Gold, silver, bronze: structuring sponsorship tiers (and when to ditch them)
13 June 2026 · 2 min read · Simple Sponsors team
Tiers are a tool for one job: letting a sponsor choose quickly without negotiating every line. Used well, they anchor prices and speed up deals. Used badly, they read as a menu nobody ordered from.
The difference is in how the tiers relate to each other.
Three tiers, meaningful gaps
Three choices is the sweet spot. Price them with real distance, roughly a three-to-five multiple between bottom and top, so each tier answers a different budget question. When tiers sit close together, sponsors default to the cheapest and you have built yourself a discount ladder.
The middle tier is where most deals land, so build it to be genuinely good. The top tier exists partly to make the middle feel sensible. That is not a trick; it is how every pricing menu works.
Differentiate by kind, not just quantity
Weak tiers scale the same benefit: bigger logo, more posts. Strong tiers unlock different kinds of value as you climb: entry gets presence, middle adds engagement like a stall or a session, top adds exclusivity like category lock-out or naming rights. Exclusivity is the one thing money cannot buy at the lower tiers, which is exactly why it sells the top one.
Name tiers for what they contain
Title Sponsor, Stage Partner, Community Supporter tell the buyer what they are getting. Gold and silver tell them nothing except which is pricier. Functional names also survive screenshots and forwarding better, and most sponsorship decisions involve someone who was not in the room.
When to skip tiers entirely
If your event has fewer than five sponsor slots, or if every sponsor conversation is bespoke anyway, tiers add ceremony without value. Publish a base package and a named list of add-ons instead: prize sponsorship, session sponsorship, lanyards, the bar. Small events sell better as a short menu of real things.
Publish them either way
Whatever structure you choose, put it in public. Hidden pricing filters out every sponsor who was not ready for a call. On Simple Sponsors, your packages appear on the listing itself, so a brand can compare tiers and apply without a single scheduling email.