The Renewal Conversation: How Sponsorships Get Renewed, Grown or Ended

Many racers picture the renewal as a single meeting at the end of the season: you show up with your results, ask for next year, and hear yes or no. The brands describe something different. By the time most racers start thinking about renewing, the decision is mostly made. It was made over months, from what the sponsor saw, what their own bosses asked and whether the program was still growing. Here is what really goes into it.

Renewals are decided earlier than you think

Julian Gill, CEO of Eibach Springs, told a PRI Show seminar audience that Eibach sets its global budget for the year well ahead of time, and that established partners are lined up long before a new season starts. "There are certain things of certain series you're going to get set up with certain race teams that we have long established relationships. We're probably talking back to them in August... So they're set."

Kyle Kietzmann of BELL Racing described the same calendar at a helmet company, where custom-painted lids for the following season have to be planned early. "We finish up our budgeting in October, and so mostly our athlete rosters for the next year are really set by then," he said. "Frankly, our roster of athletes is set by the time we get to PRI for the next year, so we really don't have a lot of room left in the budget." ▶ Watch Julian Gill and Kyle Kietzmann on this

If the racer's first renewal conversation happens at the PRI Show in December, it's often too late to change anything. Your season recap, your growth numbers and your ideas for next year need to reach your contact by late summer, while budgets are still being built.

Give your contact what they need to sell you inside the company

Your contact usually isn't the final decision-maker. They have to defend your program to someone above them. On the same PRI panel, an executive from a fluid-absorbent company that had only recently started sponsoring racing explained why patience and preparation matter. "Look at this as playing the long game. Give the sponsor time," he said. "...I report to a board of directors over a venture investment company, and every single member of that board is a bean counter. They are taught to drive looking in the rearview mirror, and I need time to be able to go and sell the value of having this athlete on board." ▶ Watch the panel

Think about what your own contact needs to win that meeting: numbers, photos, examples of sales or introductions, and what you'll do differently next year. Hand them a renewal case they can take straight into the room, and give them enough time to use it.

Grow the deal by performing, not by asking

Most sponsorships start smaller than racers want. Dan Bailey, founder of EPIC Racewear, said that's by design. EPIC's deals are usually discounts on gear a racer would buy anyway, "so it's much the same as cash," and "it starts off small, right? We tiptoe, and the more you perform, the more you get. It's pretty simple. It's common that way with a lot of companies that are sponsoring. They start small." ▶ Watch Dan Bailey explain this

Enjuku Racing's general manager explained how a retailer decides who gets more the following year. Some sponsored drivers carry a personal discount code on flyers at the track, and Enjuku watches who it works for. "We'll track that and see, like, oh, you know, driver X, 50 people used that coupon this month, and driver Y, 200 did, and that'll definitely weigh into what budget may be allocated to that in the following year." Programs get reevaluated "from season to season," and the ones that produce get more support. ▶ Watch the clip

Wing Lam, co-founder of Wahoo's Fish Taco, said the best renewals don't even require a pitch. "If we see you doing a great job and we can see the uptick, and we can hear in the community that, oh my God, that kid did this at the school... we're gonna go, oh my God, what else can we do? So instead of you trying to always ask for more, you're going to end up having team managers telling you, oh my God, we got to give you more, we got to do more with you." His advice: "You don't want to push. You want the team manager to come through." ▶ Watch Wing Lam on this

That's the strongest position to renew from. When the brand's own people are asking how to do more with you, the renewal meeting is about how much, not whether.

A partnership that stops growing gets cut

The other side of growth is what happens without it. Gill was candid about the hardest conversation a sponsor has. "The toughest conversation is always when you've had a longstanding relationship with somebody and it's time to move on." He described how it usually sounds: "It's been a great three, four years, you've helped us do all this, but we've now plateaued."

He doesn't treat it as personal. "Objectives change, budgets change," Gill said, and he believes in telling a racer plainly when a season will be the last one together. ▶ Watch Julian Gill explain this

The word to notice is plateaued. A racer can deliver everything in the contract and still lose the deal if year four looks just like year one. Every renewal should bring something new to the table: a new event, a new audience, a new kind of content, an introduction the sponsor didn't have last year. And if a sponsor tells you it's time to move on, take it the way Gill hopes racers will, thank them, and leave the door open. Marketing people change companies, and budgets come back.

The takeaway

• Find out when each sponsor builds next year's budget, and send your season recap and renewal ideas a few months before that.
• Give your contact a ready-made case for their boss: numbers, photos, sales or introductions, and next year's plan.
• Use tracking you can show, like a personal discount code, so your results show up in the brand's own data.
• Add something new every year so the program never looks like it has plateaued.
• If a sponsor moves on, end it gracefully. You may be pitching the same person at another brand later.