The reality is that with costs to run even the simplest regatta going up — fuel, boat maintenance, trophies, etc. — additional monies are needed to make it a first class event. Of course, the event organizers can always raise entry fees, but in this economy, with regatta participation down, that will kill your regatta faster than anything.
What do sponsors want in return for their investment? Has anyone thought to ask? I know from my days at Rolex that I got a huge number of sponsor requests asking for money. In return for that, they would do “whatever we wanted.” It was the usual spots to watch on a sponsor boat, tickets to parties, etc. Not what we needed. Our customers (jewelers) had no desire to go watch a sailboat race. Truth be known, most of them got seasick. Tickets were equally valueless.So what do the vast majority of sponsors want? Simple — press coverage that actually mentions their name. It’d nice to reach 100 sailors at a local regatta, but not a great ROI. They want to be in Scuttlebutt, Sailing World, WindCheck and all the other top sailing magazines and websites. And they want their name mentioned.
A number of years ago, I was talking with a publisher of a major sailing magazine. I’d called him to discuss coverage of an event we held at American Yacht Club. My first question to him was, “Could you run a magazine without advertisers?” His response, of course, was, “No way.” I then went on to explain that the same applied to sponsors and regattas, and his magazine did not even mention our title sponsor in the article.
How do you get this press coverage? There is a good chance that a member of your club or organization is in public relations. Sign them up to do press releases. It’s not brain surgery and can be done from Mars. All they really need to do is give some brief details of the event — how hard it was blowing, how many races, etc — and the results. Also, if your club has a website, give the link where the results are posted.
Then start compiling a list to e-mail to and put the press release in the body of an e-mail that you send to yourself and blind copy the press contacts. Attachments often hit spam filters and don’t go through. Here is the first one for your list — Chris Gill at WindCheck — This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Get your press releases out immediately. The last day of the event. It’s been my experience that once the person charged with writing a press release or article for the club newsletter leaves the club, your chances of getting it done plummet. An e-mail newsletter like Scuttlebutt has no interest in running results from a regatta that ended a week earlier. They publish daily, so timeliness is everything.
But let me return to my comments about the sailing media. Overall, they do a decent job giving sponsors some credit, but they have a long way to go. Any chance they get to highlight a sponsor, they should, but often don’t. In my opinion this is not a well thought out decision. After all, if they give the sponsor some “ink,” they may see the need for the sponsor to advertise with them. Sailing, more than any sport I know, has a huge collection of whiners — people who bitch and moan about what is wrong and have no solutions or the desire to help pitch in and solve the problem. There are a few sites that allow this, and, in my personal opinion, should be ashamed of themselves. It’s been said that bad press is better than no press at all. I strongly disagree. There are sites that bait their readers to get into a pissing contest and say all the wrong things. People respond and then the whiners join in with inappropriate comments. Who needs this? Avoid them and don’t expose your sponsors to that sort of environment.
To that end, I’m proud to write for Wind- Check. They bend over backward to publish everything they can and give sponsors excellent exposure. This is the type of magazine that I want my sponsors to be covered in.
One final thought - send regatta stories and results on anything you run to Chris here at WindCheck. Pictures with captions identifying who or what is in them are helpful too. They do not have a huge staff, so they need input from readers. This is a magazine published in support of boating in the Northeast, so they need material to publish from you. They’ll do everything they can to get your event recognized.
Now I’ll get of my soapbox for a month. Maybe.