How the Chicago Bulls retooled their sponsorship business to meet CMO data demands
The Chicago Bulls haven’t won an NBA championship since 1998. That makes their sponsorship pitch harder than it might otherwise be, despite their enormous profile among casual fans thanks to a legend named Michael Jordan. To stay competitive, they’ve spent the last two years building a data solution designed to show brand partners how they’re influencing Bulls fans’ spending choices.
First, a step back. U.S. sports sponsorship spending is rising fast. Between 2015 and 2025, it rose 122% to $30.5 billion, according to estimates from Ampere Analysis, ahead of revenues generated by the entire television sector.
The windfall isn’t being distributed equally among rights-holders, though. The New York Knicks, for example, pulled in $619 million in revenue during the 2024-25 season, while the Washington Wizards netted just over half that ($373 million). The Knicks’ commercial situation will likely improve following their successful championship tilt earlier this month (their first in 53 years).
Franchises and teams are competing for commercial partnership deals just as CMOs and marketers are waking up (albeit slowly) to the need to measure the impact of their sports sponsorships the same way they do for media spending. More than three-fourths (76%) of U.S. consumer marketers who invested in a sports sponsorship in 2024 said they struggle to calculate the return on that investment (ROI), per Forrester. And according to a research note published in May by Gartner, sponsorships account for 18.2% of marketers’ non-digital spending, but 84% of CMOs “struggle to quantify” their value.
“Sponsorship is always about awareness, affinity and action,” said David Gaspar, partner and head of innovation at Gather. Demand for solutions that can put a number against those three A’s has helped nurture a small sector of measurement firms devoted to the nuances of sports and fandom. It’s also spurred some teams to overhaul their own approach and bring a data-led proposition to market.
The Chicago Bulls are one, and just like Jordan they have take competition very seriously.
“We have to compete with more than just the sports teams,” said Megan Donovan, the Bulls’ vp of corporate partnerships. “Brands are having expectations set for them in terms of what they expect back on return on their investment in marketing that we need to keep up with, if not exceed.”
The Bulls have been working with sports rights company Klutch to level up their measurement machine. Klutch brought in PwC to deploy a proprietary ROI tool that draws on credit-card transactions and cellphone-ping data to map out where ticket holders go after a game, and what and where they spend their money afterwards.
“It essentially looks at consumer spending habits and actions taken, and then links those to tangible changes in behaviour,” said Caryn Rosoff, svp of valuation and commercial insights at Klutch.
The system provides information on the number of transactions and average spend per fan, the total consumer spend of the Bulls’ fanbase, plus cut-down views of how different “tiers” of fan (measured by what Rosoff calls “avidity”) are spending, over a 12-month period. In practice, that allows the Bulls to offer brand partners a clearer idea of the commercial impact their sponsorships are having in Chicago.
“We’re showing the value that lives outside the arena,” added Donovan, who said the measurement framework had sharpened the Bulls’ offering to brands interested in reaching Chicago and Illinois consumers (the third largest DMA in the U.S.). As a result, the Bulls have brought in 18 additional commercial partners since 2024, including six international brands: MatchWornShirt, Babybel and Linglong Tire.
Execs like Donovan know that marketers hope that more data can help them defend spending decisions within their own organizations.
Meal kit business Factor, for example, recently paired with Serena Williams for a brand ambassador role just as the American star announced her tennis comeback. Chris Stadler, Factor’s CMO, said the brand had settled on Williams following an extensive research phase.
“We did several rounds of focus groups, we did quantitative research among our target consumers. Serena rose to the top of every list in every bit of research we did,” said Stadler. “[Factor’s target consumers] are busy, they’re professionals, they’re folks who are active and into sports and wellness and health.
“We’ve seen conversion rate improvements, we’ve seen much longer time spent on site. The click-through-rates of our social assets versus our regular assets have doubled. We’re confident that she will help build awareness in the mid and longer term as well,” said Stadler, who didn’t provide financial specifics.
Teams and franchises aren’t just competing with each other for sports marketing dollars, but with TV networks and media owners keen to squeeze every cent from their expensive rights deals.
A recent study published by Omnicom Media Group and adtech firm Genius Sports, based on a sample of 3,600 NBA fans and using campaigns from Modelo, IHOP, and ScottsMiracle-Gro, found that “augmented” sponsorship units – the sponsored game clocks, replay graphics and branded stats that decorate modern live sports coverage – could be particularly effective means of reaching basketball fans likely to be watching a game with one eye on their phones.
In-game augmented units drove brand favorability five times faster and search intent three times faster than regular video buys against sports coverage, the study found. The research also discovered that ads shown after a brand’s appearance in an augmented unit enjoyed enhanced performance, suggesting a compounding effect was in play.
“Having that halo and being part of the game before you get an ad in the commercial break brings extra credibility to the campaign,” said Kara Manatt, evp of intelligence solutions at Omnicom Media.
Franchises like the Bulls must prove their partnerships are a better destination for brand dollars than opportunities like augmented units or presenting sponsor slots.
While data can help marketers justify their endeavors to CFOs, Gaspar warned against CMOs being led too much by ROI projections. “I don’t think you can buy sponsorship the way that you can do programmatic advertising,” he said.
“Every CMO always asks: ‘Is it worth it?’ I think about some advice I got from my parents when I was buying an apartment,” Gaspar concluded. “It should feel expensive when you sign the paper. You’re going to grow into it. And you should already be well in the money when it comes time for renewal.”
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