8 PowerPoint Alternatives for Sports Sponsorship
Any successful professional in the sports sponsorship space will tell you that the magic happens in relationship building when “sponsors” are viewed more as “partners.” What’s at the core of building a meaningful partnership?
Effective storytelling.
Before a prospective sponsor officially becomes a partner, sponsorship sales professionals need to paint a clear picture of how the partnership will be mutually beneficial and exactly what the partner can expect in return for their investment.
For far too long, sponsorship professionals have been relying on lackluster PowerPoint presentations that don’t provide insightful analytics or effectively demonstrate value. In sports, the action-packed sights and sounds of the game simply cannot be captured in the traditional presentation methods of the past.
If you’re ready to switch to a more engaging and effective presentation platform for sports sponsorship sales, check out these eight PowerPoint alternatives:
Recommended PowerPoint Alternatives
As the presentation platform trusted by 50% of the teams in the NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA, and MLS, as well as hundreds of minor league teams and non-traditional sports organizations, DIGIDECK by Sportsdigita stands out as the top PowerPoint alternative in sports sponsorship for new business, onboarding, and recaps.
As an “everyday” presentation platform, DIGIDECK stands out from PowerPoint because of its:
- Extensive template library
- Cloud-based platform
- In-house brand & design team
- Striking visuals
- Ability to collaborate with teammates
- Brand consistency thanks to the Master Deck
- Centralized asset library
- AI features for summaries and copywriting
- Interactive maps and charts
Specifically in the sports sponsorship space, DIGIDECK excels because of:
- Hotspot Technology
- Viewership Analytics
- CRM Integrations
Hotspot Technology
Without DIGIDECK, attaching your prospect’s logo onto applicable activations takes hours of Photoshop time. With DIGIDECK, you can leverage 360° hotspot technology which enables you to transpose your prospect’s logo onto your big screen, side boards, uniforms, or anywhere else in your arena in just one click.
Thanks to this time-saving feature, prospective sponsors gain a crystal clear idea of how their story will be told within your venue and how every moment of exclusivity will look.
CRM Integrations
Instead of manually creating a personalized presentation for your prospect, take advantage of DIGIDECK’s CRM Integrations that allow you to instantly create and send custom presentations all in one tab.
DIGIDECK is currently integrated with Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics, SponsorCX, and KORE Software. Additional integrations are easily made possible thanks to DIGIDECK’s open API, so if you don’t see your CRM on this list— just ask!
Viewership Analytics
Tired of not knowing where your prospects are in their decision making process or if they even opened your pitch deck in the first place? DIGIDECK analytics allow you to see:
- Who opened your presentation
- When they opened it
- How long they viewed each slide
Additionally, DIGIDECK notifies you the moment someone has opened your presentation, allowing you the option to live chat with your prospect directly within the platform to reduce lag time.
If you’re looking to gain insights from your prospective sponsor in a more engaging way, Mentimeter is an innovative way to turn a stale presentation into an interactive conversation.
Mentimeter is most commonly used in the education industry, as it features interactive polls, Q&As, open ended questions, ranking scales, and more that are popular in a classroom setting. However, if you’re in the early stages of building a relationship with your prospect, Mentimeter is a clever and visually-interesting way to gain valuable information about your prospect and what they’re looking for in a partnership.
You can integrate Mentimeter with PowerPoint, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams and take advantage of multiple bright and vibrant templates. With the paid plan, you can customize slides with your custom branding.
Channel 1 Media is the only other presentation platform alongside DIGIDECK that has a strong presence in the sports industry. Beyond presentations, the Channel 1 Media team also creates additional sales tools like websites, microsites, apps, and custom tools.
These visually-appealing presentations are most commonly used in the corporate sponsorship and ticketing space. Users can take advantage of viewership analytics, 3rd party dynamic seating maps, and a dedicated in-house team with a designer, developer, and project manager.
Channel 1 Media excels in the design arena— allowing sports organizations to accurately convey their brand without the limitations of PowerPoint.
For a free alternative to PowerPoint, many organizations consider Canva. While Canva will be more limiting than custom presentation software, it does allow for a more visually-appealing experience.
On this web-based platform, users can create presentations from an extensive template library and customize them with their brand colors and fonts. Plus, Canva has a large media library complete with graphics, stock photos, images, and icons. (Keep in mind that the free version of Canva is limited in this department, while Canva Pro allows for complete access.)
Canva presentations don’t have viewership analytics or automations that are helpful for sports sponsorship sales, but if the only goal is an affordable platform that’s more visually appealing than PowerPoint, then Canva can be an appropriate choice.
Keynote is Apple’s free alternative to PowerPoint, and it boasts an intelligent, easy-to-use interface. Where Keynote really stands out is its cinematic transitions between slides. Keynote can also make interactive charts and add enhancements to images.
Die-hard Apple users appreciate how easy it is to use Keynote on iPads and with the Apple Pencil. Teams can take advantage of real-time collaboration from any Apple device.
Users can create their own slide designs or start with one of over 40 pre-existing themes. If letting go of PowerPoint feels too difficult, you can integrate Keynote with PowerPoint and save Keynote presentations as PowerPoint files or import and edit PowerPoint presentations in the Keynote platform.
This is another presentation tool that doesn’t have analytics or automation features that can be helpful for sports sponsorship teams, but it does offer a more visually interesting appearance and a more seamless building experience for Apple users.
Although Slidebean is most well-known for creating pitch decks for startups to pitch to investors, they also create decks and presentations for all kinds of sales and marketing teams.
Slidebean is like most tools on this list in that it’s focused on a higher-quality design than PowerPoint can offer. These presentations won’t come equipped with sales enablement features that are beneficial to sponsorship sales, but they offer a more visually-exciting experience at a low cost. Users can opt for one of three packages:
- Pitch Deck Design
- Pitch Deck Writing & Design
- Strategy + Pitch Deck Sprint
Gamma is an AI-powered tool that creates striking presentations, documents, and even web pages without the need to code. Users simply give Gamma a topic or provide notes, an outline, or an article. Then, approve the outline Gamma provides and pick a theme. The app takes the creation process from there to create a full fledged presentation.
While the first go-round is rarely perfect, it offers a great jumping off point for users to work with. Finishing touches can be completed manually after AI generates the first draft.
Users can try out the app for free and later switch to an affordable paid plan that removes the Gamma watermark, offers custom fonts, and more detailed analytics.
For sales teams that are passionate about video, Powtoon is a great option. Powtoon makes it simple to create presentations that are formatted like professional videos. Edit your slides at any time— when you hit play, a video will play through your deck like an animated explainer video.
Powtoon configures the timing of each slide automatically based on the amount of content. If you’d prefer to present your presentation as a slide deck instead, you can toggle to the “Slideshow” option.
Affordable paid plans offer more ideal features, including creating videos longer than three minutes (which is necessary for most sponsorship pitches), more animations, soundtracks, and white-labeling.
Powtoon doesn’t offer viewership analytics or CRM integrations for sponsorship sales, but it is a unique way to present that stands out in a sea of dull PowerPoints.
Elevate Your Sports Sponsorship Sales With DIGIDECK
With multiple PowerPoint alternatives, you have options to stand out from the crowd with a more engaging design. However, if you’re looking to go beyond just a nice design and leverage a presentation platform complete with a suite of sales enablement features, then DIGIDECK is the #1 choice presentation platform in the sports industry.
Leveraged by hundreds of sports organizations to secure blue-chip partnerships, DIGIDECK helps sales and marketing teams create and send impactful, immersive, and trackable presentations and pitch decks in a fraction of the time.
Interested in joining hundreds of top teams and transforming your sponsorship sales? Request a free DIGIDECK demo today!
