When T-Mobile explores potential sponsorship opportunities, the focus is less on the prominence of its logo and more on the opportunity to put its 5G network and technology to work in a way that drives the positive perception of its network, coverage, speed and reliability.

The goal: drive T-Mobile’s position as the leader in 5G.

“That’s where we see our future, especially with all the capabilities our 5G network brings,” said Amy Azzi, T-Mobile’s Senior Director of Sponsorships.

A true innovator, Azzi brought her expertise to both our 7in7 interview series and this year’s Sponsorship Mastery Summit. She shared a message that a partnership with T-Mobile requires innovation, creating unique and unexpected ways to showcase T-Mobile’s network capabilities and drives brand affinity. To achieve T-Mobile’s sponsorship goals, the company isn’t looking for more sponsorships, it’s striving for fewer, better, bigger partnerships.

T-Mobile’s partnerships have been the talk of the industry. Just look at its partnership with SailGP. Azzi’s team looked for a way to showcase the “really customized network solutions” through a sponsorship deal that would highlight the capabilities of the offering. Earlier this year, T-Mobile launched its 5G Advanced Network Solutions, which is helping businesses unlock data and reduce latency.

Becoming the exclusive U.S. 5G Partner of SailGP provided the perfect opportunity. T-Mobile placed routers and sensors in the racing boats and throughout the racecourse. These connections were used to transmit video from the boats for streaming purposes, in addition to providing telemetry data used in both the live broadcast and timekeeping.

By implementing T-Mobile’s solution, SailGP saw a 50% reduction in latency. Additionally, the increased speed of data transfer was a benefit to the decision-making process of the coaches and athletes, not to mention providing a fan experience that brings people closer to the action.

For T-Mobile, this partnership checked many important sponsorship boxes, “[it showed] our network in action in some of the most demanding conditions,” Azzi said. “If it works on water, that’s a pretty good indication it will work on land.”

T-Mobile is seeing similar results through partnerships with the Red Bull Rampage, an invitation-only freeride mountain bike competition, by providing real-time data transfer from a variety of camera angles that allow fans to further engage with the sport. Then there’s T-Mobile’s partnership with Major League Baseball, which allows the company to tell a larger network story.

With each of these partnerships, T-Mobile is tracking data to substantiate success.

The organization is, and will continue to be, an industry leader, because of its ability to drive brand affinity by adding as much value to partners and audiences as it gets out of each partnership.