Today I worked with the sponsorship department, seeing both the sales and activation sides as well as experiencing a game-day for the sponsorship department.
We started the day by having a department lunch, which was lots of fun because it immediately showed me how tight knit and open the group was, which made me feel very welcomed. After lunch, I saw the sales side of the operation by getting the rundown of the entire process. I saw the initial sponsorship proposal document that is sent out to potential clients and then how a contract is made after the client responds with what they would like to sponsor. During the season, the sales side isn’t too busy because they do most of the sales during the off-season to prepare the stadium by opening day.
After working with the sales side, I worked with Ashley who is on the activation side, meaning that she takes the contracts and puts what the client wants into action. A lot of her job consists of communicating with the client as well as any other department that needs to be involved depending on the request of the client. Like the sales department, most of her work is done during the months leading up to opening day, but during the season she still has some signage coming in as well as working with clients who sponsor specific games or have PA reads during specific games.
The director of sponsorship made me some trivia about the partnership proposal, so I answered all of those questions. After doing so, I quizzed Ashley on a few of the questions, and she got most of them right. After quizzing Ashley, I quizzed Chip, who is the Assistant General Manager of Sales, and he didn’t do too well. I will admit that most of the answers were numbers, and he was usually pretty close.
Before the game, Ashley and I prepared all of the prize packs that would be awarded during promotions throughout the night, and we also put coupons in the cup holders of a few sections. Then we walked around the stadium to make sure that everything looked presentable and fixed any signs that needed extra attention. Once gates opened, we found a few lucky fans to win prize packs and then sent all of the necessary information about the fans off to the promotions team and tracked that information to send to the sponsor at the end of the season.
