Sponsorship scams and how both sides avoid them
4 July 2026 · 2 min read · Simple Sponsors team
Wherever money meets urgency, cons appear, and event sponsorship has both. Organizers desperate for funding and brands eager for reach both make attractive marks.
The scams are few in pattern and easy to defeat once named. Here are the ones that circulate, and the habits that stop them.
The sponsor who needs a fee first
A generous sponsor appears, sometimes claiming to be a known brand, and commits quickly. Then comes the catch: a processing fee, a verification charge, a refundable deposit you must pay to release the funds. Real sponsors never charge you to give you money. Any request flowing that direction is the entire red flag; stop there.
The brand impersonator
Emails from addresses that almost match a real company, agents claiming to represent brands they have never met. Verify independently: find the company’s marketing contact through its official site or LinkedIn and confirm the person exists and the deal is real. Two polite messages have saved organizers from weeks of fake negotiation.
The event that does not exist
Brands get conned too: polished decks for events with no venue booking, inflated editions of real events, organizers who vanish after the advance. Diligence is simple and fair: ask for the venue confirmation, call a past sponsor, check the event’s public history. Honest organizers provide all three without flinching.
Habits that make you a hard target
Verify identities through independent channels, put every deal in writing, never pay to receive money, and prefer structured venues over pure DM deals. On Simple Sponsors, listings pass automated checks before going live, sample listings are labeled as samples, and deals move through a tracked application flow. Structure does not abolish fraud, but fraud hates paperwork.