The average exhibitor Net Promoter Score has remained at around 21% for between 15 and 20 years, according to EVOLIO Marketing data reported by Convene, PCMA’s publication. Almost two decades of selling the same things — space, a logo, a mention from the stage — and the average sponsor still isn’t convinced. Joe Federbush, president of EVOLIO Marketing, draws a straightforward conclusion: what really persuades event sponsorship companies today is the opportunity to speak to the right audience and demonstrate the results afterwards.
If you’ve been selling sponsorships for a while and have noticed that proposals which worked three years ago now meet with a long silence, price probably isn’t the problem. The relationship between organisers and event sponsors has changed. Sponsors are no longer asking how many people will see their brand. They want to know how many relevant people they’ll be able to speak to, and how you’ll demonstrate that afterwards.
What event sponsorship companies want today
This shift goes beyond a marketing hunch: the data supports it, and sponsors’ changing priorities reflect it. According to the same EVOLIO data reported by Convene, fewer than half of exhibitors rate their investment as excellent or very good. Around another 30% rate it as merely good, a figure that has barely changed in years. Federbush illustrates the difference by comparing two specific formats: he describes securing a paid speaking slot as “very important for many exhibitors”, while a logo on a banner “doesn’t do much from a branding standpoint”.
The problem, according to Federbush, is that traditional sponsorship ROI is “very difficult to measure”. That is why the industry is beginning to discuss return on experience and return on emotion alongside return on investment. What really predicts whether a sponsor will return is whether they leave with something memorable and would recommend the event, rather than an impressions figure alone.
The same trend is apparent among organisers. According to the latest UFI Global Exhibition Barometer, reported by TSNN, 75% of surveyed organisers increased their sponsorship revenue by more than 5% in 2025, compared with just 33% who achieved the same growth through stand space sales. Sponsorship is growing faster than floor space sales, giving sponsors more scope to ask for something beyond visibility in return.
For medium-sized event sponsorship companies, this is also good news. They can compete on equal terms with much larger brands when the offer centres on quality access and clear data, rather than a production budget they could never match.
Types of sponsors: they don’t all want the same thing
Before putting together a proposal, it helps to recognise that there is no standard sponsor. Event sponsorship companies are not a homogeneous group. The different types of sponsors you encounter will have different priorities, even if they share this broader shift towards access and evidence.
A headline sponsor, whose name is attached to the event or whose presence is most prominent, still needs brand awareness. Increasingly, though, they also expect qualified leads and a post-event report with actual figures, rather than stand photos alone.
A content sponsor, funding a talk, panel discussion or award, primarily wants to be associated with the programme’s credibility. Who speaks and what they say matters more than the size of the banner displaying the sponsor’s logo.
An experience sponsor, supporting a relaxation area, coffee service or phone charging station, invests in direct interaction and in staying in attendees’ memories longer than a sign would.
An in-kind sponsor, providing a product or service rather than money, primarily wants people to see it being used and to receive honest feedback.
A media partner, meanwhile, wants reach and shared content, rather than a physical presence in the room.
Another profile has grown considerably in recent years: the technology sponsor, contributing a tool that improves the event itself rather than money or a physical product. Examples include a networking app, a simultaneous interpretation system or a badging solution. These sponsors tend to measure success through actual use of their technology during the event, rather than impressions or direct leads, which requires a different approach to measurement.
Distinguishing between these types of sponsors before you start selling allows you to build packages for each profile. A single generic sponsorship brochure that tries to appeal to everyone often fails to convince anyone fully.
How to attract sponsors when you’re selling more than a logo
How to attract sponsors without reducing the conversation to package prices is a question that comes up in almost every sponsorship meeting. The answer begins long before you send a proposal: with data from previous editions, an understanding of who attended and what they did, and the tangible results achieved by each sponsor who chose to return. Without that foundation, every discussion about prices or packages rests on promises.
The three elements of a convincing proposal
A proposal that persuades event sponsorship companies today usually has three elements.
The first is an accurate audience profile: who attends, which sectors they work in and what roles they hold, rather than a generic estimate of the “target audience”.
The second is a specific interaction plan: what the sponsor will actually be able to do with those people beyond being present in the same room.
The third is a commitment to measurement: which data you will provide afterwards and when, rather than a vague promise of a “results report”.
That third element often determines whether a sponsorship is renewed or lost the following year. The more automation and traceability your event management platform provides, the easier it becomes to fulfil that promise without a huge amount of manual work. We explored this in detail in our article on using AI to improve event efficiency and ROI, where first-party data and human interaction remain the real advantages, however much automation sits behind them.
Design for interaction, not just logo placement
Interaction also depends on the event format, and organisers have already recognised this. In the same UFI Barometer, 36% of US respondents identify more interactive and participatory formats as their top priority for change, compared with a global average of 22%.
The more passive an event is — rows of chairs, a speaker and a screen — the fewer opportunities sponsors have to generate the qualified conversations they now expect. Creating moments in which attendees participate rather than simply listen improves more than the programme. It turns the sponsor’s space into somewhere things happen, rather than part of the backdrop.
We explored this when discussing corporate event experiences that go beyond the traditional conference. The same thinking applies directly to attracting sponsors who want to return, rather than sign up just once.
In practice, this could be as simple as enabling direct messaging in the event app between sponsors and attendees interested in their sector. Or it could involve a prize-based challenge that encourages attendees to visit the sponsor’s area more than once. A large banner with no opportunities for interaction no longer does the job. However attractive it looks, it generates none of the data the sponsor will ask for afterwards.
The size of the market and why expectations have risen
The exhibitions and events industry is a genuinely large economy in its own right, which also helps explain why event sponsors can afford to be more demanding. According to the Global Economic Impact of Exhibitions report, produced by Oxford Economics for UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, the sector generated €91.7 billion ($103.6billion) in direct GDP worldwide in 2025, rising to €226.6 billion($256 billion) once indirect and induced effects are included — enough to rank as the world’s 59th largest economy, ahead of Qatar and Morocco. The same report counts roughly 4.7 million exhibiting companies and 318 million visitors across the year.
Those figures cover everything from flagship trade shows to smaller corporate gatherings. It is in that second group — smaller and more precisely targeted — that meaningful access to a particular audience matters more than the size of a logo on stage.
In a market of this size, event sponsorship companies don’t have to settle for the first proposal they receive. They have options, and they compare them using criteria increasingly similar to those applied to any other marketing investment. For organisers of medium-sized or niche events, this creates an opportunity to compete on the quality of access they offer.
At Eventscase, our years of working with industry associations rather than relying on cold outreach have taught us something similar: lasting sponsorships rarely begin with a perfect PDF proposal. They grow from relationships that existed before money entered the conversation. Data and interaction give sponsors the evidence they need to justify their investment internally, but established trust opens the door to that conversation.
What comes next is likely to be a higher standard for sponsorship rather than an entirely new format: shared dashboards for organisers and sponsors, renewals tied to agreed performance indicators, and less room for sponsorships that simply display a logo and wait for results. Event sponsorship companies that understand this early will have the data to show whether returning is worthwhile.