The Corporate Card Wars Are Playing Out on Stadium Screens

The Corporate Card Wars Are Playing Out on Stadium Screens There's a war happening in corporate finance, and the battlefield looks nothing like Wall Street. It looks like a basketball arena. Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. American Express's pervasive presence across entertainment and sports venues. Ramp's emerging partnerships with professional teams. Brex's targeted activations in tech-heavy markets. The corporate card and expense management industry has discovered that sports sponsorship isn't just a brand awareness play — it's a customer acquisition channel with economics that actually work. Here's how a B2B fintech category found its way onto stadium screens, and why the spending is about to accelerate. The Capital One Blueprint Capital One effectively wrote the playbook for financial services in sports naming rights. When they put their name on the Wizards' and Capitals' arena in D.C., they didn't just buy signage — they bought a platform. Every game broadcast that mentions "Capital One Arena" is a brand impression. Every GPS navigation that routes someone to "Capital One Arena" is a brand impression. Every concert ticket, every Uber ride, every Instagram story tagged at the venue reinforces the association between Capital One and premium live experiences. The naming rights model has been so successful that Capital One has extended it across multiple properties and experiential platforms. Their strategy is straightforward: be present in the moments when high-value consumers are making discretionary spending decisions. But here's where it gets interesting for the corporate card segment specifically. The B2B Sports Sponsorship Play Traditional consumer credit card companies — Visa, Mastercard, American Express — have been in sports sponsorship for decades. What's new is the corporate card and expense management category: Ramp, Brex, Divvy (now part of BILL), and newer entrants that are specifically targeting business spending. These companies face a unique marketing challenge. Their product is a corporate expense card — something that gets approved by a CFO or finance team, not purchased by an individual consumer on impulse. Traditional consumer advertising is inefficient for this kind of sale. So why sports? Because the people who make corporate card decisions — founders, CFOs, VPs of Finance, operations leaders — attend sporting events. They sit in premium seats and suites. They attend corporate hospitality events at venues. They're part of the affluent, business-oriented demographic that sports properties' premium inventory is designed to reach. When Ramp puts its brand in an NBA arena, they're not trying to reach the fan in the nosebleeds. They're targeting the executive in the suite who's going to evaluate corporate card options at next quarter's finance review. The venue environment provides access to that decision-maker in a relaxed, relationship-building context that a cold email never could. The Hospitality Funnel This is where sports sponsorship for B2B fintech gets genuinely sophisticated. The most valuable asset isn't the logo on the LED board. It's the hospitality inventory. Suite access, courtside seats, exclusive events, and VIP experiences provide B2B companies with a relationship-building tool that nothing else can replicate. A corporate card company can invite a target prospect to a playoff game, host them in a branded suite, and have a casual conversation about their expense management challenges — all in an environment designed to create positive associations. This isn't theoretical. It's exactly how enterprise software, consulting firms, and financial services companies have used sports hospitality for years. The corporate card companies are simply applying the same model to their specific sales cycle. The economics are compelling. A single enterprise customer switching to Ramp or Brex might represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual transaction volume. The cost of acquiring that customer through a hospitality experience at a sporting event — even including premium sponsorship fees — is often lower than the cost of traditional enterprise sales channels. Market-Specific Targeting The smarter corporate card companies are matching their sponsorship investments to their target customer geography. Brex, which focuses heavily on startups and technology companies, has been strategic about market selection — prioritizing tech hub cities like San Francisco, New York, and Austin. Ramp, which positions itself as the expense management platform for growing companies across industries, takes a broader geographic approach. Their partnerships reflect a national customer acquisition strategy rather than a niche market play. American Express, with its long history in sports sponsorship, plays the prestige game — associating its brand with the most premium experiences in sports. Their "Card Member" exclusive access model turns sports sponsorship into a tangible product benefit, which is a strategy the newer fintech players are beginning to emulate. The Data Integration Opportunity Here's the next frontier: corporate card companies integrating their products directly into the sports experience in ways that generate transaction data and customer acquisition simultaneously. Imagine a corporate card that offers enhanced rewards for sports and entertainment spending. Or an expense management platform that automatically categorizes and reports client entertainment expenses incurred at sponsored venues. Or a fintech partner that provides cashless payment infrastructure for an entire arena, generating transaction data while eliminating cash handling costs for the venue. These aren't hypothetical scenarios — they're either already happening or actively being developed. The convergence of fintech products and venue operations creates sponsorship models where the financial relationship goes far beyond logo placement. What This Means for Properties Sports properties with premium B2B audiences should be paying close attention to the corporate card wars. This category represents incremental sponsorship revenue that doesn't compete with traditional consumer financial services partnerships. A property can reasonably have both a consumer credit card partner (Visa, Mastercard) and a corporate card partner (Ramp, Brex) without meaningful category conflict. The products serve different customers in different contexts. Smart properties are already selling both. The key is inventory packaging. Corporate card companies don't need massive brand awareness among the general fan base. They need targeted access to decision-makers: premium hospitality inventory, exclusive event access, executive networking opportunities, and data-driven proof that their target audience is in the building. Properties that can demonstrate the composition of their premium audience — job titles, company sizes, spending authority — will command premium pricing from B2B fintech sponsors. This is where sponsorship intelligence platforms become essential, helping properties quantify and package the value of their business-to-business audience. The Spend Trajectory Corporate card market share is still actively contested. Ramp, Brex, and their competitors are sitting on billions in venture capital and are under pressure to grow rapidly. Sports sponsorship — with its combination of brand building, customer acquisition, and relationship facilitation — fits their growth mandate perfectly. Expect sponsorship spending from this category to increase significantly over the next three to five years. The first naming rights deal from a corporate card company (beyond Capital One's consumer brand) is probably not far off. Category-specific hospitality partnerships will proliferate. And the integration of fintech products into venue infrastructure will create entirely new sponsorship models. The corporate card wars are real, the stakes are enormous, and sports venues have become the arena where the battle for market share is being fought — literally.