By Lucas Golding, Assistant, Sponsorship + Consultancy

The Ryder Cup is just around the corner and stands as one of the most highly anticipated tournaments in sport. With its rare blend of national pride, drama, and team spirit in an individual game, it is uniquely compelling for fans, sponsors, and broadcasters worldwide.

The biennial event sees the best twelve players from Europe and USA go head-to-head in a match play format, sparking drama and powerful narratives. This year the action unfolds at Bethpage Black, New York, a course known for its brutal layout and the iconic “WARNING: Black Course is Extremely Difficult” sign. Bethpage will host, not just 28 matches of golf, but the drama, noise, and national pride that makes the Ryder Cup unlike anything else in the sport and is a magnet for the world’s biggest brands.

(Photo: Ryder Cup)

But beyond the spectacle, the Ryder Cup also tells us something important about sponsorship itself. What began as a platform for locally focused, prestige-based deals has evolved into globally integrated, performance-driven partnerships, showing how sponsorship has matured and is no longer just about logos on leaderboards.

Teeing up success for Brands

Beyond the fairways lies another competition, as brands compete for share of voice and attention during the three-day spectacle. The Ryder Cup gives sponsors the chance to be part of a story that’s emotional, patriotic, and truly global. In 2023, there was a record-breaking Ryder Cup in Europe with more than 271,000 fans from 100 different countries packing the course in Rome, alongside more than five million tuning in worldwide (DP World Tour). Similarly, In the UK, Sky Sports posted its highest-ever Ryder Cup audience at the 2023 Ryder Cup with an average of 785,000 viewers across the three days which is up 38% on 2021 and 25% on 2018, a clear showcase of golf’s momentum.

That influence now stretches well beyond the event itself. LIV Golf and the new Tomorrow Golf League have borrowed heavily from the Ryder Cup’s team-based format, branding, and fan-first presentation, proof of the tournament’s power as a blueprint for modern golf. Broadcasters have responded in kind, with NBC striking a $440 (£329m) deal in the U.S. and Sky Sports extending its long-standing partnership through 2025. 

At the Ryder Cup, sponsors are woven into the event’s narrative, delivering experiences and activations that resonate with fans. That resonance is backed by data provided by Dentsu Sports Analytics which shows that younger audiences (Gen Z) are 19% more receptive to sponsorship messaging and engage more positively with sponsors compared to general sports fans. It’s this deeper connection that underpins why companies are willing to pay between £5.3–7.6m per event to become a worldwide Ryder Cup partner (Sport Business Journal).

With its unmatched mix of live spectacle, broadcast reach, and digital engagement, the Ryder Cup continues to prove why the world’s biggest brands are willing to invest so heavily in its story.

From Host-Nation Deals to Worldwide Platforms

Prior to the 2018 Ryder Cup, the governing bodies would only select partners who are associated with the markets and countries they were playing in. According to the Sport Business Journal, in 2018, BMW was announced as the only Worldwide Partner. Now there are a total of seven Worldwide partners for the event: Aon, BMW, Capgemini, Citi, DP World, SAP, and Rolex. By creating this worldwide partner programme, it allows brands to sponsor both teams and multiple matches under one agreement (The Ryder Cup). This expanded worldwide partner program departs from the previous sponsorship model which was USA or Europe specific sponsorship allowing for a truly global reach. This has been the biggest change for sponsor allocations. With the number of global partners capped at eight, securing a spot has become far more lucrative and beneficial, as the Ryder Cup’s alternating locations between Europe and the USA guarantee exposure across two continents and media markets.

The Ryder Cup’s worldwide partner program perfectly demonstrates how sponsorship has evolved over time. Heritage and trust remain at the core with Rolex embodying prestige and timelessness. The watch brand has a long-term commitment of reinforcing the Ryder Cup’s stature as golf’s ultimate stage but also keep tradition at its core.

Global connectivity and supporting local communities are defining hallmarks of modern sponsorship, demonstrated by DP World, whose worldwide reach and global presence make them far more than just a logo. They have created an initiative called the ‘Second Life Container’ where 20-foot shipping containers collect used and unwanted golf balls from the Ryder Cup and DP World Tour events, which are then redistributed to support grassroots golf initiatives worldwide. DP World use their global platform to give back to the game and connect communities across continents which coincides with our Decoding 360 data – a study of more than 10,000 global fans, which shows that almost 2 in 3 UK Golf Fans think that brands who sponsor events should invest in the local community.

Most brands are trying to incorporate ways to integrate the fans at these events to make it as memorable as possible. BMW, being the first worldwide partner, has consistently activated around performance and fan experiences. From delivering the Ryder Cup in a wingsuit in 2021 to streaming the Ryder Cup live to BMW 7-series owners in 2023, they activated in various imaginative ways since 2018.

(Photo: petersalzmann.at, Instagram)

Younger audiences have grown up with real-time stats, instant replays, shot tracers, and AI-powered insights across every sport they watch which correlates with our data from Decoding 360, showing that 45% of Gen Z Ryder Cup fans want sponsors to enhance their fan experience through new innovations. Capgemini uses their worldwide partnership to offer fans real-time course and player insights, showing how technology can deepen engagement on and off the course. This provided estimates showing the probability of someone winning the hole, a match or the day. This shift highlights how the Ryder Cup has become a proving ground for what modern sponsorship should deliver: cultural relevance, digital scale and demonstrable impact.

How Data Became Golf’s New Caddie

Golf is now, more than ever, dominated with statistics and data, and players are using devices such as Trackman and ball tracking devices to gather data. Luke Donald was at the helm for the Europeans in 2023, and alongside him was Edoardo Molinari as one of his vice-captains. Molinari, who has an engineering background, uses his data skills to create data driven analytics to help himself and other golfers such as Matt Fitzpatrick.

Now why is this relevant to the Ryder Cup?

The hosting team of the Ryder Cup can adjust the course to favour their players strengths. In 2023, Donald said that having tighter fairways, more rough and greens that don’t get too fast is a template for the Europeans and hinders the USA team slightly more as that is what they are used to (Sky Sports). Capgemini used their AI and data technology to create the ‘Captain’s Dashboard’ for the Ryder Cup Team leaders which allowed Luke Donald and his leadership team to make real-time, data-driven calls optimising match pairings to boost performance on every hole.

Adjusting the course to favour the European’s strengths paired with the technology created by Capgemini revealed to be a deadly partnership which resulted in dominating victory for the European team in 2023. Interestingly, the American team, while having access to the ‘Captains Dashboard’, chose not to adopt this technology which in hindsight might have had more of an impact than they first thought.

Looking ahead to the Ryder Cup this week, it will be interesting to see if they make the change to use this technology and see if it has as much an impact as it did for the Europeans.

The Ryder Cup’s New Future

Alongside the emergence of new technology being used at the Ryder Cup, heritage sponsors remain an integral part, anchoring the event with prestige and tradition. These iconic partnerships provide continuity and trust, reinforcing the Ryder Cup’s identity as golf’s ultimate stage. Yet, alongside these symbols of tradition, a new wave of sponsorship is emerging. AI and data-driven innovations are becoming expected by fans, who increasingly demand deeper insights, real-time stats, and interactive experiences. This appetite for innovation opens the door for more technology and AI companies to compete for worldwide partner slots, raising the exciting prospect of what new tools and breakthroughs these brands could bring to future Ryder Cups.

For brands, the takeaway is clear: sponsorship is now a test of relevance, innovation and return on investment. For rights holders, it underlines the need to curate partnerships that bring more than just funding, they must actively enhance the event and deepen its cultural resonance.

Together, these partnerships show that the Ryder Cup is no longer just a showcase of sporting tradition and settle for visibility alone. We are at a point where new sponsors are thinking more creatively and tactically, by finding new innovative ways to enhance the fan journey, shape the event’s narrative, and, in some cases, directly influence the outcome on the course.