Inside the Minds of Commercial Teams in Sport & Entertainment: 2025 Sentiment Report

How commercial leaders in sport really feel about sponsorship, storytelling, and career clarity in 2025

I’m Niru, and each week I tackle reader questions about commercial strategy, partnerships, comms and growth in the sports and entertainment industry. Send me your questions, and in return, I’ll humbly offer actionable, real-talk advice.

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Over the last 6 months, I’ve interviewed dozens of commercial leaders across sport and entertainment. Brand-side sponsors, rights holders, agency heads, partnership managers, and senior marketers who oversee multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals.

They spoke honestly, without the polish or filters you typically see in public-facing announcements.

They opened up about what’s quietly weighing them down day-to-day, and the challenges they’re facing behind closed doors.

And the truth came through clearly: The commercial side of sport is dealing with a growing gap between ambition and reality, structurally, creatively, and emotionally.

This breakdown pulls from 30+ hours of candid conversations, direct voice notes, late-night DMs, and personal follow-ups with the operators who are living it.

Our biggest takeaways

• Sponsorship budgets are spent first, justified later, and it’s draining teams.

• Brands talk big on purpose, but hesitate when it’s time to act.

• Mid-level burnout is real, hidden, and quietly eroding team strength.

• Agencies still pitch like it’s 2018, and brands notice the disconnect.

• Companies hold valuable stories but lack a system to tell them effectively.

• Impressions are dominating sponsorship measurement, and everyone’s tired of it.

• Internal misalignment is silently diluting even the strongest ideas.

Let’s dig into the 7 takeaways:

Takeaway 1: Sponsorship goals are unclear, even when the money’s already spent

It’s surprising how often sponsorships begin without clear objectives. Commercial leaders frequently find themselves handed major investments—often in the millions—and told, essentially, "figure it out." The result is teams scrambling to retrofit strategic value into partnerships after the fact, rather than shaping them intentionally from the start.

One executive described this vividly: "We committed millions, but when we asked what the goals were, leadership shrugged. They expected us to define success after the check was signed."

This backwards process leaves teams stuck in justification mode. They chase KPIs without clarity, deliver reports that feel hollow, and ultimately struggle to articulate to leadership exactly why they did the deal in the first place. It's not just frustrating, it puts the entire partnership at risk from day one.

Without upfront alignment, sponsorships drift aimlessly, weakening the long-term narrative and leaving everyone involved questioning if the investment ever truly mattered.