6 Tips for Corporate Partnerships Career Seekers
Crypto.com Arena. Little Caesars Arena. Empower Field at Mile High. Acrisure Stadium. What do they all have in common?
Unfortunately, each new name has come around following iconic brands for venues. If you’re in Los Angeles, Detroit, Denver, or Pittsburgh, you’re still likely to hear Staples Center, Joe Louis Arena, Mile High Stadium, and Heinz Field.
Speaking of Heinz Field, Ryan Huzjak of the Pittsburgh Steelers had his hands tied directly to the Michigan-based insurance company Acrisure taking over as his venue’s naming rights partner.
Thinking about a career in Corporate Partnerships? With Huzjak’s help, here’s a deeper dive into the world of sponsorship:
What are Corporate Partnerships?
Whether reaching out to and maintaining relationships with team sponsors or handling naming rights deals, partnerships can be a wide umbrella of roles.
“I certainly think it’s, in many ways, where the rubber meets the road in our business. It’s the combination of driving fan engagement and connecting that to achieving business goals for outside entities,” Huzjak said.
1/ Starting in sales
As it seems more times than not in sports and entertainment, things come back to sales. Huzjak came into the industry selling tickets and got into the marketing side of things as well with the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls. While not a necessity, experience in sales can be a springboard to a sponsorship position because of the transferable skills. Sales are where executives can strengthen their communication and presentation skills, and gain confidence and professionalism, much faster than their counterparts in other departments.
“Sales has that connotation that you’re trying to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do,” Huzjak said. “And I’ve never felt that way about selling. I’ve always approached it as trying to find an opportunity and combine that with whatever property I’m working for has to offer. So even when I was selling tickets, I thought of it that way; trying to be a solutions-oriented seller, trying to be someone who’s a consultive seller. Someone who would listen to objectives and try to achieve those.”
2/ Playing the Long Game
Finding the right corporate partner is important. Partnership deals are often fostered from a period of getting to know the brand over a longer period of time, and seeing how it might match with a property. These are far from quick sales cycles.
“We don’t do a whole lot of transactional type of deals, and so they tend to be deals where partnerships are cultivating over a long period of time,” Huzjak said. “There’s a natural vetting process where we’re getting to know each other. Them getting to know the franchise and what’s available in us getting to know the people involved.”
Specific to the now-Acrisure Stadium, Huzjak said the process began with trying to renew the deal with Kraft-Heinz first and foremost. To the outside world, it would seem as if it may have been quick, but the Steelers were in talks with Heinz well over a year before any final decisions were made. From there, Huzjak said the Steelers hired several outside resources to begin the search process for a new partner, which led to their new naming rights partnership starting in July 2022.
2/ New deals do not always mean ditching old partners
The Steelers taking down the Heinz ketchup bottles was not a knee-jerk reaction. One may assume that the relationship soured between the team and the Pittsburgh-based food processing company, but Huzjak made sure to highlight that the Steelers and the KraftHeinz Company are still in good standing as their partnership has evolved.
“As you look at what a naming rights [license] of an NFL stadium represents, and the value it can deliver for a brand, there’s a lot of obvious benefits. There’s a lot of exposure, name recognition, and ultimately, the goal there is to align those benefits with a company that can most take advantage of them. And in our case, the Heinz brand is, admittedly, I think a pretty well-recognizable brand.
Huzjak added that Acrisure is a fast-growing company whose new alignment with the Steelers can help them in improving their name recognition. When considering new partners, giving an up-and-coming company that aligns with your values a helping hand can be a way to show your organization is willing to adapt from only working with traditional corporations.
3/ Alignment is key
Partners and franchises must be on one accord to facilitate a positive relationship. That’s what helps build programs; alignment.
“We hope, more often than not, our corporate partners are supporting and aligned with programs that are really well received by our fans and help drive some of the organization’s goals as well,” Huzjak said.
4/ Keep your fans in mind with partnerships
Your fans will let you know how they feel about a partnership deal — whether they like it or not. Not just for naming rights deals, but for other activations around stadiums and arenas. Things like concession items, team merchandise, club and hospitality spaces, or even point of sales can all be impacted by a new sponsorship deal.
5/ Play on the field is not your priority
One thing that can boost corporate partnerships and help organizations attract brands is a winning team. Huzjak has been with a fairly successful Steelers franchise for nearly a decade and he worked for the Chicago Bears during their last run to the Super Bowl in 2007. So he knows what it’s like working for a team in the spotlight.
But being on the business side of the organization, the focus is more on controlling what they can control. With only one team in each league winning a championship each year, organizations can’t rely on “winning” as a strategy. There has to be a process in place and an obsession to deliver value. Huzjak said it’s about “elevating the peaks of winning and flattening out the valleys of losing.”
“We start to think about the type of long-term value we can deliver for brands,” Huzjak said. “And I think that is true because of the emotional connection with fans. … As brands connect with sports, they’re connecting with things that matter and are important to people, and are aligned to the things that they hold true for their families, their traditions, their habits, where they’re from. Those are things that sports bring in an authentic way and allowing brands to connect to meaningful platforms, which is really the value.”
6/ Leagues and markets are all different for partners
With two iconic, national name brands like the Steelers and Heinz both being based in Pittsburgh, it makes sense why the two entities have been tied together for more than two decades. These are the types of factors organizations have to consider when evaluating potential partners.
Huzjak has experience in the NFL, NBA, and MLB, so he has seen how each league operates and what partners may be more suited for them respectively. Seasons play a big part in that; just think about the visibility partners will get in a 162-game MLB season or 82-game NBA season, vs. a 17-game NFL slate.
The same brand might work with multiple teams and leagues, and do something different with each one of them. There are so many ways that brands can connect with audiences in-season, in the offseason, and through media. But nothing compares to the opportunities to get fans’ eyes on your partner’s brand than during home games.
“In baseball there’s more home games. So more of the assets are tied to home game or game-type assets,” Huzjak said. “ … Basketball, it’s similar in the arena, there’s more repetition. But again, it’s about looking at where fans are engaging with the teams, and where there are opportunities for brands to connect.”
Conclusion:
There is not just one way to find success in sports and entertainment partnerships. Huzjak thinks, like most things, the core fundamentals to success apply here; being yourself and treating people well, for example.
But he also believes what is so specific to partnerships is that you have to be able to listen and understand your consumers.
“In sponsorships, you create the product too,” Huzjak said. “You have to find the solution, you have to create the product, so there’s a lot of creativity involved in that. And it’s not just ‘throw it against the wall, hopefully it sticks’ creativity, it is strategic creativity. Those that have the most success early are the ones that are able to hone in on those strategies quickly. Understand what really could make a difference for a potential sponsor, and know how to quickly connect that to something that lives in the team environment.”
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