Sponsorship Guidelines

Sponsorship & Corporate Partnership Inquiry Guidelines

We receive a high volume of inbound proposals and review each carefully to determine alignment with our corporate partnership mandate. The guidelines below are intended to set clear expectations and help prospective partners assess fit before submitting an inquiry.

 

Our Focus

We specialise in structuring long-term corporate and brand partnerships rather than one-off sponsorships tied to single events or isolated projects. Our work is designed to support sustained brand investment, ongoing activation, and strategic alignment across a rights holder’s broader portfolio of assets.

 

Planning & Lead Time

Based on our experience working with global brand clients, we typically require a four-to-six-month lead time to plan, structure, and execute partnership investments effectively. Inquiries with shorter timelines are rarely advanced.

We prioritise projects that offer meaningful activation and engagement opportunities before, during, and after a campaign or season. In most cases, brands allocate as much, if not more, budget toward activation as they do toward sponsorship rights themselves.

 

Funding Expectations

Projects are expected to be fully funded at baseline and not reliant on brands to underwrite the entire cost. We strongly encourage rights holders to co-invest in activation, typically at a minimum of 10% of the total sponsorship value, to ensure alignment, execution quality, and credibility with brand partners.

 

Engagement Structure

We do not operate on a commission-only or broker-style basis. All engagements are structured around a monthly retainer, applied as a draw against future commissions.

  • Typical engagement period: six months
  • Retainers are paid monthly and upfront
  • All retainers paid to date are fully deducted from commissions earned

Retainer payments stop immediately once a partner is secured, as all paid retainers are offset against the resulting commission.

 

Exclusivity

We customarily require agency exclusivity for the duration of the engagement. We are comfortable working alongside in-house teams where appropriate, provided roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.

In certain cases, partnership discussions may extend into Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) or strategic investment opportunities. These may be direct or via innovative startups and emerging businesses connected to your platform or ecosystem, including initiatives involving IR, AI, and Web3. Separate activation and innovation budgets may be available for such projects.

 

Further Context

The following articles are provided for background only and do not alter our engagement requirements:

 

Final note: We encourage prospective partners to review these guidelines carefully before reaching out. Inquiries that align with the above structure are prioritised.

 

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About Us

We are a brand partnership and sponsorship agency working with leading brands worldwide, connecting brands with rights holders since 2008.

We are based in Los Angeles and London, serving sport and entertainment, along with clients in industries ranging from fintech to fashion, with a current concentration on disruptive innovation platforms and strategy labs.

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Innovation Platform

A collaborative innovation platform bringing together corporate partners and CVCs, C-Suite leaders and mentors, ad, media, and pr agencies, multi-platform media outlets, academia, and government, along with disruptive labs, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, incorporating smart city initiatives, 15-minute cities projects, IoT, AI, machine learning, robotics, immersive and extended reality.

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