Sponsorship budgets are under more scrutiny than ever. Executives want to know whether a partnership is actually working, not just whether fans saw the logo, but whether they registered it, retained it, and cared enough to act on it. MarketCast provides sponsorship effectiveness measurement across every major U.S. sports league. The 2025-2026 Sponsorship Effectiveness Study makes clear that some brands have figured this out, and some leagues are pulling ahead in ways that should reshape how smart sponsors think about portfolio allocation.
The Brands Cutting Through with Sponsorships
Recognition of official sponsorships — measured as the percentage of respective fans who correctly identified a league sponsor — remains the baseline for proving a partnership is working. In the 2025-2026 season, two brands sit at the top across all leagues tracked.
Bud Light/Budweiser holds its position as the most recognized official sponsor in the NFL, with 69% of fans correctly identifying the brand. Consistency is the hero here. A partnership that spans decades becomes part of how fans understand the league itself.
FedEx is the season’s most notable mover. Its PGA Tour sponsorship reached 69% recognition, up nine points from the previous season. Elevated viewership and heightened competition around the FedEx Cup drove results. This is a clean example of what happens when a sponsorship benefits from a property moment.
Goodyear-NASCAR (68%, up 4 points), Gatorade-NFL (65%, up 2 points), and Gatorade-MLB (65%, up 4 points) round out the top five. Gatorade’s consistent presence across multiple leagues — NFL, MLB, NBA, and now Formula 1 — represents one of the most efficiently distributed sponsorship footprints in the study. Sixty percent of NBA fans correctly identify Gatorade as an official sponsor. Forty-four percent do so for Formula 1, a new addition to the study this season.
Nike-NWSL (60%, up 5 points) and Amazon-NWSL (60%, up 11 points) are among the strongest performers in women’s sports with numbers that reflect both brand investment and the league’s growing fan engagement.
The Soccer Sponsorship Signal
The World Cup is coming to North America in 2026 and with it over $3.5 billion in Advertising and sponsorsorship spend in the US. The MLS and NWSL offer a compelling case study of American soccer fans and how they feel about sponsors. They’re a fan base that goes beyond merely recognizing sponsors and the Sponsorship report reveals how much these loyal fans care.
When fans say it matters to them to be aware of official sponsors, that’s a measure of receptivity, the degree to which a fan base is actively engaged with sponsorship as part of their relationship with the sport. For a brand evaluating where to place a bet, it’s one of the more honest indicators of whether sponsor investment is likely to compound over time.
In the 2025-2026 season, soccer fans lead every other league on this measure.
Both the NWSL and MLS sit at 82%, meaning more than four in five fans of each league say it’s important to them to know who the official sponsors are. MLS’s figure represents a 14-point increase over the previous season. The NWSL is up six points. Women’s March Madness follows at 78%, up eight points year-over-year.
These are not incremental gains. A 14-point swing in fan receptivity to sponsorship, in a single season, is the kind of shift that changes the math on a portfolio decision.
The soccer story runs deeper than a single data point. We’re going deeper on what’s driving these numbers and what they mean for brands considering or currently invested in soccer properties in our upcoming free report, the US World Cup Opportunity.
What This Means for Sponsorship Effectiveness Evaluators
Two questions drive every sponsorship portfolio decision: Are we in the right properties? And are our partnerships actually working?
The Sponsorship report is built to answer both. Now in its 18th year, it tracks more than 300 brands across 35 categories and all major U.S. sports leagues, making it the longest-running sponsorship tracking study in North America. It measures not just whether fans recognize a brand as an official sponsor, but the attitudinal and behavioral signals that indicate whether that recognition is translating into something that matters.
The brands at the top of this year’s rankings didn’t get there by accident. They got there through sustained investment, strategic alignment with their properties, and the sponsorship effectiveness measurement infrastructure to know what was working and where to press harder.
MarketCast’s Sponsorship Effectiveness Study is the longest-running sponsorship tracking study in North America. Now in its 18th year, it measures over 300 brands across 35 categories and all major U.S. sports leagues. The study helps rights holders and sponsors evaluate sponsorship performance and improve future campaigns.
Reach out to us today to find out how you can purchase this year’s study.