I've searched "sponsorship", but the results are rather outdated and they're all off-topic.
As the topic suggests, I have a few questions about getting sponsorships.
1. We're a student-organized AMS approved club. Currently we have 100+ members and we expect this number to grow to ~170 next year. The first 'big' tournament we organized had 63 people participate over 3 days, with more people (80 total on first day, 50 during final) coming to watch. We also had 110 viewers online watching the finals. The tournament thread had 6700 hits, and our blog has 2500 hits.
^ Those are the numbers we currently have and we're looking to get a small sponsorship for our next tournament coming up in June. Are the numbers 'attractive' enough for a company (of any size) to sponsor us? Obviously we're not asking something like $2000. Perhaps a few small prize items to start off and eventually sponsorship for the club itself...
2. How do I go about getting this sponsorship? Do I contact the local managers or the customer service department via email? For example, a company like NCIX, who do I contact? Any other suggestions as to who we should contact?
Any comments and feedbacks are appreciated! Thanks guys :D
all you can do is speak to them and ask. sell yourself and, more importantly, sell how sponsoring your tournament would be useful for the company you want to deal with, most well run companies generally don't give money away if they're not going to expect any sort of return
as to who, i'd look for someone in marketing if they have such a department. and i wouldn't email, more likely to get some sort of reply by phone, and follow up in person if possible
local would certainly be the best bet of anything small time. Any favorite place to eat that many of you're group frequents? Maybe a family owned business in the area?
Your numbers arent appealing for any kind of sponsoring - although that can be said for almost all gaming tournament stuff. A 100+ members strong club must already have some connections in place that you can use, maybe a son,friend,daughter of a small business owner. Talk to your members and see what comes up.
If you are looking for professional sponsors like Razer or Steelseries etc, you could try asking other organizers Most people have "sponsor packs" which would detail like hits on a site, facebook/twitter amount of people who are at your events and stuff. good luck