Do Winning Teams Increase Brand Trust For Sponsors?

In the competitive world of sports marketing, the partnership between a sponsor and a team is perceived as a symbiotic relationship. Research suggests that aligning a brand with a winning team creates a "halo effect," which transfers the team’s success and popularity directly to the sponsor. But it is controversial whether this success actually transformed into meaningful results of brand trust. While winning incessantly might seem like a shortcut to the brand’s prosperity, brand trust is shaped by various factors beyond the final score of the game. 

When a team wins championships or maintains a consistent winning record, it creates positive emotions and a sense of collective identity among its fans. When a sponsor is attached to that success, they benefit in several ways through positive association and increased credibility. 

Winning teams receive more than just trophies. They gain an extended spot in the public, which can significantly boost brand trust through emotional association and psychological transfer. When a team invests deeply into competitive games, more social media conversations are generated, which leads to a higher quality fan engagement compared to teams that emotionally leave the games early. This creates an effect of familiarity for a sponsor. Also, the audiences’ brains link the positive emotions of the winning moment to everything related to it such as sponsor logos. 

Research in sports marketing suggests that a sponsor’s credibility increases when consumers perceive sponsors as part of a successful team identity. For example, when a team consistently performs well, sponsors are seen as more credible and reliable, not because of their actual products, but because they are associated with their sponsoring team’s achievements. In this way, winning functions as a tool for building trust, allowing brands to benefit from emotions rather than the rational evaluation of the team’s performance. 

In psychology, the mere-exposure effect proposes that people tend to develop a preference for things because they are familiar with them. As the sponsor’s logo repeatedly appears during these moments of victory, the brand becomes familiar to sports audiences. This consistent familiarity and the positive perception of the team’s success build recognition. Over time, recognition develops from simple awareness into the brand’s layer of trust as the brand becomes a reliable companion to the fan’s most exciting sports memories.

However, the effect of winning on brand trust is not always stable. According to The Arab Journal of Administration, research shows that the halo effect is a major factor in how people see brands, especially since global spending on sports sponsorships reached $114.4 billion in 2024. Data from soccer shows that team identification, which is how much a fan feels connected to their team, has a huge impact on loyalty. When a team wins, this bond between the customer and the team gets stronger. Statistics from the International Journal of Business and Social Science show that sports sponsorship can boost a brand's total value by up to 81% and increase the money the company makes back by 24%. Also, a good brand image has a 72% impact on a person’s decision to purchase a product.

This trust works because of a psychological concept called Basking in Reflected Glory (BIRGing). This phenomenon takes place when fans boost their own self-esteem by associating with a successful group, even if they didn't play in the game themselves. When a team wins, fans feel a personal sense of achievement, which triggers a "feel-good" state, which again leads to the feel-good, do-good phenomenon. The feel-good do-good phenomenon explains how people are more likely to be helpful or have positive thoughts when they are already in a good mood. In sports, this means that because the team’s victory puts the fan in a positive mood, they are more likely to do good for the sponsor by viewing them through a positive lens. A study from the Journal of Sports Science Research suggests that loyal fans are 60% more likely to believe a sponsor actually cares about the team, rather than just trying to make money, as long as the team is winning.

Real-world examples show how this works. For instance, fans of successful clubs like FC Bayern Munich tend to trust the team’s management and business partners much more because the team wins very often (Reutlingen University, 2018). Similarly, when brands support stars like tennis player Jasmine Paolini or teams in the WNBA, they create a story that fans remember. If a brand is there for a first-time win, that trust lasts 40% longer over three years compared to brands that sponsor losing teams. Because the team is a winner, the sponsor must be thriving too. During a championship season, seeing a logo on a winning jersey makes the brand look more professional and important, turning the sponsor into a prosperous success in the fan's mind.