Liveet Tips

How to Get Sponsors for an Event (and Keep Them Coming Back)

Otito Uche

21 Oct 2026 • 12 min read

Getting sponsors for an event comes down to something most organisers overlook: proving what the sponsorship delivered. In a 2025 World Federation of Advertisers study of more than 40 global brands, nearly three-quarters of sponsorship practitioners named measuring and demonstrating ROI as a top challenge. Yet less than 1% of sponsorship budgets typically go to measurement. The organiser who measures it for them becomes easy to say yes to, and hard to replace. If you wan to secure sponsorship year after year, then you should treat the first deal with a sponsor as the start of a renewal cycle, and plan for that renewal from the first conversation.

This guide covers the full process, from understanding what sponsors are actually buying to the post-event report that brings them back next year.

Why event sponsorship is harder to win and keep

Events are leaning on sponsorship more than ever. In American Express Global Business Travel's 2026 Meetings & Events Forecast, a YouGov survey of 601 meeting professionals across eight countries, more than a third said they are seeking supplementary funding, such as sponsorship, to offset rising costs.

It isn't easy money, though. In Event Academy's 2024 event marketing survey, 24.6% of organisers named finding and securing quality sponsors as their single biggest challenge.

Part of the difficulty sits with the sponsor. Brands keep spending on sponsorship but rarely invest in proving it works, which leaves the person who signed the deal with little to show their finance team.

What sponsors are actually buying

Sponsors usually come to an event for one of two reasons: to generate sales or to build their brand. Some want a mix, but they are looked at very differently.

	Commercial sponsors	Brand sponsors
What they want	Qualified leads, meetings with decision-makers, product trials, sales pipeline	Visibility, association with a respected event, audience reach, a CSR story
Who signs off internally	Sales and revenue leaders	Brand, communications or CSR teams
How they judge success	Leads captured, meetings held, deals that follow	Verified attendance, session reach, media coverage, social engagement, delegate feedback

The mistake is treating them the same way. A bank sponsoring a fintech summit to win corporate clients will not be satisfied with a large logo and a mention from the stage. A telco supporting a youth conference as part of its CSR programme may care much more about reach and public association than about a lead count.

Ask the question directly in your first conversation: what would make this sponsorship a success for you? Then build everything else around the answer.

Step 1: Know your audience before you pitch

Your audience is the product sponsors are buying, so describe it in verified numbers before you approach anyone. Pull together data from past editions, such as:

How many people registered and how many actually attended
Their job titles, seniority, industries and companies
Where they came from (cities and countries)
What they did at the event: sessions attended, meetings booked, booths visited

Attendance figures carry far more weight than registration numbers. Sponsors have learned that the two can differ widely, and they discount registration figures accordingly. This data forms the core of your sponsorship deck.

If this is your first edition, you're asking sponsors to buy an audience that doesn't exist yet. Close that gap with the strongest evidence you have:

Proxies for your audience: the size and profile of your community, mailing list or social following, plus the track record of the people organising
Confirmed speakers: a strong speaker line-up tells sponsors who will be in the room better than any projection
Registration milestones: share targets, then send updates as registrations come in so sponsors can watch momentum build
Founding sponsor packages: offer early sponsors a lower price in exchange for first refusal on next year's package. They take a risk on you, and you lock in a renewal conversation.
A make-good clause: if verified attendance falls below an agreed number, the sponsor gets extra benefits, such as additional content features or a discount on next year's package. Putting this in writing shows you stand behind your numbers.

Keep projections conservative. A first edition that beats a modest forecast earns more trust than one that misses an ambitious one.

A short list of well-matched sponsors will outperform a long list of companies with big budgets. Look for alignment in five areas:

Audience: Does the company sell to the people who attend your event?
Markets: Are they active in, or expanding into, the cities and countries your delegates come from?
Priorities: What products or services are they pushing right now?
Track record: Which events have they sponsored before, and at what level?
Values: Would being associated with your event help or confuse their brand?

Good places to look include the sponsor lists of similar events, companies advertising to your audience on LinkedIn and in industry publications, and your own delegate list. The companies sending staff to your event as attendees are often the warmest sponsorship prospects.

If you're organising in Nigeria, a handful of sectors fund most conference and exhibition sponsorship: banks, telcos, fintechs, and FMCG and beverage brands. Banks and telcos often have two separate doors, a marketing budget and a CSR or foundation budget, and they're judged on different things. A youth or education event may get a faster yes from the foundation team than from brand marketing, so find out which one you're pitching before you write the proposal.

Don't overlook the local subsidiaries of multinationals. Many already sponsor events abroad. As one Vanguard commentator argued, Nigerian companies that spend millions sponsoring conferences overseas should start demanding that those conferences be held at home. The budget exists. Local organisers win more of it by matching the professionalism, and above all the data, that sponsors get from international events.

Find the right person, not just the right company. A proposal sent to a generic info@ address rarely reaches anyone with budget. Match your contact to the sponsor's goal:

Lead-focused sponsors: head of sales, business development, or product marketing
Brand-focused sponsors: brand or marketing manager
CSR-focused sponsors: foundation, sustainability, or corporate affairs lead

Your own delegate list is the warmest route in. Someone from the company who attended last year can introduce you, or at least tell you who owns the budget. For larger deals, ask early whether procurement gets involved. Many banks and telcos run formal sponsorship request processes, and missing a submission window can cost you a year.

Step 3: Start 6 to 12 months before the event

Approach sponsors 6 to 12 months before your event, because most companies commit their marketing budgets well in advance. Ask a few weeks out and the money is usually already spent elsewhere. A practical timeline:

12 months out: Research sponsors and start building relationships.
9 months out: Make your first formal approach and share the opportunity.
6 months out: Present proposals, discuss objectives and negotiate.
3 months out: Confirm sponsorships and plan activations.

Check each sponsor's financial year and work backwards from it. Most Nigerian banks, telcos and listed companies run a January to December financial year and lock next year's budgets between September and November. If your event is in the first half of next year, your proposal needs to land before then, not in January. Some multinational subsidiaries follow their parent company's calendar instead. Guinness Nigeria, for example, runs a July to June year, which moves the budgeting window. If you can't tell, ask your contact directly: "When does your team set next year's sponsorship budget?"

Step 4: Design sponsorship packages around outcomes

The strongest sponsorship packages tie each tier to a result, such as leads or meetings, not just to logo size. Traditional levels (headline, platinum, gold, silver) are still useful because they give sponsors an easy way to compare price and prominence. Build outcomes into each one:

Lead-focused benefits: booth or exhibition space with lead capture, hosted meetings with pre-qualified delegates, a sponsored workshop with registration data shared afterwards, product demonstration slots
Brand-focused benefits: naming rights for a stage or session, speaking slots, branded networking areas, inclusion in pre-event and post-event content, media visibility
Shared benefits: a post-event report, delegate feedback on the sponsor's activation, and first refusal on next year's package

Category exclusivity at the top tier, where only one bank or one telco can take the headline slot, lets you charge a premium. Sponsored sessions are another standard option. Leave room to customise: the best activation ideas often come out of the conversation with the sponsor rather than a fixed menu.

How to price your sponsorship packages. Work through three checks, in order:

Set your floor from costs. Decide how much of the event budget sponsorship needs to cover, then split that across the packages you plan to sell. This is the minimum the event needs, not what each package is worth.
Test it against value to the sponsor. Ask what it costs them to reach the same people another way: a qualified lead from LinkedIn ads, a meeting booked by their sales team, or hosting their own event. If your package delivers that access for less, you can price above your floor.
Check the market. Find out what comparable events in your city and sector charge. Sponsors will compare, so know where you sit and be ready to explain the difference.

Limit the number of top-tier packages. One headline sponsor and two or three platinum slots create scarcity and make the top tier worth paying for. Price each tier on what it delivers, so a sponsor upgrading from gold to platinum can see exactly what the extra money buys.

Step 5: Agree on success metrics before the event

Agree in writing on what success looks like before the event, and base every projection on verified data. Overpromising is one of the fastest ways to lose a sponsor. If you project 5,000 delegates and 1,800 turn up, the damage goes beyond the attendance figure: the sponsor stops trusting everything else you report.

Sponsor goal	Metrics to agree on
Lead generation	Qualified leads captured, meetings held, demos given, cost per qualified lead
Brand visibility	Verified attendance, session attendance, social reach, media mentions
Thought leadership	Session attendance, session ratings, content views after the event
CSR or community	People reached, programme outcomes, coverage of the initiative

How to calculate cost per qualified lead. This is the most useful number for commercial sponsors, because it lets them compare your event with their other channels. Divide the sponsor's total cost by the number of qualified leads captured. For example (figures for illustration):

A fintech pays ₦6,000,000 for a gold package and spends ₦1,500,000 on its booth and staff. Total cost: ₦7,500,000.
Its team scans 240 badges. After filtering against its own criteria, 150 count as qualified leads.
Cost per qualified lead: ₦7,500,000 ÷ 150 = ₦50,000.

That number only means something next to the alternatives. If the fintech pays more than ₦50,000 for a qualified lead through other channels, your event is the cheaper route, and that's the sentence that gets the renewal approved.

Two things make the number trustworthy. First, agree in advance what counts as "qualified" (job title, company size, budget authority), so you're not arguing about it afterwards. Second, include the sponsor's activation costs, not just the package fee. A figure that leaves out real spending won't survive their finance team's review.

Step 6: Write a tailored event sponsorship proposal

A strong event sponsorship proposal is short, specific and built around one sponsor's goal. A generic proposal tells the sponsor you haven't thought about their business. Include:

A short opening that references the sponsor's priorities, such as a recent campaign, product launch or market expansion
Your audience profile, using verified data from past editions
The recommended package, with the reasoning behind it
Specific activation ideas that fit their brand
The success metrics you agreed in Step 5
Investment and deadlines

The more clearly you connect the sponsor's objective, your audience, the activation and the expected outcome, the stronger the proposal becomes.

Increasingly, sponsors score events before they commit. Edidiong Ekong, who has led marketing at Boomplay, Alerzo and Fireflies, rates every event on three questions: does it reach our target audience, can it convert into measurable business value, and will it deliver strong visibility? A no on any one kills the deal. Structure your proposal so each of those questions has a clear, evidenced answer.

Step 7: Capture the data as the event happens

Plan your data capture before the doors open, because evidence you don't collect on the day can't be rebuilt afterwards. This is where many sponsorships quietly fail. The event runs well, but registration data sits in one system and check-ins in another, while sponsor leads end up on spreadsheets, business cards or WhatsApp.

Use a check-in system that records who actually attended, not just who registered.
Give sponsors and exhibitors a reliable way to capture leads, such as badge scanning, so contacts don't end up on scraps of paper.
Track attendance at sponsored sessions.
Collect delegate feedback on sponsor activations through a short post-event survey.

Help sponsors before and after the event, not just during it. Offer pre-event meeting booking with delegates who opt in, and get captured leads to sponsors the same day. A lead followed up within days is worth far more than one followed up in a month.

Step 8: Send a post-event report within two weeks

The post-event report is where renewals are won, so send it within two weeks, while the event is still fresh in the sponsor's mind. A strong report covers:

Attendance: total verified attendance and the audience profile
Engagement: how many people interacted with the sponsor's booth, session or activation
Leads: how many qualified contacts the sponsor captured, and the cost per qualified lead
Feedback: what delegates said about the sponsor's presence
Delivery: each agreed deliverable, with evidence that it was delivered
Next steps: what you learned, and a clear recommendation, such as renew at the same level or upgrade, with the numbers that justify it. Sponsors increasingly run their own repeat-or-drop review, so give them the case before they build it themselves

The goal is to replace "Would you like to sponsor us again?" with "Here's what your sponsorship delivered, here's what we learned, and here's what we can do better next year." That turns a fresh sales pitch into a renewal conversation.

Remember who the report is really for. Your contact has to justify the spend to their own finance and leadership teams, and at a multinational subsidiary, sometimes to a regional office in Johannesburg, Dubai or London. Give them figures they can paste straight into an internal update, and include a one-page summary that makes sense to someone who never attended the event.

Step 9: Keep the relationship going all year

Sponsors who only hear from you when you need money are easy to lose, so stay in touch between editions with:

Updates on event planning and speaker announcements
Early previews of new formats or packages
Introductions to useful contacts in your network
Content from the event that features their participation

Once trust is established, aim for multi-year agreements. They give you predictable revenue and give the sponsor time to build on what worked.

Common event sponsorship mistakes to avoid

Sending the same proposal to everyone. Sponsors can tell, and it signals that you don't understand their business.
Selling logo placement instead of outcomes. Visibility alone is increasingly hard for sponsors to justify internally.
Asking at the last minute. Late requests usually lead to smaller budgets and weaker activations.
Promising numbers you can't verify. A missed projection damages trust in everything else you report.
Disappearing after the event. No report usually means no renewal.

Liveet is a guest management platform that has powered more than 500 events and 200,000 guests. For conference and exhibition organisers, it captures the data that sponsorship reporting depends on, as the event happens:

Verified attendance. Kiosk check-in verifies delegates as they arrive and prints their badges in about five seconds, giving you an accurate record of who actually attended.
Sponsor and exhibitor lead capture. With Liveet Verify, sponsors and exhibitors scan a delegate's badge QR code to capture their details on the spot, giving lead-focused sponsors a measurable number of contacts to take back to their sales teams.
Exportable attendance data. Event owners can export attendance data from their Liveet dashboard, so the numbers for your post-event sponsor report are ready as soon as the event ends.

That means you can hand every sponsor a report built on real numbers, not estimates, and open the renewal conversation with evidence.

Planning your next conference or exhibition? Book a call with the Liveet team to see how you can capture sponsor leads and measure attendance at your next event.

Frequently asked questions

What is event sponsorship?

Event sponsorship is a partnership in which a company provides money, products or services to an event in exchange for benefits such as access to its audience, leads, brand visibility or association with its cause.

An exhibitor pays for space to showcase its products, usually a booth. A sponsor pays for a wider package of benefits, which can include exhibition space alongside speaking slots, naming rights and branding.

What is in-kind sponsorship?

In-kind sponsorship is support given as products or services instead of cash, such as venue space, catering, printing or event technology. Agree on its value in writing so both sides know what each tier is worth.

How many sponsorship tiers should I offer?

Most events offer three to five tiers. Fewer tiers are easier for sponsors to compare. Make sure each step up delivers a clear additional outcome, not just a bigger logo.

What do sponsors look for in an event?

An audience that matches their customers, a credible organiser, activation opportunities that fit their goals, and evidence afterwards that the sponsorship delivered what was promised.