With col­lege foot­ball just crown­ing its new cham­pi­on and the NFL play­offs under­way, we’re remind­ed again how impor­tant sports are to so many peo­ple. Because of this pas­sion, part­ner­ing with sports prop­er­ties can be a mean­ing­ful way to mar­ket a brand. Just in 2014, North Amer­i­can com­pa­nies spent over $14 bil­lion dol­lars to acquire spon­sor­ship rights to sports prop­er­ties and Euro­pean com­pa­nies spent near­ly $15 bil­lion. Some brands, like Gatorade, are sport-relat­ed, so it makes great sense to mar­ket through sports. But brands from all kinds of prod­uct cat­e­gories (from soft drinks to cars to insur­ance com­pa­nies) also use sport spon­sor­ships to accom­plish their busi­ness objec­tives.

Here are six tips for using sport spon­sor­ship as a brand build­ing strat­e­gy.

1. Fan Passion Means Brand Passion

The prin­ci­ple of “lik­ing trans­fer” states that a person’s lik­ing toward one object also trans­fers to oth­er objects that are asso­ci­at­ed with it. And the stronger the lik­ing is, the more like­ly it is that it will trans­fer to the oth­er enti­ties. This mech­a­nism can cre­ate ben­e­fi­cial spon­sor­ship part­ner­ships for brands.

Align­ing your brand with sports prop­er­ties that have pas­sion­ate fan bases means oppor­tu­ni­ties to turn the fans into pas­sion­ate con­sumers. NASCAR fans espe­cial­ly are well-known for exhibit­ing fan loy­al­ty equals brand loy­al­ty behav­iors.

An impor­tant ben­e­fit for spon­sors is the abil­i­ty to use the property’s trade­mark. There­fore, to fur­ther cap­i­tal­ize on fan pas­sion as a spon­sor, it’s wise to offer prod­ucts with the property’s trade­marks (e.g., logo). Bud Light offered team-themed cans for NFL fans this sea­son, a clever way to moti­vate fans to buy the prod­uct.

2. Beware Of Rivalries

Just as there is “lik­ing trans­fer” there can also be “dis­lik­ing trans­fer.” In sports, many die-hard fans have strong dis­like toward rival teams, which can trans­late to sim­i­lar dis­like toward their spon­sors.

Com­pa­nies should be care­ful about win­ning cus­tomers with­out alien­at­ing rival fan base. Often in these cas­es, brands may spon­sor the entire league or spon­sor both rivals reduc­ing the risk of any neg­a­tive respons­es. Some notable exam­ples include Delta spon­sor­ing both the Yan­kees and the Mets and McDonald’s spon­sor­ing both the Green Bay Pack­ers and the Chica­go Bears.

3. Small, Local Brands Can Win Big

For most local com­pa­nies (e.g., a restau­rant or car deal­er­ship) part­ner­ing with the local team can be ben­e­fi­cial. The con­nec­tion will tap on the fans’ pas­sion for their team and attract them to the brand. At the same time, there is lit­tle risk for back­lash from sup­port­ers of rivals for geo­graph­ic rea­sons.

For exam­ple, the rival­ry between the Mon­tre­al Cana­di­ens and the Boston Bru­ins is prob­a­bly the most intense one in the Nation­al Hock­ey League. As much as Mon­tre­al fans may dis­like their rivals and their spon­sors, they wouldn’t be going to Boston for din­ner plans or buy­ing a car any­way.

4. Build Brand Awareness

For unknown brands, sports spon­sor­ships can offer a quick way to gain­ing expo­sure and recog­ni­tion. Obvi­ous­ly, it is eas­i­er to build such aware­ness through big­ger prop­er­ties but again it is large­ly a func­tion of who the tar­get mar­ket is.

Nation­al brands will prob­a­bly need to spon­sor big­ger prop­er­ties on a nation­al scale, where­as local com­pa­nies only need aware­ness with­in the local mar­ket.

Col­lege foot­ball bowl games have often been used by com­pa­nies that were try­ing to expand nation­al­ly to help them become bet­ter known in a short peri­od of time.

5. Meaningful Engagement Matters

While build­ing aware­ness is great, mean­ing­ful spon­sor­ships are more than just eye­balls and impres­sions.

Spon­sor­ships that engage the fans are more like­ly to be impact­ful and build mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships between the brands and the fans. There­fore, spon­sors need to design excit­ing and cre­ative engage­ment acti­va­tions and go above and beyond sim­ply using the phrase “offi­cial part­ner of” in their ads.

6. Protect Your Investment

Spon­sor­ship part­ner­ships are invest­ments and need to be treat­ed as such. Pur­pose­ful acti­va­tion not only helps poten­tial return on invest­ment but can also defend against poten­tial ambush efforts by com­peti­tors.

Clever ambush mar­ket­ing cam­paigns estab­lish a con­nec­tion to a sports prop­er­ty by cre­ative­ly using word­ing and themes that asso­ciate with the prop­er­ty with­out using any autho­rized trade­marks. There­fore, offi­cial spon­sors must active­ly acti­vate their spon­sor­ship, espe­cial­ly through use of ben­e­fits that are only avail­able for them, like use of the property’s trade­marks and on-site pres­ence.

Build­ing brands through sports spon­sor­ships requires strate­gi­cal effort and addi­tion­al mon­ey (above the cost for acquir­ing the spon­sor­ship rights) but with­out them, the spon­sor­ship may be all in vain. Just like an expen­sive toy can’t run with­out bat­ter­ies, a spon­sor­ship can’t do much with­out mean­ing­ful acti­va­tion.