Why Advertising With a Hometown Football Team Still Works—and Why 2027 Is the Year to Partner With the Toros
An invitation to San Antonio businesses preparing for the Continental Football League’s 2027 season.
Most advertising asks people to pay attention. A team partnership asks them to belong. That difference is why companies keep tying products and services to sports teams—and why the research, not just the tradition, still supports the idea. For San Antonio businesses, the San Antonio Toros offer something national campaigns cannot: a local professional football brand with deep city roots, a summer season when the sports calendar opens up, and a 2027 campaign that local partners can help shape from the start.
Fans reward the brands that stand with their team
Independent surveys keep finding the same pattern. In a national study of more than 5,000 U.S. adults, 66% said they are more likely to buy from companies that sponsor sports they like—up from 59% two years earlier. One in five said they had already chosen a company because it sponsored a sport they follow (Sports Business Journal, 2025). Nielsen Sports, reviewing 100 sponsorships across seven markets and 20 industries, found an average 10% lift in purchase intent among fans exposed to the sponsorship. The same research notes that a one-point gain in awareness or consideration is associated with about a 1% increase in sales, and that fans tend to trust official sponsors more than ordinary ads (Nielsen Sports, 2022; Cornwell, 2026).
That trust is the commercial engine. As Cornwell (2026) put it in Harvard Business Review, partnering with sports creates reciprocity: customers tell themselves they will buy from the brand because the brand supports what matters to them. Logo visibility alone is not the strategy. The relationship is.
Peer-reviewed studies show the effect goes beyond awareness
Laboratory and field research has tested whether team ties change what people intend to buy—and, in stronger designs, what they will pay.
Ngan et al. (2011) ran an experiment on sports sponsorship and purchase intention. Team performance raised intent to buy the sponsor’s product. The strongest combination was a winning team with a star player. The effect was actually larger among casual fans than among die-hards—an important finding for a market like San Antonio, where many customers are football fans first and Toros fans second. A well-run local team can convert that general football affinity into brand preference.
Tsordia et al. (2018) studied a professional basketball club paired with a software company. Perceived quality and brand engagement drove loyalty and purchases of the sponsor’s product. Two conditions fed those results: perceived fit between the company and the team, and identification with the team. In other words, the partnership works when the brand feels like it belongs on the sideline, and when fans already care about the club.
Almaiman et al. (2024) went a step further than survey intent. Using a choice experiment with soccer fans, they found fans were willing to pay more for a sponsor’s product, and that the sponsoring brand captured the highest market share versus competing apparel brands. Sponsorship, they concluded, can change buying behavior—not only attitudes.
A 2026 study of football fans reached a similar conclusion in a different market: greater involvement with a club raised both the value fans assigned to the sponsoring brand and their intention to purchase that brand’s products or services (Varea Calero et al., 2026). The practical implication for a San Antonio retailer, clinic, contractor, restaurant group, or professional-services firm is straightforward. If your customers already live here, work here, and follow local sports, standing next to the Toros is a way to borrow the team’s identification and put it to work for your brand.
Local fit is not a slogan. It is a documented advantage.
The studies keep returning to one word: congruence. The closer the match between the brand and the team—in personality, in product, and in place—the stronger the results. A hometown business and a hometown team are a natural fit. Customers already know both. They do not have to be taught why a San Antonio company would support San Antonio football.
That is also why smaller, high-passion audiences can outperform bigger, colder ones. The same national survey that found 66% of adults more likely to buy from liked-sport sponsors also found that highly engaged niche fan bases were more open to sponsors, and more likely to recommend them, than fans of some of the largest leagues (Sports Business Journal, 2025). The Toros will never be the NFL. They do not need to be. They need to be ours—visible in the summer, rooted in South Texas, and close enough that a partner can shake hands with fans at the gate.
Why the Toros, and why 2027
The original San Antonio Toros were a South Texas power in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including a 1969 Continental Football League championship-game appearance. The revived club returned as a CoFL member for 2026 and is now building the 2027 season. League leadership has said 2027 schedules and the next wave of teams are taking shape this fall, with training camp slated to open May 8, 2027 (Continental Football League, 2026).
That calendar is part of the marketing case. Fall belongs to the NFL and Friday night lights. Saturdays belong to college football. The CoFL plays in summer, when professional football is scarce and families are looking for something to do in San Antonio. A Toros partnership puts a local brand in front of fans when the usual sports clutter is lighter—and when community events, youth football, and weekend hospitality are easier to activate around a game.
The club is locally led and built to stay in San Antonio. Partners are not renting space on a franchise that can be moved to another city. They are tying their name to a team whose identity is the city itself: history, toughness, and a fan-connected model. That is the kind of fit the academic literature keeps identifying as the difference between a logo on a wall and a brand people choose.
What a smart 2027 partnership looks like
The research is just as clear about what does not work. Paying for a mark and hoping people notice it is a weak plan. Naming rights and unused signage often fail to show clean sales growth on their own. What works is activation: hospitality, in-game presence, social content, community appearances, sampling, and a product or service that feels like it belongs with the team (Tsordia et al., 2018; Cornwell, 2026; Nielsen Sports, 2022).
- A restaurant group can own a tailgate or a family night.
- A clinic or hospital can stand for player health and community wellness.
- A contractor, supplier, or professional-services firm can be the hometown company that helped put the team on the field.
- A retailer can put product in fans’ hands on game day and follow them home on social media the rest of the week.
The 2027 season is the right moment because the roster, schedule, and partner map are still being built. Early partners help write the story instead of buying a leftover board. They also get a full offseason to introduce the relationship before kickoff.
An invitation
Advertising with a sports team is a good idea when the team is real to the customer, the brand fit is honest, and the company does more than rent a logo. The peer-reviewed record supports that conclusion. So does the way fans already shop: they notice who stands with the teams they love, and a meaningful share of them buy accordingly.
If your business serves San Antonio, the Toros are the local professional football team asking to stand with you in 2027. We are looking for partners who want their name on a summer Saturday in this city—not as a decoration, but as part of the reason the team is here.
Visit https://cofltoros.com/partnerships to see a full list of the teams’ 2026 partners!
References
Almaiman, K. H., Ang, L., & Winzar, H. (2024). Beyond purchase intention in sports sponsorship: An alternative approach to measuring brand equity using best-worst scaling. European Journal of Marketing, 58(13), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-07-2021-0481
Continental Football League. (2026). Teams / 2027 build. https://www.coflfootball.com/teams
Cornwell, T. B. (2026, June 10). What brands get wrong about sports sponsorships—and how to get them right. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2026/06/what-brands-get-wrong-about-sports-sponsorships-and-how-to-get-them-right
Ngan, H. M. K., Prendergast, G. P., & Tsang, A. S. L. (2011). Linking sports sponsorship with purchase intentions: Team performance, stars, and the moderating role of team identification. European Journal of Marketing, 45(4), 551–566. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090561111111334
Nielsen Sports. (2022). Sports sponsorships are raising more than just brand awareness. https://nielsensports.com/sports-sponsorships-are-raising-more-than-just-brand-awareness/
Sports Business Journal. (2025, May 7). Measure what matters: New data reveals the true drivers of sports sponsorship success. https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/05/07/measure-what-matters-new-data-reveals-the-true-drivers-of-sports-sponsorship-success/
Tsordia, C., Papadimitriou, D., & Parganas, P. (2018). The influence of sport sponsorship on brand equity and purchase behavior. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 26(1), 85–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2017.1374299
Varea Calero, A. D., Ramírez-Hurtado, J. M., Rejón-Guardia, F., & Berbel-Pineda, J. M. (2026). Football fan engagement: Sponsorship brand value and consumer purchase intentions. Management Decision, 64(1), 375–403. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-11-2023-2126