Venue Sponsorship

BDS Sponsorship has advised a greater range of venues than any other sponsorship consultancy.

Music/Entertainment Arenas

Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool – A unique sponsorship strategy based on securing two high-profile naming rights sponsorships for one venue (with four preferred partners, as secondary-level sponsors). The sponsorship income secured for ACC Liverpool was 300% higher than any comparable venue in the UK.

BDS was employed by AECC (Aberdeen Exhibition & Conference Centre), a leading venue in the Aberdeen business community and host venue for Offshore Europe, one of the largest oil & gas events in the world. The final deal involved a 10-year agreement which saw the Arena being re-named the ‘GE Oil & Gas Arena, Aberdeen’.

BDS has also undertaken work for Earls Court/Olympia and the NEC Birmingham.

Arts Venues and Museums

The British Film Institute’s London Imax, Usher Hall, Criterion Theatre, Birmingham Hippodrome, Millennium Centre Cardiff and the Royal Festival Hall are among our clients. We have also worked with the National Space Science Centre, The National Marine Aquarium, Magna and The Science Museum.

Heritage

We have undertaken sponsorship consultancy for historic venues including Leeds Castle, the National Trust and the Roman Baths in Bath.

Expo

Our consultants raised in excess of £5 million for the Department of Trade and Industry in support of the UK Pavilion at EXPO’92 in Seville.

Shopping Centres

BDS obtained significant sponsorship income for Bluewater Shopping Centre, through sponsorships such as the Land Rover Experience. This sponsorship won the International Council of Shopping Centres Global Award for Centre Productivity.

Having generated significant sponsorship income for Bluewater Shopping Centre we were employed, after completing a strategic phase, to undertake sponsorship and commercialisation for INTU Shopping Centres. In 2 years we achieved approximately £10 million of additional income.

Leisure Attractions

We wrote the sponsorship strategy for the British Airways London Eye and implemented the sponsorship sales process, raising over £1.7 million in secondary sponsorship alone.

Following the success of our work, we were appointed to write a sponsorship strategy for Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park. We were retained to undertake the resultant sales work and achieved in excess of £5 million in sponsorship revenue.

We were retained by LEGOLAND Windsor and obtained significant levels of sponsorship from a wide range of companies including Ford, Coca-Cola, Kodak, BT, McDonalds, Cow & Gate and Mars.

We have been employed by Bristol Zoo Gardens, Chester Zoo and Edinburgh Zoo to carry out sponsorship strategy and allied income. BDS also advised Bristol Zoo Gardens on potential construction and fit-out sponsorship for their new Wildlife Conservation Park development.

Following the initial strategy work for Bristol Zoo Gardens, we were employed by the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) to create a sponsorship and secondary income generation strategy for BIAZA members nationwide.

Sports Stadiums

We worked for the Millennium Commission’s Landmark Project for Scotland, Hampden Stadium. Having developed the fund-raising strategy, we secured £5m in reduced title sponsorship from BT Scotland.

BDS obtained a number of sponsors who paid a seven-figure sum for the first (and possibly still only) sponsorship of the closure of a building – Wembley Stadium. As part of the sponsorship benefits for a P&G hair shampoo brand, the sponsor ran an on-pack promotion to win the benches from the England Dressing Rooms.

BDS has also worked with Newmarket Racecourses Trust.

We wrote the original strategy for title sponsorship of the Coventry City football ground. We recommended placing directional signage to the new stadium on the M6. This recommendation increased the value of the Ricoh Arena by over 500% and delivered a sponsorship worth £1 million a year for ten years. 

Venue Sponsorship Experience