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Benchmark report · 2026
The State of
Corporate Sponsorship 2026
Corporate sponsorship keeps growing in 2026, yet sponsors barely measure what they buy. The latest figures, for 2025, put the European market at a record €34.45 billion, with under 1% of it spent on measurement. This report benchmarks your program on activation, measurement, governance and compliance.
Published September 2026 · 32 verified sources · ~20-minute read
European sponsorship · 2025
€34.45bn
+4.7% year on year, a record
72% goes to sport
Activation ratio
0.81:1
activation spend per €1 of rights fees
18% reach 1:1
Measurement budget
<1%
of sponsorship spend goes to measurement
76% rank ROI a top-three challenge
Data from
ESA
|
Nielsen Sports
|
WFA
|
Lumency
|
IEG
|
Deloitte
|
Sporsora
|
ANA
|
IPA
|
YouGov
|
Ampere Analysis
|
Play the Game
TL;DR
Key findings
1
A record market, led by sport
European sponsorship reached a record €34.45 billion in 2025, up 4.7% on the previous year. Sport took 72% of that, growing 5.9%, while arts, culture and cause sponsorship grew only 1.8%.1 Growth is concentrated in sport.
2
Activation spend lags behind rights fees
Sponsors that track activation spend average just 0.81:1 against rights fees, and only 18% reach the classic 1:1 benchmark.10 Most, in other words, underinvest in the work that brings a deal to life.
3
Measurement is underfunded
Sponsors spend under 1% of their budgets on measurement, yet 76% of them rank proving return on investment (ROI) among their top three challenges.12,13 In practice, teams are asked to prove results with almost no budget for doing so.
4
Awareness is still the main measure
Brand awareness remains the most common measure, used by 84% of brand owners (the companies buying the sponsorship), with consideration next at 65%.12 Commercial outcomes such as sales are still the exception, so most programs report on attention rather than on business results.
5
Governance is spreading
More than half of brand owners, 53%, now run a governance model with written rules.12,13 Yet only 36% score activation results the same way across their whole portfolio.11 Rules are spreading faster than consistent scoring.
6
Gambling money is leaving football
From 2026-27, Premier League clubs lose shirt-front gambling sponsors, an estimated £80 million a year across 11 of 20 clubs.17 Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium have already restricted or banned gambling sponsorship, though Italy may now reverse its ban.20,21,18,19
7
Women's sport is growing fastest
Women's-only deals across Europe's Big Five football leagues rose 53% to 181 in 2025/26.27 Deloitte forecasts US$3 billion in global women's sport revenue for 2026, but Europe takes only 14% of it, room for sponsors to grow.6
8
Budgets are shifting toward sponsorship
Brand owners now put an average 11% of their marketing budgets into sponsorship and activation.12 At the same time, the share of brands planning to cut sponsorship nearly halved, from 31% to 17%.12 Sponsorship is gaining share of the marketing budget, not losing it.
Chapter 1
The sponsorship market in 2026
Sponsorship spending keeps climbing in 2026, in Europe and worldwide alike. The latest full-year figures, for 2025, put the European market at a record €34.45 billion, its third straight year of growth since sponsorship returned to its pre-pandemic level.1,3 Globally, rights fees alone reached US$97.5 billion in 2024.5
Together they show that sponsorship is no longer a small line in the marketing budget but a large market that is still growing. This chapter looks at Europe first, then at the global reference points that put the European figures in context.
€34.45bn
European sponsorship spend in 2025, a record
72%
of that total went to sport
6.26bn
Germany, Europe's largest national market
+14%
growth in Spain, the fastest-growing major market
Europe: three years of growth, led by sport
The European market has now grown for three years in a row. It rose 6.2% to €30.86 billion in 2023 and 6.6% to €32.91 billion in 2024.3,2 In 2025 it added another 4.7% to reach €34.45 billion, a slower pace but a new record.3,2,1
Sport took €24.79 billion of the 2025 total, which is 72% of all spend.1 It also grew faster than the market as a whole, at 5.9%.1 Non-sport sponsorship, which covers arts, culture, entertainment, festivals and social causes, reached €9.66 billion, up 1.8%.1
That segment is still recovering from the pandemic: at €9.49 billion in 2024, it remained below its 2019 peak of €10.43 billion.2 Growth is therefore concentrated in sport, while the non-sport side has yet to regain the ground it lost.
The global reference points
Football is the most sponsored sport in the world, with football deals making up 41% of all sports sponsorships worldwide.8 At the top of that market sit venue naming rights, the fee a brand pays to put its name on a stadium or arena. US brands spent nearly US$891 million on them across seven major leagues in 2025.7
European deals are smaller but follow the same logic. FC Barcelona's Spotify Camp Nou agreement is worth about €20 million a season, and Atlético Madrid's Riyadh Air Metropolitano deal about €10 million a season through 2033.9 These figures set the ceiling. The benchmarks in the next chapter show what an ordinary corporate program looks like beneath it.
Women's sport: the fastest-moving segment
Deloitte forecasts global women's elite sport revenue of US$3 billion in 2026, up 25% from US$2.4 billion in 2025.6 That is 340% above the 2022 level, in only four years.6 Commercial revenue, which combines sponsorship, partnerships and merchandising, is the largest category at US$1.35 billion, or 45% of the total.6
Europe's share of that revenue is only 14% (US$434 million), while North America takes 54% (US$1.64 billion).6 That gap between a fast-growing segment and a small revenue base leaves plenty of room for European sponsors to enter.
DE
Germany
Germany is Europe's largest national sponsorship market, with €6.26 billion of spend in 2025.
UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is the second largest market at €6.15 billion, and its 10.5% growth is closing the gap on Germany.
FR
France
French sports partnerships reached a record €1.78 billion in 2025, up 6%, with football alone taking 40% of that spend.
Takeaway: the market is growing, but mostly in sport, in a few large countries and in women's sport. Your 2026 question is not whether to sponsor but whether you can prove a growing budget is spent well. This report benchmarks exactly that, across activation, measurement, governance and compliance.
Chapter 2
Operations benchmarks: activation, governance, discipline
Chapter 1 covered the market, which you cannot control. This chapter turns to what you can control: how the money is run once a partnership is signed. The benchmarks below tell one story: sponsors have become better at knowing what they spend, and much less consistent at judging what it returns.
They come from two buyer-side studies: the first is the 2025 study of more than 40 brand owners by the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) and Lumency.12,13 The second is a 2018 survey of 182 US marketers by the ANA and MASB, still the most recent large read on measurement practice.14
0.81:1
average activation spend per €1 of rights fees
22%
cannot state their activation spend, down from 41%
36%
score activation the same way every time
53%
run a governance model with written rules
How sponsors run the money
Source note: the WFA x Lumency study, Global Sponsorships and Partnerships 2025, surveyed more than 40 brand owners who together represent US$8.2 billion in sponsorship investment.12,13 It therefore covers a large share of the money, even though it surveys only about 40 companies. The second source is the accountability study by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and MASB (Marketing Accountability Standards Board), a survey of 182 US sponsorship-buying marketers in 2018.14
Optimy customer
eins energie in Sachsen, a regional German utility, moved its sponsorship intake out of Excel and into one digital flow with Optimy. Every request now follows the same path from application to decision, and the team sees its whole portfolio in one place.
Takeaway: a competitive 2026 program runs on four habits. It combines one intake flow, activation spend at 1:1 or above, consistent scoring, and a measurement clause agreed before signing. Fewer than four in ten sponsors manage the last three today, so fixing even one moves you ahead of most of the sector.
Chapter 3
Measurement and technology: under 1% of the budget
Knowing what you spend is one thing, and proving what it returns is another. Proving return on investment (ROI) is the most cited challenge in the sector's most recent buyer-side study. In the WFA and Lumency study, 76% of the 38 sponsors who answered that question put measuring and showing ROI in their top three challenges.13
Budget and resource management followed at 42%, with activation also at 42%, so the next two challenges are about resources and delivery rather than proof.13 Yet most sponsors still spend less than 1% of their budgets on measuring impact.12,13 Teams are expected to show results while their budget does not cover the work of measuring them, and that gap is the central problem of 2026.
76%
rank proving ROI a top-three challenge
<1%
of sponsorship budgets goes to measurement
67%
of brands say they have a measurement framework
37%
have a standard process for measuring ROI
Frameworks exist, but practice is uneven
Brands say the sector has moved forward. Two thirds of brands (67%) report having a measurement framework, an agreed set of metrics and a method to collect them, to justify sponsorship spend.5 And 78% of CMOs (chief marketing officers) prioritize ROI measurement for sponsorship.5
The last large survey of actual practice, the 2018 ANA and MASB study of 182 US sponsorship-buying marketers, found much lower figures. It found that only 37% of them had a standard process for measuring sponsorship ROI,14 and only 40% wrote measurement requirements into their contracts.14 Having a framework and using one are evidently not the same thing.
Real practice trails the reported progress
Part of that difference is a matter of dates. Those framework and CMO figures come from 2024, while the most recent large survey of actual practice dates from 2018, so the two cannot be compared directly.
A related discipline is improving faster: the share of brand owners who cannot state their activation spend fell from 41% to 22% between 2023 and 2025.13 That figure tracks spending discipline rather than proof of results, but it shows how fast the sector can move.
AI already values media exposure, but not yet the sponsorship itself
AI is already mainstream in one area, media valuation, which means putting a money value on the exposure a logo gets on screen. Nielsen tracks millions of hours of broadcast content, detects brand exposure with AI and checks the results with expert human analysts.15 Its 2025 data valued the ten biggest team sponsorship deals at almost US$515 million in combined media value.16
So the tools to value a logo exist, but the process that connects a sponsorship request to a business outcome mostly does not exist yet. Media value is therefore the easy half of the answer, and the harder half still has to be designed into the contract and the reporting.
Takeaway: measurement decides which 2026 budgets survive. Move your measurement spend from below 1% to a fixed line in the budget, and write outcome metrics into every contract before you sign it. Both steps are smaller than they sound, yet together they give you something concrete to show at every renewal.
Chapter 4
What changes in 2026: rules and money
In 2026, a sponsorship can be well run, well measured and still not allowed, because rules increasingly decide what you can buy.
At the same time, budgets keep moving toward sponsorship. Brand owners already commit an average 11% of their marketing budget to it, and the share planning to cut spending has nearly halved, from 31% to 17%.12
Three things have changed.
- Categories are being removed. Whole categories such as gambling are being removed from shirts and stadiums.
- Hospitality falls under anti-corruption law. Hospitality now falls under anti-corruption law.
- Tax treatment changes the cost. Whether tax law treats a payment as a donation or as sponsorship changes what it really costs.
Gambling paid for much of European football, so its bans are the natural place to start. The timeline below shows how they spread across Europe:
Football's reliance on gambling money explains why these bans are causing such disruption. Across Europe's top 20 leagues in 2024-25, betting was the number one shirt-sponsorship sector in 9 of the 20 leagues.22 Betting brands also accounted for 15% of all sponsors in those leagues.22
Each exit frees shirt fronts and stadium inventory for other categories to buy. It is worth checking who takes the gambling brand's place, because that partner will sit next to you on the shirt or in the stadium.
Compliance and tax: three rules every European sponsor should know
FR
Hospitality under Sapin II
Sponsorship hospitality, such as inviting clients to matches, falls under Sapin II, France's anti-corruption law.23 France raised the maximum fine on companies from €1 million to €5 million in April 2024, under Law 2024-364.23
Sustainability is now a selection criterion
Category rules and compliance are not the only screens a request has to pass, because sustainability has become a governance topic for sponsors too. The European Sponsorship Association set up a Sustainability Working Group in 2023, with 31 member organizations.26 Its January 2024 survey ranked sustainability and ESG, short for environmental, social and governance criteria, as the industry's number one trend for the fifth time in six years.26
On the rights-holder side, more than 250 sports organizations have signed the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, including 39 football clubs and governing bodies.30 That signature is a public commitment you can check, and one you can write into your partnership criteria.
€150m
a year back to Italian football if the ban is repealed
£80m
Premier League shortfall a year as gambling sponsors exit
11%
of the average marketing budget already goes to sponsorship
+14.7%
IPA Bellwether score for events budgets, Q1 2026
Sponsorship budgets keep rising despite the rules
UK data confirms the shift. Each quarter, the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) Bellwether report asks companies whether they raised or cut their marketing budget. It then reports the gap as a single score, where a positive number means more companies raised budgets than cut them.
In Q1 2026 that score was +14.7% for events, the category closest to sponsorship, the strongest reading of any marketing line. Overall marketing budgets reached +7.3%, their highest in almost two years.28 The pattern from Chapter 1 therefore holds: the money keeps arriving, so your 2026 task is proving it is spent well.
One reason the money keeps arriving is that sponsorship works on the audience it reaches. Football fans think better of a brand that sponsors their competition than the public does: 67% say so, against 54% of the general population.8
Women's sport and wider portfolios are where the new money is going
Women's-only sponsorship deals across Europe's Big Five football leagues rose 53% since 2022/23, to 181 agreements in 2025/26.27 Combined men's and women's deals grew too, up 47% to 677.27 Fan interest is rising at the same time. Across those five markets, 17% of people now follow a women's football club, and that share has grown by about a fifth (21%) since late 2023.27
The same shift shows in the US, where deals in women's sport grew 12% year on year, against 8% across men's professional leagues.29 The case for moving now rests on a mismatch: deal counts and audiences are both rising, while Europe's revenue base is still small.
Portfolios are widening too. The average brand now spans 2.2 sponsorship categories, up 73% in two years.12 Twice as many sponsor music and arts as in 2023, so your next partnership is more likely than before to sit outside sport.12
Agencies are getting bigger and more demanding
The agencies you negotiate with are also getting bigger, backed by institutional investors. Silver Lake, an investment firm, bought Endeavor for US$25 billion in March 2025 and removed it from the stock market.31 In November 2025, Goldman Sachs bought Excel Sports Management for about US$1 billion.31
Those owners expect hard negotiation and documented results, so you need the same standard of evidence on your side of the table.
Takeaway: screen every request in 2026 for category rules, compliance exposure, tax treatment and sustainability commitments, and keep the audit trail. Do this now, because more money is arriving and the agencies on the other side are bigger and better prepared. A scored, documented decision defends your budget better than one made by email.
Chapter 5
Benchmark yourself
This chapter turns the four before it into a scorecard. It asks one question across nine dimensions: is your program better run and better proven than the sector you have just read about? Every row draws on the benchmarks in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Give yourself one point for each row where you match or beat the benchmark, then read the band that fits your score.
Your score sorts you into three bands
- 7-9: you are the benchmark. Publish your criteria and your measurement approach, so that rights holders can bring you proposals that already fit them.
- 4-6: you have a solid core, so close the two easiest gaps first. A measurement clause is one paragraph in your next contract, and consistent scoring is one template that you apply to every activation.
- 0-3: start with intake, because one flow with published criteria and a scored decision brings order to incoming requests and creates the data that every other row needs. Then set your activation ratio, which is a budget rule rather than a redesign.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
How big is the European sponsorship market in 2026?
What is a good activation-to-rights ratio for sponsorship?
How much do sponsors spend on measurement?
Which countries have banned gambling sponsorship in sport?
How fast is women's sport sponsorship growing?
Is sponsorship spending in France treated as a donation for tax?
From request to result, with Optimy
Optimy is one platform for the whole sponsorship process, from intake and eligibility screening through scored selection and contract tracking to impact reporting. Companies, utilities and foundations use it to decide faster and to prove what their sponsorships deliver.
Methodology & sources
Every statistic in this report comes from the source named below, and we checked each one again against that source in September 2026, before publication. Where the data year differs from the publication year, we say so. Figures are reported as published: we made no estimates and filled no gaps. Where a survey covers one country or a small sample, such as the more than 40 brand owners in the WFA x Lumency study, the text says so. Charts use the cited figures only.
- European Sponsorship Association / Nielsen Sports, European Sponsorship Market Overview (2025 data, published March 2026) · sponsorship.org/european-sponsorship-market-reaches-e34-45bn-in-2025-as-growth-continues-across-all-sectors/
- European Sponsorship Association / Nielsen Sports, European sponsorship market 2024 (published 2025) · sponsorship.org/european-sponsorship-valued-at-e32-9bn-as-post-pandemic-recovery-continues/
- European Sponsorship Association / Nielsen Sports, European sponsorship market 2023 (published 2024) · sponsorship.org/european-sponsorship-valued-at-e30-9bn-as-industry-returns-to-pre-pandemic-levels/
- Sporsora / Nielsen Sports, Panorama des partenariats sportifs en France (2025 data) · sporsora.com/etude-sporsora-x-nielsen-sports-panorama-des-partenariats-sportifs-en-france/
- Lumency, Global Sponsorship Trends report (IEG and IEG/Edelman data, 2024) · lumency.co/2025/01/22/global-sponsorship-trends-report/
- Deloitte, Game Changers: Unlocking the Potential of Women's Sports (2026 forecast, 2025 actuals) · www.deloitte.com/uk/en/about/press-room/womens-elite-sports-revenues-2026.html
- SponsorUnited venue naming-rights data, reported by Forbes (2025) · www.forbes.com/sites/timnewcomb/2025/12/01/brands-spend-nearly-900-million-on-venue-naming-rights-in-us/
- Nielsen, 2025 Global Sports Report · www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/the-future-of-sport-nielsens-2025-report-reveals-growth-drivers/
- Finance Football, top stadium naming-rights deals (2024/25 values) · financefootball.com/en/2024/10/28/top-biggest-naming-rights-deals-2025/
- WFA in partnership with Lumency, activation-ratio findings (2025) · lumency.co/2025/06/25/why-activation-ratios-matter-2/
- WFA in partnership with Lumency, scoring sponsorship activation (2025) · lumency.co/2025/07/08/scoring-sponsorship-activation/
- World Federation of Advertisers, "4 changes taking place in sponsorships and partnerships" (WFA x Lumency 2025 study) · wfanet.org/knowledge/item/2025/12/17/4-changes-taking-place-in-sponsorships-and-partnerships
- WFA x Lumency, Global Sponsorships and Partnerships 2025 (40+ brand owners; n=38 for the ROI-challenges question, fielded mid-2025) · lumency.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/WFA_Global-Sponsorships-Partnerships-2025.pdf
- ANA / MASB, Improving Sponsorship Accountability Metrics (182 US sponsors, fielded 2018; latest large-scale wave) · themasb.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ANA-MASB_Improving-Sponsorship-Accountability-Metrics.pdf
- Nielsen, Sponsorship Media Value Benchmarking Report (2024-25 season) · www.nielsen.com/report/sponsorship-media-value-benchmarking-report/
- Nielsen Sports, Tops of Sports report (2025 media value data) · www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/nielsen-reveals-exclusive-new-data-and-insights-in-annual-tops-of-sports-report/
- Bettors Insider, Premier League front-of-shirt gambling ban, 2026-27 season · bettorsinsider.com/soccer/2026/08/18/premier-league-shirt-sponsorships-transform-this-season-as-20-year-gambling-sponsor-era-ends-under-new-uk-ban/
- Yogonet International, Dutch gambling sponsorship ban and Eredivisie CV estimate (2025) · www.yogonet.com/international/news/2025/01/06/90616-dutch-football-clubs-likely-to-experience-financial-hit-due-to-ban-on-gambling-commercials-sponsorships
- PowerPlay (sports law), Belgian ban on gambling advertising in sport (2025) · powerplay.be/belgian-ban-on-gambling-advertising-in-the-sports-sector/
- Focus Gaming News, Italy's Dignity Decree and the 2026 repeal move · focusgn.com/gambling-sponsorship-could-return-to-italian-sport-under-new-decree
- National Law Review, Spain's Royal Decree 958/2020 on gambling advertising and sponsorship · natlawreview.com/article/gambling-sponsorship-and-advertising-shakeup-spanish-football
- Play the Game, shirt-sponsorship sectors across Europe's top 20 leagues (2024-25) · www.playthegame.org/news/play-the-game-reveals-the-extent-of-footballs-reliance/
- Leto Legal, Sapin II sanctions after Law 2024-364 · www.leto.legal/guides/sanctions-loi-sapin-2
- Bpifrance Création, mécénat d'entreprise tax rules (Article 238 bis CGI) · bpifrance-creation.fr/encyclopedie/fiscalite-lentreprise/fiscalite-divers/mecenat-dentreprise-reduction-dimpot
- Superpotion, Loi Évin guide (sanctions and December 2024 bill) · superpotion.fr/loi-evin-guide-complet/
- European Sponsorship Association, Sustainability Working Group and annual trends survey (2024) · sponsorship.org/sustainable-sponsorship/
- Ampere Analysis, women's football sponsorship across the Big Five leagues (2025/26), via SVG Europe · www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/sponsorship-in-womens-football-surges-across-europe-amid-growing-fan-interest/
- IPA, Bellwether Report Q1 2026 · ipa.co.uk/news/bellwether-report-q1-2026
- SponsorUnited, 2024-25 Women in Sports Report · www.sponsorunited.com/insights/explosive-growth-of-womens-sports-offers-bopportunities-for-brands
- Football and Climate, signatories of the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework (2026) · www.footballandclimate.org/p/signing-up-is-not-delivering
- Loeb & Loeb, sports-agency consolidation and institutional capital (2025 deals) · www.loeb.com/en/insights/passle/2026/02/the-new-playbook-for-sports-agencies-consolidation-integration-and-institutional-capital
- YouGov, sponsor perception lifts from The Hundred 2026 (504 GB cricket fans, August 2026) · yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55511-did-sponsoring-the-hundred-2026-improve-perceptions-of-the-competitions-marketing-partners
About Optimy
Optimy is the platform that companies, utilities and foundations use to run sponsorship, grant and volunteering programs, from application to reporting. The organization featured in chapter 2, eins energie in Sachsen, is an Optimy customer, and its description comes from the published Optimy customer story. optimy.com
© 2026 Optimy · You may quote this report with attribution ("Optimy, The State of Corporate Sponsorship 2026") and a link to the source page.