{"id":22347,"date":"2025-06-11T17:05:48","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T17:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22347"},"modified":"2025-06-11T17:05:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T17:05:49","slug":"inside-one-insurance-companys-unorthodox-approach-to-sports-sponsorships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22347","title":{"rendered":"Inside one insurance company\u2019s unorthodox approach to sports sponsorships"},"content":{"rendered":"

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One of the top salespeople at Gallagher is a former pro rugby player.<\/p>\n

Nathan Hines, who played internationally for Scotland in the early aughts, joined Gallagher as business development director for its rugby clients in 2020, translating his leadership skills from pitch to pitchdeck, according to Gallagher CMO Chris Mead. The insurance brand is betting Hines isn\u2019t the only athlete who can thrive in the corporate world\u2014with a little bit of help, of course.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just sell to a client tomorrow,\u201d Mead told Marketing Brew. \u201cIt\u2019s no different than you can\u2019t hit a 98-mile-an-hour fastball or shoot a 3-point shot in one day. They\u2019ve got that training. They just need some professional structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The insurance broker, which represents a range of clients, including many sports teams, venues, and athletes, has taken a somewhat unorthodox approach to the sports sponsorship world since it began pushing into marketing around eight years ago.<\/p>\n

Gallagher sponsors several of its sports clients that it buys insurance for, ranging from regional to international deals, and unlike a more typical buy that could focus on naming rights or jersey patches, the brand is focused on building out experiences for potential customers. Recently, it\u2019s also expanded into serving athletes, like through an internship program for active players who might end up following in Hines\u2019s footsteps.<\/p>\n

Go your own way<\/h2>\n

For many brands that ink sports deals, boosting brand awareness by tapping into large, engaged audiences is key. But Mead says Gallagher didn\u2019t get into the sports sponsorship game for name recognition. \u201cIt was much more community-based,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One of the company\u2019s earliest partnerships was with Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. Outside the stadium sits Gallagher Way; the space is open to ticket holders on game days, and also hosts broader community events like concerts, movie nights, and fitness classes. Similarly, Gallagher Square at Petco Park in San Diego offers a playground, dog park, and pickleball courts even when the Padres aren\u2019t playing. With the Houston Astros, Gallagher serves as the presenting partner of the team\u2019s Astros Foundation Volunteer Corps.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the community and\u2026these experiences that people can go to,\u201d Mead said. \u201cWhere are the fans when they\u2019re not staring at that one sign that someone has in right field? They\u2019re interfacing within community events that we like to have our name attached to.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The company\u2019s sports partnerships extend beyond baseball, spanning football, soccer, basketball, golf, hockey, rugby, IndyCar, and the Special Olympics. Properties like World Rugby and the Special Olympics help give Gallagher global reach across men\u2019s and women\u2019s sports, while team partnerships add a local component, Mead said. In addition to evaluating those opportunities based on the potential for community activation, he said his team also seeks to sponsor properties for which Gallagher already serves as the risk manager.<\/p>\n

Suit up<\/h2>\n

One of Gallagher\u2019s earliest sports partnerships was with Premiership Rugby, the English pro rugby league for which Gallagher is the presenting partner. It was through conversations with those players that the idea for the Gallagher Partnership Internship Program was born, Mead said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started with injured rugby players,\u201d he said. \u201cThey blow out their shoulder, and sometimes they don\u2019t have a plan. Sometimes they have a really great plan, and things just happen sooner than they thought, or they\u2019re approaching retirement, and they\u2019ve got all the skills we all want\u2014leadership skills, teamwork skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Gallagher already had a large internship program, it was just a matter of fitting athletes into that framework, Mead said. Last year, the company introduced a pilot program of the athlete internship with a handful of players from the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL, and this year extended it to include several players from the Chicago Stars in the NWSL. Mead said the plan is to eventually expand the program to the Special Olympics, too.<\/p>\n

While the Gallagher team works to build out the internship program to include more athletes, it\u2019s also focused on continuing to grow the company\u2019s presence across the sports ecosystem, particularly right where it started: in rugby. Earlier this month, Gallagher announced a partnership with New Zealand Rugby, and given that the Women\u2019s Rugby World Cup takes place this summer, women\u2019s rugby is of particular interest as another potential growth area, Mead said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re on a pretty good clip, but I think I can see it continuing to grow, signing new teams and new leagues to partnerships,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the top salespeople at Gallagher is a former pro rugby player. Nathan Hines, who played internationally for Scotland in the early aughts, joined Gallagher as business development director for its rugby clients in 2020, translating his leadership skills from pitch to pitchdeck, according to Gallagher CMO Chris Mead. The insurance brand is betting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nInside one insurance company\u2019s unorthodox approach to sports sponsorships | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the top salespeople at Gallagher is a former pro rugby player.Nathan Hines, who played internationally for Scotland in the early aughts, joined\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22347\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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