How to Build a Sponsorship Pitch Deck

A sponsorship pitch deck is a short, visual presentation, usually 10 to 12 slides, that shows one brand what a partnership with you would look like. Build it around that sponsor's customers and goals, show their brand on your assets, leave the fee out, and finish with a dated next step.

This guide is part of our sponsorship proposals hub. For pricing, tiers and the written document you leave behind, see how to write a sponsorship proposal.

What is a sponsorship pitch deck, and how is it different from a brochure or proposal?

A pitch deck is for a meeting with one prospect; a brochure is a one-to-many menu, and a proposal is the detailed written document. The RFU's club sponsorship toolkit, developed on behalf of the RFU by Orchard Connects, sets out three sales materials: a short introduction for email or phone, a teaser of two or three pages (or a video of up to 90 seconds), and a 10 to 12 slide presentation for in-person meetings (RFU sponsorship compendium).

Brochures publish prices for many small local buyers at once. FC United of Manchester's 2023/24 brochure, for example, lists a pitch-side board at £695 and a Digital Partner Package at £5,000, both ex VAT, alongside "2,000+ average match day attendances" (FC United brochure). Redditch United's 2026/27 brochure lists pitchside boards from £600+VAT and leaves bespoke partnerships unpriced (Redditch United). A pitch deck for a bigger prospect is built around that one brand instead.

How many slides should a sponsorship pitch deck have?

Aim for 10 to 12 slides, and treat 15 as a ceiling. The RFU compendium recommends a maximum of 12 slides, presented in no more than about 30 minutes, inside a first meeting of 45 minutes to an hour so there is time for questions (RFU compendium). The toolkit's companion templates guide is slightly looser and allows up to 15 slides (RFU Sponsorship Sales Templates). The Events Calendar suggests about 10 slides (Liquid Web).

Keep it short: a sent deck is skimmed. We found no sport-specific data, but investor and sales data agree:

• In a 2015 study of 200+ startup decks, DocSend and Harvard professor Tom Eisenmann found investors spent an average of 3 minutes 44 seconds on a deck (TechCrunch).
• In 2024, DocSend put the average investor time with a pitch deck at two minutes and 42 seconds (DocSend). It is a separate study, so not a trend line.
• DocSend's 2017 sales content benchmarks found prospects spent less than three minutes on average on B2B sales content (DocSend).

None of these are sponsorship figures, but the lesson holds: your first slides carry most of the weight.

What slides should a sponsorship pitch deck include?

Use a spine of about ten slides that moves from the sponsor's world to yours and ends with a next step. Drawn from the RFU toolkit, Digideck, Ken Ungar of CHARGE and CoachingArea:

Notice what is missing: the price. The RFU compendium says the presentation does not need costings, though you should be ready to discuss ballpark figures; Digideck says show value before price. Packages, tiers and how much to ask belong in the proposal.

How do you show audience data in a sponsorship deck?

Show it as charts matched to the sponsor's customers, not as tables of your own numbers. Chris Baylis of the Sponsorship Collective suggests pie charts for gender and region and graphs for age (Sponsorship Collective).

Premiership Rugby used YouGov Profiles to segment its fans and tailor pitches to prospective partners, which its Head of Business Development said helped show "a strong data-driven story" (YouGov). If you offer fan data to a sponsor, the RFU's asset list notes that access is subject to GDPR.

How do you show a sponsor their brand on your assets?

Put their logo on photos of your real inventory, so they can see the partnership before they sign. The RFU's asset list makes a good checklist: kit placements, perimeter and LED boards, ground and stand naming, scoreboards, programmes, tickets, website and social, and vehicles (RFU What to Offer a Sponsor).

Generic pitches get noticed. Reviewing a proposal an emerging pro league sent to a large home improvement brand, former Washington Commanders chief strategy officer Shripal Shah wrote that "the pitch felt generic" (JohnWallStreet).

Doing this by hand is slow; Digideck says that, without a dedicated tool, putting a prospect's logo onto activation visuals takes hours in Photoshop (Digideck). Sportworks Designs builds them from your own inventory photos, adding sponsor logos to kits, LED boards, stadium signage and social content with set logo placements and matching colour, sizing and perspective. Studio builds activation visuals from reference images and a concept, and Video turns them into short clips.

How do you personalise a deck for every prospect?

Keep one master template and change the slides that matter: cover, why them, audience, mockups and activation. Ken Ungar draws a useful line between customisation (tailoring the offer to the prospect's objectives) and personalisation (their name and colours), and calls customisation the keystone of a good deck (Performance Racing Industry).

The RFU templates guide makes the same split for clubs, with separate B2C templates (local retailers, restaurants, gyms, pubs) and B2B templates (banks, lawyers, accountants) (RFU templates).

Sportworks Decks turns your existing PowerPoint or PDF into a reusable template with linked image placeholders, then builds a personalised deck for each brand you select, with visuals, inventory and pricing, exported to PPTX or PDF. For outbound campaigns, Scale generates personalised pitch assets for several brands or a whole industry in one run. As Birmingham City FC's Head of Partnerships puts it: "We can create personalised decks in minutes" (Sportworks customers).

Other tools do this too. Digideck offers mail-merge fields for prospect names, logos and custom data (Digideck), and says "nearly half" of US pro teams in the NHL, NFL, MLB, MLS and NBA use it (Digideck). PowerPoint, Canva or Google Slides are fine for a handful of prospects a season.

Should you present the sponsorship deck or send it?

Present it whenever you can, and send it afterwards with the written proposal. The RFU templates guide suggests using the deck as a guide or agenda for the meeting rather than reading it out, and says decks can be emailed afterwards to summarise the opportunity. Power Sponsorship's Kim Skildum-Reid goes further: she argues a deck is not an effective way to sell sponsorship, that PowerPoint suits only a tailored stand-up presentation to a group, and that it always needs a far more detailed leave-behind (Power Sponsorship). It is a fair challenge: never let the deck be the only thing a sponsor receives.

Chris Baylis takes a different line on first meetings: bring nothing, spend more time listening than talking, and remember that you are the sales tool, not the package (Sponsorship Collective). A practical middle path is discovery first, then a deck shaped by what you heard.

A sent deck must work without a salesperson present (Digideck), so give the send version a little more explanation.

Should you send a sponsorship deck as a PDF, PowerPoint or a link?

Send a PDF if it is small, and a link if it is image-heavy or you want to know whether it was read. The RFU notes that teasers are generally sent as a PDF, and The Events Calendar recommends PDF so every sponsor can open it. Watch the size: Google says the attachment limit for personal Gmail accounts is 25 MB in total, and above that Gmail swaps the file for a Google Drive link (Gmail Help). A deck full of mockups can pass that quickly.

A link can be updated in place and shows engagement, which helps you time your follow-up. Digideck tracks slide and session duration with real-time open alerts (Digideck), SponsorFlo says its decks go out as tracked links that show when the sponsor opens them (SponsorFlo), and Visme's template page lists open tracking (Visme). Sportworks deck sharing offers public, password-protected or email-gated links, an internal feedback link for your team, open notifications, per-viewer analytics (sessions and dwell time) and a slide-by-slide heatmap (Decks).

If you track how prospects read your decks, check your privacy notice covers it.

What are the most common sponsorship deck mistakes?

The biggest mistake is a deck about the club rather than the sponsor. CoachingArea lists the usual errors:

• Club-centred content: history, team photos and a general plea for support instead of the sponsor's goals (CoachingArea).
• One deck for everyone: the same pitch sent to every company.
• Price before value: the fee on slide three.
• Too much text: the RFU templates guide warns against packing the presentation with information and reading it out.
• No clear next step: finish with an action, an owner and a date.

How do sponsorship decks differ by sport and level?

The spine stays the same, but the emphasis changes:

First you need the right prospects in the room: see how to find sponsors.

FAQ

Should I put prices in a sponsorship pitch deck?

Usually not. The RFU toolkit says the presentation does not need costings, but you should be ready to talk ballpark figures; set out full pricing in the written proposal.

Is there a free sponsorship deck template?

Yes. The RFU publishes PowerPoint sales templates (B2B and B2C teasers and full documents), alongside a sales script, asset register and draft agreement (England Rugby). Written for rugby clubs, they adapt to other sports.

Is there an alternative to a sponsorship pitch deck?

For most rights holders the deck plus a written proposal is still the norm. Sportworks is building Showcase (coming soon), an interactive 3D world you send a prospect instead of a pitch deck: they walk through the venue, see their brand on the LEDs and other assets, and click through to the deck, assets for sale, price list and terms. More in our Sportworks overview.

See it with your own inventory

If building a personalised deck and mockups for each prospect is eating your week, book a 30-minute Sportworks demo and see Decks and Designs working on your own assets.