UK Sponsorship Awards 2025 - nine headline themes

Women’s sports sponsorship continues to surge: As in recent years, UKSA 2025 was packed with great sponsorships that seek to empower girls and women. The overall winner on the night, Metro Bank’s ‘Champion of Women’s and Girls’ cricket’, entered by The Space Between, is aiming to triple the number of girl’s cricket teams by 2028. For judges, the partnership was a standard bearer in the recent empowering growth of women’s sport as a commercial and community-based platform.

Other women-focused campaigns included Kick On With Starling, a project to support women’s and girls’ grassroot football teams. With former Lioness Jill Scott as ambassador, the scheme has provided 10,000 women and girls with free kit, while the social media campaign for ‘Kick On’ has outperformed expectations. In a similar vein, a partnership between TeamViewer, Manchester United FC and Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1, entered by WeAreFearless set out to address the gender gap in sports technology, where 75% of roles are currently held by men.

Arts sponsorship shows resilience: It’s been a tough few years for arts sponsorship. First came the Covid-19 crisis and then came a rise in anti-sponsor activism. Oil & Gas-themed sponsorships were first to come under attack, but more recently attention has switched to financial services firms that partner with the arts. 

While activism is an ongoing issue, it’s fair to say that the arts sponsorship sector has shown some resilience – securing an increasingly diverse range of partners. Finalists in the 2025 UK Sponsorship Awards Arts Category, for example, included Sanrio, Net-A-Porter and the eventual winner Cathay, which partnered LW Theatres. The 2025 cohort also illustrated the increasingly sophisticated nature of arts sponsorship. A key theme was the way arts sponsorship can help build powerful authentic community links. Examples included Manchester-based cultural space Aviva Studios and the Barclays/Donmar Warehouse partnership, which enabled the continuation of Donmar’s ‘LOCAL’ projects. Net-A-Porter’s sponsorship of the V&A’s ‘DIVA’ was also an illustration of how the arts can be leveraged to empower and celebrate women.

Social purpose attracts investment: UKSA 2025 saw a bumper crop of social purpose entries, perhaps reflecting the challenging state of society and the economy.

Unsurprisingly, charities that deal with cancer were a key focal point, for example Movember and Prostate Cancer UK. But it was also a landmark year for social purpose campaigns based around disabilities. In a Paralympics year, Toyota’s partnership with ParalympicsGB, Every Body Moves, was a high-profile example of this. Equally thought-provoking was Unsilence the Crowd, a tech-powered collaboration between Sela & Newcastle United to support the deaf community. 

One interesting trend is the way eye-catching insights are being used to drive social purpose strategies. TalkMoreThanFootball (Three Mobile and Chelsea) addresses the fact that two-thirds of football fans have struggled with mental health, but just one-third have spoken about it. Škoda & Tour de France Femmes: Ride With Me, meanwhile, began with the insight that 8m women in the UK own bikes, but half don’t ride them. 

Tech-powered sponsorship is in the ascendancy: Sponsorship has always been a great medium for testing out new forms of tech – and this was evident once again in 2025. A wide range of tech was on display in the Best Use of Technology category, with OKX & Man City introducing an immersive, digital destination that brought fans closer to their heroes, whilst educating them on the meaning of Web3. Within the environment, fans could communicate with AI-powered Manchester City avatars.

The Tech category winners Volvo & Sky Atlantic showcased what they called the UK’s first ‘smart sponsorship’ - a tech-powered solution that enables brands to customise their sponsorship idents for specific audiences using addressable TV technology.

Another intriguing entry saw Microsoft and Alpine Formula One Team launch their Race into STEM programme, which seeks to promote gender diversity in motorsport and provide educational content for all young people through events and activations. The afore-mentioned Sela campaign was also very tech-centric. Here, a replica NUFC shirt was woven with intelligent sensors that translated the stadium soundscape into a ‘physical language’ of pulses and tingles – all to aid deaf fans’ enjoyment.

Social video and games take centre stage: Digital platforms are a key consideration for brands that want to target young audiences – and this was evident throughout UKSA 2025’s entries. Education and Learning winner Cartoon Network Go Create, entered by SUPER. Ideas Marketing, set out to inspire young minds through digital skill-building. By integrating coding lessons, Roblox challenges, and career resources, the programme reached 680,000 children and boosted brand awareness by 56%.

The Esports/Gaming category also saw a couple of strong entries that point to new engagement opportunities for brands. Revolut, for example, sponsored the BLAST Premier Spring Final 2024, a collaboration that helped the financial services platform connect to a digitally savvy demo. Sky Broadband, meanwhile, has been building a presence in Fortnite, working with EssenceMediacom Sport & Entertainment.

Elsewhere FAST platform Pluto TV and Wavemaker UK were looking to drive audiences towards the Most Haunted TV series. A Haunted Mansion activation reached millions via social media and boosted Pluto TV’s connection with the show.

Marriott Bonvoy & Manchester United - United. Near and Far also underlined the power of digital media. Entered by 160over90, the campaign set out to redefine fan engagement through storytelling and immersive experiences. Highlighting fan journeys from Istanbul, Mumbai, and Mexico City, it blended authentic narratives with Marriott Bonvoy’s premium hospitality – achieving 26.1m views and 142m impressions.

Branded content still going strong: Branded content has become a crucial component of the sponsorship toolkit, as companies look for new ways to engage with audiences across multiple platforms. The winner of the branded content category at UKSA 2025 was A Team Talk to Inspire the Nation with NatWest, which was built around the bank’s partnership with TeamGB. The aim of the campaign was to motivate people to take action today for a better tomorrow, with Team GB athlete ambassadors acting as the inspiration and co-creating the campaign messages.

If there’s a message from 2025’s Finalists, it’s that brands of pretty much any description can build a content marketing strategy as long as they find an authentic voice. Names on the shortlist alongside NatWest included Vinted, Boots, Mentos, Nivea Men, Morrisons and Ovo. Not to be overlooked either is Andrex - Do You Really Like It? (When They Learn To Wipe It), entered by Drum OMG. This campaign was designed to encourage distracted parents to engage with Andrex's potty-training app, GoTime. The solution was to step out of the stressful world of parenting altogether and use a more entertaining vehicle to get their attention. The brand worked with DJ Pied Piper and Masters of Ceremonies to re-record ‘Do You Really Like It?’ with a toilet-themed twist.

Sponsors take the lead on the environment: With governments around the world backtracking on their green commitments it has been left to brands to try and keep the environment and sustainability front of mind among consumers.

The partnership that came out on top in the UKSA’s dedicated environmental category was evian’s work with the Wimbledon Tennis Championships on its innovative refill system. Initially focused on players, the system was expanded in 2024 to create a first of its kind refill system for hydrating spectators at the iconic tennis tournament. The initiative marked significant progress in evian and Wimbledon’s commitment to circularity, resulting in 12.5% of evian sales coming from refills. 73% of surveyed spectators said they would choose evian refills at future events.

The Kia Oval sponsorship, winner in the naming rights category, also pushed its green credentials. Here, a key aim of the partnership was to highlight Kia’s leadership in electrification and EV vehicle range. Meanwhile E.ON Next and Channel 4 took an interesting tack, creating a social-first series called The Secret Life of the Next Generation. A key goal here was to help young people reduce their feelings of eco-anxiety by showing that saving energy at home is positive climate action. Incidentally, the campaign also underlines the trend toward digital-first branded content.

Rights holders and brands leverage scale: There were several examples this year of platforms and sponsors using their muscle to create multi-tiered marketing campaigns. As a case in point, Rockstar Energy Drink was headline sponsor of six of Live Nations’s top festivals, an unprecedented collaboration that combined scale, cultural relevance and immersive experiences to redefine music sponsorships. Still on the rights holder side, Channel 4 created a ‘Comedy on Channel 4’ package for Tesco Whoosh’s first every foray into sponsorship. By combining TV, social media, and digital touchpoints, Tesco Whoosh created a powerful, omni-channel campaign.

On the client side, UKSA saw winning entries from Dirt is Good, a collection of Unilever laundry brands - Persil, OMO, Surf Excel, Breeze, Rinso, Ala and Skip. In a similar vein, Unilever came to the awards with Up Your BBQ Game with Unilever & UEFA EURO 2024. This partnership saw Unilever Nutrition and its portfolio of 21 condiment brands (led by Hellmann’s) come together for the first time in 2024 to transform BBQ season across Europe. Both campaigns were entered by Wasserman.

Olympics continues to capture the imagination: UKSA 2025 had a special category for Best Sponsor at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. It proved to be a great showcase for some of the year’s most creative sponsorships. Bridgestone’s pan European campaign ‘Prepared to Perform’, for example, cleverly hijacked the cultural blind spot of ‘Luck’. It showed how Olympians mitigate risk with rigorous training and mental preparation. Just like Bridgestone - whose products and solutions require meticulous preparation to give drivers confidence in them.

Other entries came from the likes of GetPro, Flogas, NatWest, British Gas, Deloitte, Toyota and Dreams. Like Bridgestone, Dreams found an interesting entry point into the Olympics, by focusing on the importance of sleep for elite athletes. Personalised solutions included a ‘Dreams Sleep Retreat’ with custom sleep pods.

Full details of the 2025 winners and nominees can be found at the Awards website: http://www.sponsorship-awards.co.uk/