The Brief

Sport & Sponsorship.
Analysis before product.

Ten articles on the structural failures of the sports sponsorship market — written before a single line of Sponsable was built. Read them to understand the market, or to understand why the platform exists.

Discovery Engine Brands
The Discovery Problem: Why Sports Sponsorship Runs on Who You Know — and What That Costs Everyone
The most commercially viable athlete in a given category and the brand best suited to partner with them will, in the current market, probably never find each other.
14 min
OpenBooks Both
Pricing in the Dark: The Information Asymmetry Costing Athletes Their Market Rate
In almost every professional field, salary data exists somewhere. In sports sponsorship, it does not. That absence is not an accident — and athletes are paying for it.
13 min
Smart Reporting Athletes
The Accountability Gap: Why Athletes Don't Report — And Why It's Costing Them
Sponsored athletes are walking away from contract renewals not because they performed badly, but because they failed to communicate that they performed at all.
11 min
Sponsorship Economics Both
Gear Rich, Cash Poor: The Product-for-Posts Trap and How to Escape It
The outdoor and action sports industries have quietly normalised a sponsorship model that asks elite athletes to perform professional marketing labour in exchange for product alone.
12 min
Roster Intelligence Brands
The Measurement Problem: Why Sponsorship Budgets Are Defended With Gut Feel — and What It Costs
Every other line in a marketing budget can be defended with a number. Sponsorship — often the most emotionally significant investment a brand makes — is defended with a feeling.
15 min
Project Marketplace Athletes
The Pitch Problem: Why "Sponsor Me" Emails Fail — and What Brands Actually Need to Say Yes
The sponsorship pitch has been the same for decades: a request, a profile, a hope. It asks brands to imagine a relationship rather than evaluate a proposal.
13 min
TrustPoint Both
The Trust Deficit: Why Sponsorship Needs a Reputation Layer — and Why Building One Is Harder Than It Looks
Sports sponsorship runs on trust extended between parties who have almost no objective basis for extending it. The bad behaviour that results — from both sides — is consequential and largely invisible.
11 min
Sessions & Education Athletes
The Literacy Gap: Why Software Cannot Fix What Business Education Has to Solve First
The tools athletes need to run professional commercial careers now exist. The knowledge required to use them effectively often doesn't. Closing that gap is not optional.
13 min
Service Marketplace Athletes
The Fractional Team Problem: Professional Athletes Need a Team. They Just Can't Justify One Full-Time.
Lawyers, filmmakers, safety coordinators, coaches — every professional athlete needs all of them, each only a handful of times a year. The market for finding them has always been the same: who you happen to know.
7 min
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