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Sponsorships Are
Joint Ventures
For Emerging Sports
& New Teams

In women's sports and emerging leagues, the parties in a sponsorship aren't just licensing logos. They're combining their names, IP, and reputations to uncover a new audience. Build the fan base and unlock the benefits.

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The New Landscape

The Sports Industry Is Adding New Stakeholders Faster Than the Old Playbook Can Handle

New Leagues New Teams New Brands New Fan Bases New Technology

New leagues. New teams. Emerging women's properties. Fan bases that didn't exist five years ago. Brands that have never done sports partnerships before. Technology that's changing how fans engage, how content travels, and what "activation" even means.

The commercial infrastructure hasn't caught up. Most new entrants are trying to navigate sponsorship using frameworks built for the NFL, the NBA, and a media landscape that no longer exists.

The opportunity is real — new revenue streams, new sponsor categories, new forms of fan engagement that nobody has claimed yet. Getting there requires a different approach to structuring the partnerships that fund it all.

Women's soccer
Women's Sports

Women's Sport Isn't a Carbon Copy of Men's Sport.

The growth in women's sports is real and it's accelerating. New leagues, expanded coverage, fan demographics that brands have been trying to reach for years. The commercial opportunity is significant — and largely unclaimed.

The mistake most brands make is reaching for the familiar playbook: rate cards, asset lists, logo placements designed for a media environment built around men's sports. It doesn't fit. The fan profiles are different. The engagement patterns are different. The content opportunities are different.

Partner Alignment

Identify brand partners whose customer base and values genuinely map to the property and its fans

New Categories

Structure deals that create new commercial categories rather than filling existing ones

Fan Engagement

Build content and activation formats designed for how women's sports fans actually engage

Revenue Lines

Develop revenue lines — sponsorship, in-kind, co-branded content — suited to where the property is now and where it's going

For Emerging Teams & Leagues

For New Properties, a Sponsorship Has to Do More Than Generate Revenue

Established properties can afford to treat sponsorships as pure revenue. New teams and leagues can't — and they shouldn't try. The math doesn't work, and the transactional approach leaves too much on the table.

A well-aligned brand partner doesn't just write a check. It brings its customer base into contact with your fanbase, lends credibility to a property still establishing its identity, and contributes goods, services, and activation resources that offset real operational costs.

Align brand partners around a shared mission — not just a transaction
Use brand credibility to accelerate fanbase growth
Offset costs with in-kind product, services, and activation resources
Build commercial infrastructure that scales as the property does
Lacrosse
The Approach

It's Time For
a New
Sponsorship Playbook

The old playbook is: The brand wants maximum impact for minimum spend. The rights holder wants maximum revenue for minimum obligation.

"A sports sponsorship isn't a sale. It's a combination of the most critical things each party possesses: their names, reputations, audiences, and IP."

When you structure a deal as a joint venture — with clear contributions, aligned incentives, and shared ownership of the outcome — the combination becomes worth more than what either party could build alone. That's the model Race Point Sports Advisors brings to every engagement.

Services

Four Ways
We Can Work Together

From deal structure to long-term partnership strategy, we bring joint venture thinking to the full range of sponsorship and rights work.

Deal Structuring & Advisory

Most sponsorship deals undervalue what the parties are actually contributing. We help clients define contributions, protect IP, align incentives, and build in dispute and exit mechanisms — before anyone needs them.

Leagues · Rights holders · Brands · Talent

Rights Holder Advisory

Most rights holders lead with gameday inventory — signage, tickets, logo placements. The more valuable assets rarely make it into the conversation: community programs, foundations, technology platforms, player access, and cause-driven initiatives that brands can't buy anywhere else. We help rights holders identify partners whose interests genuinely align with what they actually control, and structure deals that put those assets to work across the full calendar — not just on game night.

Rights holders · Teams · Leagues · Foundations

Brand-Side Sponsorship Advisory

The right deal is built around alignment — shared market, values, and audience. We help brands find genuinely aligned leagues, teams, or athletes, and structure deals that connect to real business outcomes: new customers, market credibility, and IP that extends beyond the contract term.

Brands entering or optimizing sports partnerships

NIL & Talent Integration

Athlete NIL is often the most valuable and most underprotected element of a larger sponsorship. We structure talent integration within team and league deals — ensuring athlete IP is properly valued, protected, and positioned to benefit the full partnership.

Athletes · Teams · Multi-stakeholder JVs
Matt Reece
About Matt Reece

Nearly Two Decades Advising Major Commercial Rights Holders and Brands

Matt Reece served as Chief Legal Officer of the Boston Bruins and TD Garden for over a decade, responsible for the full commercial side of the business: sponsorships, naming rights, ticketing, marketing, infrastructure, and foundation and community work. As outside counsel, he has structured sponsorship, naming rights, and technology license deals for brands and technology companies, with experience across the NWSL, NBA, NHL, MLS, USL, NASCAR, and other sports leagues and organizations. Before sports, he spent a decade structuring IP licenses, outsourcing arrangements, and joint ventures.

The combination of women's sports and emerging leagues, technology, and new investment has opened real possibilities for revenue and fan engagement that the traditional playbook was not built to capture. The opportunity is to develop new fanbases and commercial categories, rethink how assets get deployed, and build structures that create genuine value for both the rights holder and the brand.

Race Point Sports Advisors puts those ideas into action using a joint venture framework built on that experience. The focus is on women's sports, young teams, and brands that are new to sports sponsorship — that is where the openness, creativity, and willingness to build something new are found. Current clients include mainelove, Thermoshade, Heraean Group, and AIM Sport. If you are a rights holder or brand developing a strategy, structuring a new deal, or figuring out whether a partnership is worth pursuing, I am happy to talk.

Rights Holder

CLO, Boston Bruins & TD Garden (10+ years)

Outside Counsel

Sponsorship, naming rights & tech licensing across major leagues

Leagues

NWSL · NBA · NHL · MLS · USL · NASCAR

Prior Practice

IP licensing, outsourcing & joint venture structuring

Let's Talk

Structuring a Partnership? Renegotiating One? Start Here.

Whether you're entering a new deal, renegotiating an existing one, or evaluating whether a partnership is worth pursuing — a conversation costs nothing.

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