Sponsor Contracts

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After this lesson you'll be able to see what a sponsor was contracted for, compare it to what's actually running, and catch anyone falling behind — while there is still season left to fix it.

Contracts are the promise; placements are the delivery. The entire value of tracking them side by side is timing: an under-delivery you catch in June is a make-good plan, and an under-delivery you discover in October is a refund conversation. This lesson is about reading the gap early enough that it stays the first kind.

What contracts hold

Each sponsor contract is its own record, tied to the sponsor and the team — one contract per sponsor, per team, per season. The record carries:

• Sponsor and team, both linked to their Company records.
• League and season the commitment covers.
• Contracted games — the number the comparison runs against.
• Contract label — the human-readable shape of the deal: a full season, a half season, or a minimum-games commitment like "Minimum of 35 Games."
• Notes — anything about the deal that a number can't carry.

A sponsor with commitments across multiple teams has one contract record per team — so "Tire Rack at the Red Sox" and "Tire Rack at the Nationals" each get their own count, and the sponsor's account shows all of them together. Record names read cleanly in a list: sponsor, team, season, and game count right in the title.

Contracted vs. actual

This is the payoff. The contract records hold what was committed; the placement records hold what's actually running. Because both link to the same sponsor Company, the comparison happens on the account itself:

1. Open the sponsor's Company record.
2. Open the Media & Sponsorship tab — sponsor placements and sponsor contracts sit there together.
3. Read the contract's game count per team, then count the executed placements against it.
4. The difference is the gap — per team, not just in total, so you know exactly where the shortfall sits.

Spotting an under-delivering sponsor

Run the comparison across sponsors, not just one at a time. The gap between contracted and executed tells you who's behind while there's still time to make it right — scheduling make-good placements in remaining games instead of negotiating after the season ends.

When you find a gap, do two things: confirm it's real (were placements run but left as scheduled? run but not linked to the sponsor?), and then flag it on the account so the make-good conversation starts from the record, not from memory.

Adding a new sponsor

1. Add the sponsor as a Company — that account becomes the anchor for everything.
2. Create a contract record per team they've committed to, with the season, contracted games, and label.
3. As placements get logged with that sponsor, they tie to the same account automatically — the contracted-versus-actual view builds itself from there.

Common mistakes

What good looks like

• Every active sponsor has a contract record per team and season, with a count and a label — no commitments living only in someone's inbox.
• Contract counts match the signed documents, and any correction was made against the source.
• Gaps are read against executed placements, and every real gap has a flagged follow-up on the account.
• Pace checks happen mid-season on a rhythm — not once, at the end, when nothing can be fixed.

Now you try →

Pick a sponsor, open their account, and check their contracted count against what's actually run this season.

👉 Open the CRM

Related lessons: Placements keeps the actual side of the comparison honest; Nielsen Verification confirms the executed numbers you're comparing against; Your Dashboards rolls contract pace into the full sponsor readout.