The Las Vegas Raiders are known for doing things their own way, and that shows up in how they approach sponsorships. The goal isn’t simply delivering assets. It’s creating experiences that feel right for fans, supported by a sponsorship operation that can execute at a high level every time.
Trak helps power that work by giving the Raiders one place to plan, manage, and prove delivery, without relying on scattered spreadsheets, email threads, and mismatched file versions.
Sponsorship at the Raiders starts with relationships. The team looks for partners they trust, partners they enjoy working with, and partners who want to build something together over time. Christian Howard, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships, summed it up this way:
That mindset shapes everything, from who they choose to work with to how activations come to life. The Raiders don’t just sell space. They build programs that make sense for the brand, the team, and the fans in the building.
Before Trak, the partnerships team was working across spreadsheets, shared drives, and another platform that still created double work instead of eliminating it.
“We were using spreadsheets and shared drives... and then another platform that left us doing double the work. Manual errors. Old versions of attachments. Nothing was efficient,”
Jamie Gary, Senior Manager of Corporate Partnerships Activation.
Most of the work lived inside email: deliverables, timelines, approvals, attachments, and constant updates. It became difficult to know what was current, who owned what, and what had already been delivered.
Jamie described the breaking point:
“I hit a wall. I just couldn’t keep working that way.”
The Raiders didn’t go shopping for software. They were using what they were told to use, even though it wasn’t working. It wasn’t until they attended an activation summit and saw Trak presented that they realized there was another option.
That discovery mattered, but what really sold them was how Trak felt in practice. Jamie wasn’t just looking for a new platform. She needed something partners would actually use. From the external side it had to be simple to navigate, easy to read, and quick to process, because sponsorship tasks are only a small fraction of most partners’ day-to-day work.
Internally, the deciding factor was customization. The Raiders pride themselves on doing things differently, and Jamie needed a system that could match that.
That flexibility shows up everywhere, from how tasks are structured to how dashboards and data panels are laid out, and even which information is visible to different users. When their needs shift, the expectation is that the system shifts with them.
And when it comes to partner buy-in, Jamie keeps coming back to usability.
“It’s very user friendly… very intuitive,”
Partners can quickly toggle between seasons, find what they need, and stop asking the Raiders team to dig up old recap decks just to answer basic questions. Instead, they can see performance details, photos, specs, and past uploads in one place.
The shift is what “fits” the Raider way: less admin, less chasing, and more time spent building better ideas and better partner outcomes.
They didn’t treat onboarding like a software switch-flip. They treated it like an activation: test it, tune it, then scale it. After a rough rollout with a previous platform, Jamie built a plan that avoided the same mistakes and made adoption feel natural for both partners and the internal team.
Trak helped from the start by meeting them where they were. Instead of forcing a rigid process, the platform was flexible enough to mirror how the Raiders already operate, which made it easier to introduce without friction. The team could set up the experience in a way that felt clean on the partner side and practical on the fulfillment side, so partners weren’t overwhelmed and the Raiders weren’t stuck translating their workflow into someone else’s system.
They began with a soft launch using a small set of high-usage partners, gathered direct feedback on what was clear, what wasn’t, and how the experience looked and felt, then adjusted before rolling it out more broadly.
When it was time to expand, they made onboarding easy to say yes to. They hosted multiple training options (three to four sessions) so partners could pick what fit their schedules, and Trak’s CEO led the training, which helped build confidence and drive buy-in early. They even ran raffles to boost attendance and get more partners into the platform quickly.
Timing mattered too. They launched at the beginning of their fiscal year, when things reset and the pace is slower, giving everyone time to learn the system, build habits, and work out any wrinkles before the heavy delivery season hit.
And Trak didn’t disappear after kickoff. The Raiders had continued support, quick answers when questions came up, and a clear path to keep improving how partners used the platform. Internally, Jamie reinforced adoption with team trainings, SOPs built with their revenue planning and analytics group, and office hours so there was always a place to go for help.
The result was what you want from onboarding: fewer confused partners, fewer internal fire drills, and a rollout that felt smooth, organized, and sustainable.
On the data side, the Raiders didn’t want “another system to feed.” They wanted Trak to stay current automatically, without creating ongoing work for the business or the data team.
Adam Rockett, Senior Data Engineer, helped set up that pipeline early on. After an initial working session to define what Trak needed, he delivered the file and the rest of the automation fell into place quickly. From there, it’s been mostly hands-off.
Today, the Raiders send a daily CSV of deals and line-item inventory (roughly 6,000 to 6,500 rows per file). The file is transferred via SFTP from Azure Blob storage into Trak’s S3 bucket. Trak then ingests that data to create and update inventory automatically, including assigning items to the right rep.
The best part is what doesn’t happen: manual updates, constant check-ins, or ongoing maintenance work.
And when the Raiders need to adjust, like adding a new field, updating a deal stage, or loading deals before contracts are fully signed, it’s easy to adapt without rebuilding the whole process.
With Trak in place, the Raiders changed how sponsorship work gets done. Admin work dropped, visibility improved, and partners became more self-sufficient.
“Over 5,000 tasks completed. More than 100,000 partner notifications. That’s how much work Trak is doing for us, and it’s all in one place.”
Always Current, Even at Scale
The Raiders load sponsorship data daily, with roughly 6,000 to 6,500 rows per file. That means thousands of deliverables and inventory items stay up to date without someone manually chasing updates. As the team adds more deals each year, the process scales right along with it.
Flexible Enough for Real-World Deals
Sponsorship doesn’t always move in neat, final form. Deals evolve. Stages change. Sometimes a partnership needs to be tracked before the contract is officially signed. Trak supports that reality without forcing the team into workarounds.
“The flexibility of it is nice,” Adam said. “It’s pretty easy if we need a new field added… sometimes we need to add deals before they’ve actually signed the contract… it’s always been really easy to add that ourselves.”
Fan-First Ideas, Executed Cleanly
Trak doesn’t replace strategy. It supports it by making execution consistent and visible, so the team can focus on creating better experiences instead of managing chaos.
Christian shared an example from the Raiders’ beer sponsorship approach:
“When we opened the building, we looked at the beer category and said, ‘Forget about money for a minute. What’s best for the fans?’ We decided the best fan experience was two beer partners, a domestic and an import, because it gives people more choice. Could we have made more money with one exclusive deal? Maybe. But it wouldn’t have been a huge difference, and it would’ve limited the experience. Fans don’t want to walk up and realize, ‘I only have this beer… I kind of wanted that.’ Trak helps us execute that strategy.”
Visibility Without Extra Reporting Work
From Adam’s perspective, the team hasn’t needed to build a separate reporting layer on top of Trak. No one has asked his team to pull Trak data out for external dashboards, which suggests the operational visibility inside Trak has been sufficient for how the group works today.
The Raiders don’t treat sponsorship like a checklist. They treat it like a craft, and they hold themselves to a high standard on delivery. Trak helps them stay organized, consistent, and scalable while keeping the focus where they want it: on building partner programs that feel intentional and fan-first.
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