It takes two to tango: Rethinking partnerships for the transformation economy

Does anyone really know what a Snapdragon is? A bj88? How about a SBOTOP? Or a Sela? These are shirt sponsors in today’s Premier League, and if you’re unfamiliar with them, even as a decades-long fan, you’re not alone.

There was a time when partnerships meant more than the dollars that came with them. Newcastle United’s shirt once bore the name of Newcastle Brown Ale, a beer brewed in the city and woven into local pub culture for decades. A name like ‘Sela’ says nothing to most fans at all. Over the last decade of transactional relationships, these partnerships faded away. But with the rise of a new consumer and a new economy, what’s old could become new again.

In the transformation economy, sports partnerships carry greater responsibility—and complexity—than ever before. Fans don’t choose teams on stats and rosters alone. They want to be part of communities that reflect their values and represent their personal identity.

When fans start to think about their team as an extension of themselves, organizations can’t just treat their partnerships like background business decisions. Every relationship becomes a signal.

And yet sponsors cycle through revolving doors, naming rights shift, and visual identities evolve before supporters have time to understand what those relationships mean. How can you feel like a team represents you when the brands beside its badge change every season?

Partnerships indicate what a team values through the company it keeps. As fans grow more selective about the brands they welcome into their lives, expectations for these relationships are changing.

Partnerships now influence how fans stay connected to their team. Teams today still control the arena, the rituals, and the energy of game day. But within the transformation economy, the strength of a relationship is often built in the quieter stretches between games.

Partnerships help teams remain present during the moments in between. They appear in the products people use, the places they visit, the communities they join, and the habits they repeat. Over time, these touchpoints remind fans of their team and the identity they associate with supporting it.

Connection rarely fades in a single moment. It softens gradually when there’s nothing to reinforce it. On the other hand, a steady presence strengthens attachment because it carries the relationship beyond game day and into everyday life. It’s this continuity that forms deeper meaning and lasting loyalty.

Driving relevance: Partners as amplifiers beyond the stadium

Partners drive relevance in two distinct ways, each critical to reaching beyond your existing fanbase.

Extending reach through credibility

The right partners bring awareness to audiences who don’t yet know or care about your sport. Strategic partner selection means identifying brands that already have influence where you need it. When Formula 1 partnered with sponsors like HP, Ray-Ban, and Heineken, they weren’t just adding logos to cars. These premium brands brought global recognition that resonated far beyond racing enthusiasts, lending credibility in markets F1 was trying to penetrate. Netflix’s Drive to Survive did something different: it transformed F1’s cultural relevance entirely, turning a niche motorsport into appointment viewing for a mainstream audience that had never watched a race. These initiatives carried cachet in markets F1 was trying to penetrate, lending credibility the sport hadn’t yet earned on its own.

Supporting growth in adjacent domains

Partners also help teams expand into territories they can’t claim alone. These relationships work because both parties bring something the other can’t easily build on their own. Consider CommonSpirit Health’s partnership with the Denver Summit NWSL team. The health system introduces the Denver Summit to families already engaged in wellness, especially in pediatrics where parents want healthy and active activities for their kids. Vis-a-vis with CommonSpirit gains associations with a high performing team, focused on genuine wellbeing for their players, in a league that encourages and supports the whole person, that drive awareness and gravitas to their sports medicine programs. This type of partnership creates access to audiences in contexts the team doesn’t control, building relevance where it matters most for long-term growth.

The transformation economy demands both. You need partners who can carry your brand into unfamiliar markets and partners who can embed you into the daily lives of audiences you’re trying to reach.

Access strengthens belief: A tale of two sports brands

As part of the transformation economy, consumers increasingly want a sense of involvement with the brands they support. This feeling of inclusion builds trust and encourages deeper participation, making access a powerful driver of relevance.

Consider this tale of two sports brands. Nike has long been considered the defining brand of the running category with innovations dating back to the rubber waffle sole pattern in 1971. It even pioneered brand-led running groups with the formation of Nike Run Club in 2010. But if you fast forward to the post-COVID running boom, Nike is noticeably absent. The brand prioritized scale and control over engagement. This shift in priorities left a vacuum that put its category supremacy and share of voice at risk of erosion.

Enter Saucony and its partnership with Minted New York. Rather than centering the partnership on promotion, Saucony and Minted focused on shared experience. Minted co-founder Marcus Milione led community runs in New York and Paris so runners could test new Saucony models. The entire process, from developing models, to the storytelling and inspiration behind it, all is shared. Runners and fans of the brands are invited into product conversations, early testing, and community storytelling, all to form a real relationship. One that feels authentic and mutual rather than broadcast.

The partnership between Saucony and Minted New York shows how access can operate on multiple levels. Minted gained an edge from research and development, while Saucony benefited from rapid feedback, cultural cachet, and a constant stream of grassroots content with an engaged audience. All while making members feel like true partners helping shape their own brand experience.

Where Nike has remained largely absent from this resurgence, Saucony filled the gap not by outspending the category leader, but by giving runners a level of access Nike’s scale-driven approach never offered. The lesson isn’t that Nike lost ground because of one partnership; it’s that access, done well, can let a smaller, more nimble brand claim space that a giant left open.

Evaluating successful sports partnerships in the transformation economy

Within the transformation economy, reach alone is an incomplete metric. Attention still matters, it introduces people to the relationship, but its strength is revealed in what happens next.

Rather than only focusing on attention metrics like media value, viewers, or likes and comments, organizations have to start measuring a partner’s ability to drive momentum. Behavior provides the clearest proof-point. Do fans return to the experience again and again? Do they bring friends with them? Do they participate on their own or do they need to be prompted?

These signals are admittedly harder to capture than a media impressions report, but they aren’t invisible. Loyalty programs, CRM systems, and ticketing data can show whether the same fans return to a partner activation. Referral tracking and group sign-ups reveal whether fans are bringing others along. And a rise in organic, fan-generated content, posts and stories that exist without a campaign behind them, signals participation that wasn’t prompted. None of these require new infrastructure so much as a shift in what existing data gets asked to show.

The answers to these questions help determine if a partnership brings lasting relevance or diminishing returns. Measuring value this way takes time because cultural presence builds gradually through repeated encounters and shared experiences where fans meet the brand. When organizations look beyond immediate attention and track participation over time, they have a clearer view of whether a partnership is strengthening affinity or generating noise.

Partners as architects of relevance for teams

Sports organizations have always relied on partners, but in the transformation economy, every relationship indicates something about the team behind it. Each one either sharpens a team’s identity or blurs it. These partnerships shape the story of the team and what it means to its supporters. Because at the end of the match, fans don’t separate the badge from the brands beside it.