A €0 website for a lower-league club: how the sponsorship model works
For 3rd and 4th league clubs we offer a model where the club doesn't pay for the website build. What you get, what we need from you and how the site can help pay its way.
A 3rd or 4th league club rarely has money to spare, and its website often depends on the goodwill of a single volunteer. That is why we offer these clubs a sponsorship model: we fund the website build as part of a partnership, and the club pays only a monthly fee for management and hosting. Here is how it works and what we need from you.
The offer in numbers
The offer has two items, and both are simple:
- Website build: €0 instead of €1,500. We cover the cost of the build as part of our partnership with the club.
- Management and hosting: €149 a month. The fee covers looking after the website and hosting it.
For a smaller club, a one-off investment in a website is often a hard hurdle to clear. A monthly fee is easier to plan into the budget, and you can weigh it against what the website brings the club.
If you agree sponsorship deals for a whole season, work out the fee for the year as well: 12 × €149 comes to €1,788. Other terms of the partnership, such as how long it runs, we agree individually with each club.
What the club gets
We build the website to do the work nobody at the club has time for:
- Futbalnet without retyping – league tables, results and squads update automatically from the federation data. Nobody has to retype them after a match.
- Partner zones – dedicated spaces for partner banners that you can include in your sponsorship packages.
- Online youth recruitment – parents find information about the youth teams and sign their child up directly on the website.
- Ticket sales via Tootoot – fans buy their tickets online before they even get to the ground.
Our reference project FK Spartak Dubnica shows what this looks like in practice. League tables, results and fixtures for the first team and the youth teams from U09 to U19 load from Futbalnet, match tickets and season passes are sold through Tootoot right on the club's website, and general, main and premium partners have their own page with logos. You can see it live at fkspartakdubnica.sk.
A website that earns money
The biggest difference from a typical club website is that partners have a dedicated place on it. The club can offer sponsors extra visibility – a logo or banner on a site visited by fans, parents of young players and people from the town.
If you manage to sell these spaces, they can cover the monthly management and hosting fee, or even more. We cannot guarantee that – it depends on your partners and on how you offer them the website. It helps when sponsors can see that their support is genuinely visible, and when the site lives on matches, tickets and recruitment, so people keep coming back.
We recommend not selling the zones as a separate product, but adding them to the packages the club already offers its sponsors. Alongside the pitchside board or the logo on the shirt, partners get a banner on the website and a link on the partners page. When you talk to a sponsor, show them exactly where their banner will appear.
What we need from the club
We can build and connect the website, but you know the club. To launch, we will need:
- Content – texts about the club, its history and teams, information on youth teams and recruitment, and contacts for the coaches and the board.
- Photos – player photos for the squads, shots from training and matches, and the club crest in good quality.
- Partner contacts – a list of sponsors with their logos and links, so we can prepare the banners with them and partners are on the site from day one.
- One person at the club – a contact who answers our questions and approves the content.
How the launch works
- Demo – we show you how the website works and discuss what your club needs from it.
- Agreement – we agree the terms of the partnership individually, to suit the club.
- Materials – the club provides content, photos and partners; we prepare the site structure.
- Integrations – we connect Futbalnet, Tootoot ticket sales, recruitment sign-ups and the partner zones.
- Launch and management – we put the website live and keep looking after it as part of the monthly fee.
The best time to launch is outside the competition – in summer or during the winter break – so the website is ready for the first match, season ticket sales and recruitment.
Key takeaways
- For 3rd and 4th league clubs we fund the website build (€0 instead of €1,500); the club pays €149 a month for management and hosting.
- League tables, results and squads update automatically from Futbalnet – one less job for the club's volunteers.
- Dedicated partner zones can help cover the monthly fee if you include them in your sponsorship packages.
- From the club we mainly need content, photos and partners; other details are agreed individually.