How to Get Sponsors for Your Sports Team, With an Email Template

To get sponsors for your sports team, make a list of about twenty local businesses with a reason to reach your players and their families, offer two or three clear sponsorship packages, and ask in person with a one-page summary in hand. Follow up within a week, deliver everything you promised, and send a recap at the end of the season so the sponsor renews.

Local businesses sponsor rec, adult and youth teams all the time. Most teams never get one simply because nobody asks. Here’s the whole process, with a package table and a pitch email you can copy.

What Sponsors Want

A local business isn’t sponsoring your team out of generosity. It wants something back:

• Visibility with people who live or play nearby
• Being seen supporting healthy, positive community activities
• Access to a specific group, such as parents on a youth team or adults in a beer league
• A story to tell: “we sponsor the local U12 soccer team”

Pitch what the sponsor gets, not what your team needs.

Who to Ask

Start with businesses that have a natural connection to your team, your players or your venue:

• Bars and restaurants near the rink, field or gym (especially for adult teams that go out after games)
• Sports stores, physio and chiropractic clinics, gyms
• Businesses your players own or work at
• Real estate agents, insurance brokers, dentists and car dealers, who all buy local visibility
• Businesses already sponsoring other teams in your league, because they already see the value

Write down twenty names before you contact anyone. Plenty will say no, and a long list keeps you moving.

Build a Sponsorship Package

Don’t ask for vague “support”. Offer packages with a clear price and a clear list of what the sponsor gets. Price each tier to cover a real cost, so you can tell the sponsor exactly what their money pays for.

Package	What the sponsor gets	Price it to cover
Supporter	Logo on your team page and in season photos, a thank-you post on social media	One clear cost, such as tournament entry or a set of balls or pucks
Jersey sponsor	Name or logo on the jerseys, everything in Supporter, a framed team photo at the end of the season	The full jersey order
Title sponsor	Team named after the business (“Joe’s Pizza Hawks”), everything above, a team night at their business	A real share of the season, such as ice or field rental

Add the numbers that make it real: how many players and families will see the logo, how many games you play, and how many people follow your team online. Put it all on one page.

Pitch Email Template

Walk-ins work best for small local businesses. Email works for businesses where you know the owner or the manager’s name. Either way, keep it short:

Subject: Sponsoring the [Team Name] this season

Hi [Name],

I manage the [Team Name], a [sport] team of [number] players in the [league name]. We play [number] games this season at [venue], a few minutes from [business].

We’re looking for a local business to sponsor the team. For [price], [business] would get [package benefits, e.g. your logo on our jerseys and team page and a thank-you post every month]. The money covers [the specific cost].

I’ve attached a one-page summary. Could I drop by for ten minutes this week to talk about it?

Thanks, [Your name], [phone]

Make the Ask

The most effective pitches are personal and local. Cold emails to corporate offices rarely work. Visit when the business is quiet, ask for the owner or manager, and explain in under a minute who your team is, what the package includes, what it costs and why it’s good for them. Leave the one-page summary and your contact details.

Follow up within a week if you haven’t heard back. Many sponsors say yes on the second or third conversation, not the first.

Deliver and Renew

Once a sponsor says yes, deliver everything you promised and then a bit more. Post about them when you said you would. Send them a photo of the team in the jerseys. Invite them to a game or the end-of-season party.

At the end of the season, send a short recap: games played, how many players the sponsorship supported, results, and a couple of photos. Then ask whether they’d like to sponsor again next season. A sponsor who got a recap is far easier to renew than one who never heard from you.

Sponsoring a Local Team as a Business

If you run a business and want to sponsor a local sports team, ask the teams near you directly. Bars, rinks, fields and community centres know which teams play there. Ask the team what it needs the money for and what it can offer in return, agree on it in writing (even a short email), and ask for a photo of your name on the jerseys for your own social posts.

Track Sponsorship Money

Record sponsorship income alongside player fees in your team’s finances. BenchApp lets you track payments and expenses in one place, so you can see how much the sponsorship took off each player’s fee. When players see that a sponsor cut their fee, they’re more willing to help find the next one. For the full picture, see how to create a sports team budget.

Even one small sponsor can make a real difference to a team’s budget. Make the list, build the package and start asking.