Before this, every negotiation started from the same number, and partners who could not reach it walked away. Four tiers meant four different conversations — and four of them closed.
I was raising sponsorship for the 4th United Cup. Until then the event had exactly one price.
The problem with a single price is not that it is high. It is that it collapses every negotiation into the same negotiation. Companies that could reach it were already on the list. Companies that could not never took a second call — not because they did not want in, but because there was no seat at the table for them.
One price only filters for one kind of client.
Four prices filter for four.
I took “sponsorship” apart and asked what a company is actually buying. Some want visibility, at the venue and through the club’s broadcast reach. Some want access — to the group’s network, and to the people they would be seated next to at the dinner. Some want a credible corporate-responsibility programme. Those are different products, and they had all been packed into one rate card.
So I mapped every benefit the club could actually offer into an internal menu, then built four tiers priced on willingness to pay — naming rights and the head table at the top, then venue presence, then co-branded collateral, then a light employee participation package. Every tier was a complete offer that stood on its own rather than a discounted version of the one above it. Stepping down a tier must not feel like being demoted. The invitation letters were tiered with it: different rights, different framing, one clear ask per audience, and no tier reading like a consolation prize.
It was the first time the event had been tiered at all. The edition engaged 18 Chinese and international companies, seven or more of them from the group’s own supplier network, and converted four into paying participants. One partnership was renewed through 2028. On site it ran 400+ players and executives with a delivery team of roughly seventy.
I would be careful about claiming this as revenue proof. B2B partnership value is slow and compliance-heavy, and a single edition is not a clean read. What I track instead is progression — meetings to intent to signature, renewals, expansion — and on that measure the tiering worked.
The transferable part is plainer than the pricing tactic: when you have only one offer, you think you are being rejected. Usually you are just not asking the right question.
I only answer from what is written on this site.
Type a few words — I will show you where it says so.