Road Bike Racing - Getting a team sponsered

Does anyone here have any experience getting a sponser for a racing team? If so, tips would be helpful. Thanks

Does anyone here have any experience getting a sponser for a racing team? If so, tips would be helpful. Thanks

This year is my first experience trying to get sponsors for a bicycle team but I've spent the last 25 years trying to get sponsorship for my car racing team. First let me say that it's very very hard. At this level (and I'm assuming that your team is a local amature team) most anyone who is going to sponsor you falls into three catagories. First you have a personal relationship with them and they are willing to help you out because of it. Second they have a business that directly related to the sport i.e. a bike shop. Third they are crazy about the sport and just want to get involved.

Remember in the real world businesses sponsor sports teams for exposure that will in turn help promote their business. A small local amature cycling team will do little to help them meet that end, unless they fall into the second catagory. For every dollar spent on your team is one less dollar spent on print, radio, or television advertising. These forms of advertising will reach thousands more people than your little cycling team.

The one thing about a local amature cycling team is that you don't need 10's of thousands of dollars to get your team sponsored so several small sponsors will go a long way to attain the needed funding. For example our team is sponsored by several local shops, including the bike shop which is the title sponsor. Rather than money 360 Cycleworks gives huge discounts on goods and services. Pure Austin is a local gym that give us free memberships. Some of the sponsors give us money and discounts on services, places like PakMail. One of our sponsors is a law firm who's main partner is a cycling freak.

Now having said all that there several things that you can do to meet your goals:

Use pictures of the local races and show the excitement and beauty of the sport.

Talk about how this sport promotes a healthy lifestyle and let them know how much road cycling has grown over the last ten years.

Write out your presentation in a way that highlights the local races to show how much exposure your potential sponsor will recieve.

Let them know that they will be mentioned in any press release that will be sent out after each event.

Offer to have the team do in store promotions.

Offer each sponsor a team jersey signed by each team member and have it framed.

I hope this helps and don't get discouraged if you get more rejection than acceptance, remember you not asking for millions, you should be able to get your team up and running with 10k or less.

8 guys on a $3500 budget is enough to get started. This will get you 24 jerseys, 16 bibs and 16 vests at around $2500. The rest can go toward race entry fees. If your team intends to be its own USCF recognized entity that will cost a little more as well. Obviously this leaves little room for travel, etc. Other sponsor deals will typically include merchandise. For example, a standard entry-level sunglass deal will get you a couple of free pairs of glasses as long as you promise that everyone on the team will wear the glasses (the additional pairs will be sold to you at employee cost).

This is pretty much the structure of our new team. We have three paying sponsors which brought us to $3500 in cash and we have barter sponsors in the form of a LBS, a local photographer, Smith optics, and Cannondale. Cannondale has been great ... primarily because our LBS is a volume dealer. They're giving us nice jackets, gloves, and socks along with wholesale pricing on frames.

There's not much room for error with a $3500 budget and the biggest our team will be at this point is 8 guys. The paying sponsors are friends, relatives, and employers.

Mark

Just for the record we have a 17 man/woman roster for our road team and a 10 man/woman roster for our mtb team.

Are you in college?
Do you not have jobs?
Can you not afford to buy your own clothing and equipment?
Is there a reason why you need the sponsorship?

Do you have something to offer a sponsor beyond printing their logo on your shirt?
Are you on the road to the Olympics?
Are you developing junior riders?
Do you aspire to great things?
Or are you just a local team with a strong desire to race?

That being said....

Ask NOT what your sponsor can do for you... ask what YOU can do for your sponsor.

They're in business to make money, not to fund your hobby. You should to be able to show a sound business plan that will provide tangible results for them.

They're in business to make money, not to fund your hobby. You should to be able to show a sound business plan that will provide tangible results for them.

Exactly which is why I laid out the three types of people who tend to sponsor amature local teams. They are not doing it because the exposure will bring them more business (the exception being bike shops/gyms) but because they are friends or are just cycling nuts. I found this to be very true when I was looking for sponsorship of my autoracing team. I first tried the "professional approach" with the business plan and how this was going to benifiet them as a business. That had moderate success overall but good results with auto specific companies . Later I went with the "this is a really cool sport and you should have your name all over my car" approach and that had great results with non-automotive companies. Where most of my money came from was from two catagories: Friends with money and autoracing nuts with money. Neither really thought they were going to get much exposure for their dollar but they just a) wanted to help or b) wanted to be part of it.