extras — hospitality on finals day, naming rights to an event, a social-media shout-out, a stall at your gala day

Two clubs down the road from each other can justifiably charge very different amounts. The goal isn't to match a benchmark — it's to price what you actually deliver.

Three ways to price a package

There are three common approaches, and the best proposals blend them:

• Cost-based — start from what you need to raise. If new jerseys and ground fees come to a certain figure, work backwards to how many sponsors at what level covers it. Simple, but it ignores what your exposure is actually worth.
• Comparable-based — look at what similar local clubs of your size and sport charge. Useful as a sanity check, but treat it as a rough guide only; you rarely know what's really included in their packages.
• Value-based — price on what the exposure is worth to the business. A local business that would otherwise spend on advertising to reach the same families may happily pay more than your costs require.

Where you can, lean value-based. Cost-based pricing tends to leave money on the table, and comparable-based pricing anchors you to whatever the club next door happened to guess. Framing your package around the audience and exposure a sponsor receives lets you charge what it's genuinely worth.

Example tiered packages

The figures below are illustrative examples only — not market rates. Real numbers depend entirely on your club's size, reach, sport and region, and what you include. Treat these as a shape to adapt, then set your own prices:

• Bronze (as a guide, a few hundred dollars) — logo on your website and club app sponsor page, a social-media thank-you, and a mention in the newsletter. A friendly entry point for small local traders.
• Silver (as a guide, mid three to low four figures) — everything in Bronze, plus a boundary sign at the ground, logo on training tops, and a spot in your member loyalty offers.
• Gold (as a guide, several thousand and up) — front-of-jersey or naming rights, premium signage, hospitality on finals day, event naming, and exclusivity within their industry.

Keep inclusions clear and don't over-promise. A sponsor who can see exactly what each dollar buys is far easier to say yes to — and far easier to renew.

Don't undersell the digital exposure

The old sponsorship pitch was a fence sign and a line in the finals-day program. If that's all you're offering, you'll price low — because that's all it's worth. Bundling your digital reach is how you justify the higher tiers.

With ClubApp, sponsors can have a presence in your club app, and you can run sponsor loyalty — members show their digital membership card with participating sponsors to unlock offers, giving businesses real foot traffic rather than just a logo. Add newsletter placements and a spot in your club shop, and a sponsor is buying ongoing, trackable exposure to an engaged audience — not a sign nobody reads. That's a stronger, more defensible reason to charge Gold-tier rather than Bronze-tier prices.

Practical tips for setting your rates

• Offer a small number of clear tiers. Three is plenty. Too many options stall decisions; a tight ladder makes it easy to pick and easy to upgrade.
• Make renewal easy. The cheapest sponsorship dollar to win is the one you already have. Set clear terms, send a simple renewal well before the season ends, and keep the paperwork light.
• Show sponsors their return. A quick end-of-season note — how many members were reached, offers redeemed, posts shared — turns a donation into an investment they'll want to repeat, and makes your next price rise far easier to justify.

Ultimately, the right price is the one you can stand behind because you know what sits behind it. Work out your reach, package it clearly, lean on the value your club delivers — and quote it without flinching.