Data analytics firm SponsorUnited, one of CT’s fastest-growing private companies, provides transparency on sports sponsorship deals

Stamford native Bob Lynch has created transparency within the sports and entertainment sponsorship industry, having slowly pulled back the curtain on the multibillion-dollar sector with data analytics hub SponsorUnited.

In 2016, the marketing veteran saw a need for easier access to information on sponsors and sports teams, after heading up sponsorship efforts for the Miami Dolphins and Brooklyn Nets.

“I saw a gap in information around how these sponsorships are bought and sold,” he told the Hartford Business Journal. “The sponsorship industry and the endorsement industry were growing like a weed, but it was all very opaque. That’s what kind of planted the seed.”

After five years with the Dolphins and a year with the Nets, Lynch realized the information he sought out was hard to come by in all professional sports.

“I thought there was an opportunity to start a company and bring value to this industry,” said Lynch, who lives in Stamford and works out of his home. “I finally said, … you ought to kill the dream or go for it.”

Lynch founded SponsorUnited in 2018 and has quickly grown the 175-employee company, which provides market intelligence on sports sponsorship deals.

The company’s subscription-based platform offers users access to information on 350,000 sponsors — such as Walmart, Wells Fargo and Dick’s Sporting Goods — and more than 75,000 organizations that generate revenue from sponsorship deals. That includes sports teams and leagues, events, media companies, athletes and influencers.

Lynch said SponsorUnited’s user base includes more than 1,200 organizations ranging from global brands like PepsiCo, Verizon and Anheuser-Busch, to major sports teams and leagues like the Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Lakers and the NFL.

“It’s a diverse mix that reflects the full ecosystem of sponsorship buyers, sellers and strategists,” he said.

Subscribers pay anywhere from several thousand dollars to several hundred thousand dollars per year to use SponsorUnited’s platform, Lynch said.

The company’s early growth has attracted investors and other attention.

SponsorUnited in 2022 raised $35 million from Boston-based private equity firm Spectrum Equity. And last year, the company was named the sixth-fastest growing private business in Connecticut, according to Inc.’s annual 5000 list. SponsorUnited grew its revenue 507% over a three-year period ending in 2023, according to Inc.

Recruiting ‘scouts’

To launch his business, Lynch said he used his own funds and learned all he could about data platforms, sales-as-a-service technology and online marketplaces from Boston venture capitalist Chase Garbarino, founder of online real estate experience platform HqO, and one of SponsorUnited’s investors.

Lynch began collecting sponsorship data in 2017 using an innovative approach. He recruited college students from across the country majoring in sports management to take videos and photos of sponsor signage and displays at local stadiums, while also teaching these “scouts” about the industry.

“I had created an infrastructure of kids in every city with smartphones, so I could essentially do this at no cost at scale, getting hundreds of people,” he said. “Buying tickets to the games was probably my biggest expense at the time, and trying to live with a newborn and a 2-year-old and all that stuff that goes along with it.”

Lynch hired a few students to train other scouts and brought on Stamford investor Alain Benzaken as chief operating officer in June 2017, to help SponsorUnited build and test its online platform of sponsorship industry data.

“We had to make sure that the technology actually worked,” Lynch said. “The very first paid client we had was the San Francisco 49ers in January 2018.”

By the end of 2018, SponsorUnited had developed sponsorship data profiles on 28 teams throughout the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and other professional leagues.

‘Smarter, faster decisions’

SponsorUnited provides users a range of information, including detailed profiles on brand sponsors and the organizations that use them, including key contacts, sponsorship spend estimates, active partnerships and marketing deal structures.

It also creates competitive benchmarking reports on sponsorship deals that track creative and social media performances, he said.

“We provide a comprehensive view of sponsorship and media partnerships across sports, entertainment and lifestyle,” Lynch said. “They can also understand category and industry trends in real time.”

SponsorUnited currently collects its sponsorship data by sending about 500 scouts to stadiums in 150 countries, and using data-scraping technologies to gather information from social and digital media.

The company also gets information from news and media sources, and uses artificial intelligence to process and structure the data it collects.

Lynch would not disclose exact revenue figures, but he said the company has made more than $10 million in annual sales over the past several years.

SponsorUnited hit a milestone in November 2024, when it launched a new tech platform called SPND, which stands for sponsorship prices of negotiated deals.

The AI-backed service provides financial terms for over $13.3 billion in actual sponsorship deals.

“For a long period of time, people said it would be great if we could know how much they pay for the sponsorship,” he said. “It took us four years to learn how to do that.”

Paula Beadle, founder and CEO of the Sponsorship Marketing Association, said she believes SponsorUnited is the first company to offer this level of detail on estimated transaction prices of sponsorship deals.

“There are other notable companies in the space that provide valuation models, but I believe the technology and level of data that SponsorUnited can deliver is unique,” Beadle said. “This kind of intelligence empowers smarter, faster decisions. It’s likely SponsorUnited has become the Redfin of the sponsorship industry.”