Event sponsorship — supporting a match, tournament or public event in exchange for brand visibility — is not a separate contract type in Georgia: it is built on the norms of the Law on Advertising governing sponsorship, outdoor advertising, transport advertising and municipal regulation. The sponsor's contribution counts as the value of advertising, and the event inventory falls under the placement rules for outdoor advertising. On this page we explain which rules form the frame of the deal.
The Legal Qualification of Sponsorship
Under the Law on Advertising, sponsorship is the contribution by natural and legal persons to the activity of other natural and legal persons — in the form of funds, property, results of intellectual activity, services or works — on the condition of distributing advertising for the goods produced by the sponsor. The sponsorship contribution is thus regarded as the value of the advertising, the sponsor as the advertising customer, and the sponsored party as the advertising distributor. Two practical consequences follow. First, the sponsor has no right to interfere in the activity of the advertisement's producer and distributor — the event organizer retains content control. Second, a person whose goods or activity may not be advertised under this law has no right to sponsor at all. The law also directly prohibits sponsorship — direct or indirect, including through other persons — by manufacturers, importers and sellers of tobacco products, accessories or devices for tobacco consumption: promoting a tobacco brand through event funding is unlawful whatever intermediary is used.
Outdoor Advertising — the Placement Rules for Event Inventory
The sponsorship inventory of a stadium or street event — posters, stands, illuminated signs and other means of stable territorial placement — falls under the outdoor-advertising regime. The law imposes strict requirements on this inventory: outdoor advertising must not resemble road signs and indicators, must not impair their visibility or that of the road, and must not endanger the movement of transport and pedestrians; advertising placed on buildings must not worsen their architectural appearance and must be structurally stable; outdoor advertising in any form must not disfigure historical and architectural monuments belonging to the national and world cultural heritage. The permit layer matters as well: the representative organ of a municipality decides whether to introduce a permit for outdoor advertising, and the permit is issued by the executive organ under the law on licenses and permits. Municipalities must have an outdoor-advertising plan coordinated with the road authority, traffic police, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the railway authority and the heritage-protection service where the inventory touches their zones. The statutory permit is required only for placement on state- or municipal-owned land or property; placement on privately owned property does not require this permit and the payable amount is determined by contract with the owner. The number of the issued permit must be indicated on the outdoor advertisement. There is an exception: an inscription on an office noting the object located there is not advertising if it is less than one and a half meters from that object — a threshold event branding cannot meet, since event inventory sits across the venue.