At the Benin Sports Fair in April 2025, Mahama Coulibaly summed up in one sentence the shift African sport is going through:
For a long time, sports sponsorship was negotiated on relationships: a business leader who loves football, a persuasive federation president, a logo on a jersey. That model has a simple limit. When budgets tighten, whatever is not measured is cut first.
What companies really ask for
Advertisers are not walking away from sport. They are changing their lens. In Mahama Coulibaly’s words, “companies want clarity, transparency and performance indicators”. In other words: an objective set before signing, an activation plan, and a measured report afterwards.
This is the logic we call ROO, return on objectives: a partnership is not judged by the size of the logo, but by what it delivered for the brand (awareness, preference, sales, recruitment, civic image).
The audience that matters is not the one you think
One figure changes how an event should be sold: according to Mahama Coulibaly, “70% of the audience at a sporting event does not usually follow the discipline”. And yet, “they are the ones who consume, buy tickets and merchandise. They are the ones who create value”.
For a brand, this is a major opportunity: a big sporting event is one of the rare moments that reaches both passionate fans and the general public. It still has to be sold to sponsors with data, not impressions.
The bottleneck: closed ecosystems
The diagnosis is blunt: “the same debates have gone on for thirty years, because federations keep to themselves without opening their ecosystem to the private sector”. As long as sports bodies talk mostly among themselves, business stays on the sidelines.
Three rules for a partnership that pays
1. Set the objective before the fee. What should this partnership change for the brand within twelve months? The answer shapes the plan, not the other way round.
2. Budget for activation. The right to use a name is only the entry ticket. As researcher T. Bettina Cornwell puts it, the contract alone is worth nothing: activation is what creates value.
3. Measure, then share. A report shared with the sponsor is the best renewal argument, and the best tool to convince the next one.
African sport has the audience, the talent and the emotion. By adopting the discipline of investment, it will also earn the lasting trust of business.