Every summer, Premier League clubs take the opportunity to rebuild. Squads are reshaped, staff restructured, pre-season plans redrawn.

Yet one relationship often escapes the review: the partner measuring the value of your sponsorships. Ask many commercial directors why they stay with the same evaluation provider for five seasons and the answer is largely “because we’re scared of losing consistency of data” and/or “because we’ve run out of time.”

That instinct is understandable. But it’s also expensive – and, in our experience, based on fears that don’t survive contact with a well-run transition.

MYTH 01

There’s no cost to staying put

Loyalty to any supplier who isn’t providing the service you need is rarely free. It’s a cost when those reports show up too late for you or your sponsors to act on, when sponsors choose to ignore the reports; or when an alternative rights holder presents a more compelling case for those hard-earned sponsorship dollars come renewal time.

What’s more, our experience tells us that brands are beginning to apply the same rigour to sponsorship as they do to paid media; if your evaluation partner can’t meet that standard, that presents a threat to the sustainability of your commercial portfolio.

The irony is that clubs often absorb this for seasons on end to avoid a transition that, done properly, takes much less time (and less of your energy) than you might think.

MYTH 02

You’ll lose your history

The most common fear is that years of exposure data and benchmarks walk out the door with the old provider. In practice, your historical outputs are yours, and a capable new partner can rebaseline against them – mapping their methodology to your existing numbers so that year-on-year comparisons hold and sponsors see continuity, not a reset to zero. You don’t lose your history. You keep it, and (if you pick the right provider!) you add to it data that is more robust.

MYTH 03

The disruption will bleed into the season

Nobody wants to be mid-migration when the fixtures start. But measurement transitions aren’t like stadium works – nothing has to go dark.

The standard approach is to run old and new in parallel across a defined set of fixtures or a look-back period, reconcile the two, and cut over only once you’re happy with the new benchmarks. Your sponsors see one clean handover, rather than a gap.

MYTH 04

Your team will spend months relearning everything

Modern evaluation platforms are built to be adopted in days, not months. The heavier lift – data mapping, benchmark migration, sponsor-facing documentation – belongs to the provider, not to your commercial team. If a prospective partner expects your staff to do the carrying, that tells you something about how the relationship will run once the contract is signed.

How we make the move at GSIQ

When a rightsholder moves to GSIQ, the transition is treated as our project, not yours.

A dedicated onboarding lead owns the switch end to end. We audit your existing reporting and rebaseline our measurement against it, so historical comparisons remain valid. We run in parallel with your incumbent’s final outputs where needed, and we prepare the sponsor-facing story – why the service is changing, and why they’re now more useful to them – so your partners hear a confident narrative focused on improvements that you’re making.

And because our broadcast verification and sponsor exposure tracking are already running across live sport globally, there’s no cold start: the machinery is on from day one (in fact, we may already be monitoring you!).

The window is open

The postseason exists for exactly this kind of decision. Start a transition now and you can be reconciled, rebaselined and reporting live before the opening weekend – with a full season of stronger evidence banked before your next round of renewals. Wait until autumn and that’s when we talk ourselves into another year of the devil we know!

If your sponsorship evaluation hasn’t been reviewed since your last kit deal, perhaps it’s time to get the big summer transfer started. Get in touch – we’ll show you what a transition plan looks like for your club, fixture by fixture.