In its latest educational offering, delivered in a seminar in Sydney on 12 April, Sport Knowledge Australia (SKA) addressed the most challenging, vital, and rapidly evolving keys to financial wellbeing in sports – sponsorship and media rights issues. The seminar attracted sponsorship managers from both sporting organisations and general business sectors.

Valuation of sponsorships has matured into somewhat of a science over the last decade with corporate benefactors relying more and more upon the say so of a well resourced clique of experts.

Among those leading sponsorship analysts who scrutinise vast amounts of data in order to construct valuation summaries is SKA course presenter, James Finlayson of Sponsorship Information Services (SiS).

Access to quality up-to-the-minute information allows Finlayson and his colleagues to create in-depth analyses of sponsorship performance and to deliver independent advice on actual rather than estimated audience numbers, reach and demographic, right down to a sponsorship’s cut-through – such as brand perceptions, change in consumer habits and intention to purchase.

This type of analysis is the way of the future when it comes to major investments in sports, stadia, events and the arts, and rather than fearing the ‘sponsorship police’ as they investigate true-value and deliverables, Finlayson asserts that sport has much to gain by hopping on board the information express.

Co-presenter of the SKA course was David Ferrarin, a Senior Manager at L.E.K. Consulting – a global strategy consulting firm with a sector speciality in Media, Sport and Entertainment. Consulting to professional sporting organisations is an important part of this sector and utilises L.E.K.’s global network of 17 offices, in particular the leading markets of Los Angeles, New York and London.

Ferrarin is a leader in L.E.K’s Australian Media, Sport and Entertainment practice which holds a key position in advising professional sports on their highest value issues. One of the highest value drivers for sport he says is media rights. In this area L.E.K. applies its traditional highly analytical strategy consulting approach to maximise the value of sports media rights for their owners.

At the SKA seminar, Ferrarin addressed strategies for achieving a healthy balance between the broadcaster and the sport and detailed how the value of media rights can be increased.