Sports are costly. Whether you’re playing basketball, football, soccer, floor hockey or any of the other myriad of team sports out there, all require tough gear in order to play safely and properly. Hockey would be extremely dangerous without knee pads, elbow pads and helmets; football requires elaborate shoulder pads and helmets with protective wire over the face. Even sports that don’t require safety gear, like basketball, take money to purchase matching team jerseys. Some sports also require specialty footwear, such as cleats or ice-skates.
Any sport that involves projectile items needs the funds to buy them and other accessories, too. Basket balls, soccer balls, footballs, hockey sticks, tennis balls and rackets, badminton shuttlecocks and rackets…the list goes on and on. If the team travels, that adds yet more expense. Places to stay, meals for a team of people, and travel ticket costs must be taken into account. A college football team that plays internationally can rack up expenses as high as 18 million dollars per year. Fundraisers help support a team, but even with them, most teams usually operate in the red.
One way that sports teams have found to raise large amounts of money for their operation expenses is to advertise for sponsors who then donate funds to support them. Team members agree to wear company logos on their gear, to only use certain kinds of sports drinks, and to put product or company logos onto the sides of their carpool vans — all of which provides advertising for their sponsors. To ensure that their sponsors are legit, teams may subject them to an affiliate program review. Affiliate program reviewers investigate potential affiliates and sponsors to ensure that they are legitimate and aren’t ripping people off to advertise for them without paying up in the end.
Affiliating with sponsor companies accounts for a large amount of most college sports teams’ funds.
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