Have not seen any potential in sports sponsorship yet? Then you should take a look at the numbers recently published by Statista.com. They investigated the global sports sponsorship market including athletes, teams and leagues, events, governing bodies and federations. The total sum of corporate sponsorship funding mounts up to no less than 30.87 billion US dollars per year! However, the distribution of these funds also reveals major problems in the sports sponsorship market.
REGION: Africa obtains only 1% of the total share
Unsurprisingly, the lion’s share of the total sports sponsorship lies in Europe and North America, combing 66% together. In contrast, Asian and Oceanian countries get only 8% of the funding, Latin America 5% and Africa just 1%. Although this one percent represents more than 300 million USD after all. The remaining 19% account for global competitions and athletes such as the Olympics, which cannot be classified to one region.
SPORTS: A 10 billion USD gap between football and all other kind of sports
Regarding different kinds of sports, football takes the pole position as the recipient of sports sponsorship. With 12.84 billion USD there exists a massive gap to the second most sponsored sport: racing, which covers 2.5 billion USD. It is followed by basketball, Olympic sports and American football at almost the same level of funding as racing.
INDUSTRY: Sport events receive less than 1% of the global sponsorship funding
More than 60% are covered by leagues and teams, accounting for a total of 19.37 billion USD. Next with 13 billion USD less are governing bodies, concealing 6.27 billion USD! Followed by federations accounting for a little more than 8% and only then its individual athletes with 2.11 billion USD or otherwise put less than 7%.
GENDER: 93% of the whole global sports sponsorship wind up in male sports
In other words female sports receive only 7% of the global sports sponsorship money! Moreover, only one out of the TOP 15 athletes with reference to their sponsorship income is female. Any guess who this might be? It is Serena Williams, the former World No. 1 in women’s single tennis. The problem is: men already dominate the leagues, hence they appear as more attractive for sponsors. Apart from that, women associations and teams lack financial resources to increase their appearance anyway and – to start from the very bottom – to develop their talents, resulting in a vicious cycle for women sports in gaining prominence.
All in all, these numbers show a huge inequality in sports sponsoring in all regards. The majority of the sports funding is concentrated on male football teams and leagues in Europe and North America. Especially individual athletes and women are far less supported than men and teams or governing bodies. By inviting athletes from all over the world to our platform and representing over 300 kinds of sports, we want to squeeze this gap. Do you want to join? Then check out our portfolio on Sponsoo.com.
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