3+ years and counting. 66 campaigns. 416,000 views. 63,000 engagements. 11.6% average engagement rate. 45 athlete-creators. 3 brands.
A case study on the multi-year, multi-brand athlete-influencer marketing partnership between Callaway Golf and OpenSponsorship.
Most agency engagements last a campaign. The strong ones last a year. Callaway Golf has been working with OpenSponsorship continuously since December 2022 — three-plus years and counting — across an evolving portfolio of brands, product categories, and creator strategies.
When Callaway signed its first OpenSponsorship contract, the goal was simple: bring Callaway Golf, OGIO, and Jack Wolfskin to a single platform that could replace ad-hoc, one-off creator deals with a structured, repeatable process.
Three-plus years and 66 completed campaigns later, that playbook has scaled across equipment launches (drivers, wedges, golf bags, women's gloves), holiday seasons, major tournament cycles, and even an entirely new sport — pickleball.
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The challenge
In late 2022, Callaway had three competing pressures in its athlete-influencer marketing operation:
Speed. Product launches needed creator content live within weeks, not the six-to-twelve-week cycle that traditional agency RFPs require.
Specificity. Generic golf influencers weren't enough. Campaigns needed athletes with demonstrated golf credibility and audience-product fit at the SKU level — a women's glove campaign needs a different creator profile than a wedge campaign or a pickleball paddle launch.
Multi-brand portfolio. Callaway Golf, OGIO, and Jack Wolfskin all needed creator support — with different audience targets, different price points, and different go-to-market timing.
Traditional agency models couldn't deliver all three simultaneously. Internal sourcing was burning marketing-team hours on creator outreach instead of strategy.
Why Callaway chose OpenSponsorship
Callaway entered into a $1,750/month full-service plan in January 2023 — covering software access plus dedicated account management for all three brands.
The plan gave Callaway four things a traditional agency couldn't:
- Curated creator sourcing across 17,000+ athlete-influencer profiles, with verified social data, golf-credibility filters, and audience demographics
- Single-platform contract management — one tool for proposals, contract terms, payment processing, and deliverable tracking, replacing email-and-spreadsheet workflows
- FMV-aligned pricing at the campaign level so internal stakeholders could defend creator spend with data
- Cross-brand flexibility — the same OS account team rotated between Callaway Golf equipment launches, OGIO travel-bag campaigns, and OGIO pickleball mandates without re-onboarding
The relationship has run continuously since, with active campaigns through April 2026.
16 campaigns. 4 product categories. 3 brands.
Across the partnership, Callaway has deployed OpenSponsorship to support a wide spread of marketing objectives:
Equipment launches
- 2026 Aura Women's Golf Glove
- 2026 Performance Fairway Bag Collection (three series across walker / cart / performance use cases)
- 2025 Fairway Plus/14 Golf Bag
- Wedge launches (2024)
- Paradym Driver launches (2023)
Holiday + Seasonal
- Callaway Holiday Gifting (Oct 2025 - Jan 2026)
- Black Friday Pre-Owned (CGPO, 2024)
OGIO travel goods
- RISE Collection - on-the-go women's lifestyle creators (2023)
- Multi-bag launches (2023-2024)
OGIO Pickleball
- 2023 entry into pickleball with creator partnerships supporting the new paddle and bag collection
The throughline: each new launch reused existing platform infrastructure, established contract templates, and built-up creator relationships. Marginal cost per campaign dropped each cycle.
The performance numbers
Across 66 completed deals and 276 individual content deliverables (Instagram posts, Reels, Stories, TikToks, and UGC):
| Metric | Total | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Total views | 416,096 | Across 276 deliverables |
| Total reach | 97,302 | Unique-account-level reach |
| Total engagement | 63,099 | Likes + comments + shares + saves |
| Total likes | 63,844 | - |
| Total comments | 1,838 | - |
| Total shares | 121 | - |
| Average applause rate | 7.3% | vs. 1-3% industry benchmark for branded Instagram content |
| Average conversation rate | 0.56% | - |
| Average cost per engagement | $9.06 | - |
| Unique athletes | 45 | Mid-tier through tour-pro |
| Total deals completed | 66 | Across 3 years and 3 brands |
The headline takeaway: a 7.3% applause rate is two to seven times the industry benchmark for branded Instagram content. When the audience-creator-product fit is right, paid creator content engages at organic-content rates. That's the operating premise OpenSponsorship was built around - and the Callaway data validates it.
Top-performing partnerships
Three deliverables from across the partnership delivered outsized engagement:
January 2024 - Harsh J., the viral single-post hit
A single Instagram post from creator Harsh J. drove 16,399 likes, 96 comments, and 91,402 views - engagement well above his typical follower-base reach, indicating strong network effect and audience-product fit.
December 2023 - Petra Starke, the dual-post creator deal
A two-post Instagram package from creator Petra Starke, delivering 22,070 combined engagements:
- Post 1: 11,187 likes, 113 comments - 10.5% applause rate
- Post 2: 10,704 likes, 95 comments - 10.0% applause rate
November 2023 - Malosi Togisala, high-view product placement
A single Instagram post from creator Malosi Togisala with 27,657 views, 2,667 likes, and 86 comments - a 10.5% applause rate.
These weren't outliers driven by mega-influencer paid placement. They were mid-tier creators with deep golf credibility paired with products their audience genuinely wanted to see.
What's repeatable
Three patterns from the Callaway data hold across product categories - and apply to any consumer brand evaluating creator marketing:
1. Mid-tier creators outperform mega-influencers on cost per engagement.
Creators with 30K-150K followers in a focused niche (women's golf, golf lifestyle, pickleball) consistently delivered higher engagement rates than larger general-purpose accounts. Callaway's deal economics - typically $250-$1,000 cash + $250-$350 in product per creator - produced an average $9.06 cost per engagement, well below the rates traditional ad placements deliver.
2. Cash + product structures outperform product-only.
Athletes deliver more authentic, more performant content when the deal feels like real compensation rather than inventory dumping. Across the Callaway portfolio, combined cash-and-product deals consistently produced higher engagement rates than product-only equivalents.
3. Long-term platform commitment compounds.
Creators returning for multiple Callaway campaigns over 2-3 years generated higher per-deal performance than first-time partners. Each repeat reduced the briefing-and-onboarding overhead and produced better content. Platform-managed creator relationships build context that one-off RFPs don't.
What this means for your brand
If you're a consumer brand evaluating creator marketing in 2026, the Callaway partnership offers a few structural lessons:
- Multi-brand portfolios benefit from a single platform. Onboarding creator relationships once and reusing them across product launches drops marginal-campaign cost dramatically.
- Mid-tier creators with niche credibility beat top-of-funnel celebrity placements on engagement-per-dollar - consistently, across categories.
- Subscription-style platform fees ($1,750-$2,000/month) replace agency retainers while delivering equal-or-better outputs at faster speed.
- The relationships compound. Year one is about finding the right creators. Year two and three are about scaling the ones that worked.
Your brand may not need 66 campaigns to see results. But the structure that produced them is the same structure available on day one.
Ready to run a similar campaign?
OpenSponsorship is the leading end-to-end tech-enabled agency connecting brands with athletes and creators. We work with consumer brands across sports, lifestyle, golf, fitness, and more.
Tell us about your product launch - we'll show you how a comparable creator-marketing engine works for your category.
Related case studies
- LIV Golf Creator Marketing Case Study → (coming soon)
- How OpenSponsorship Works for Consumer Brands →
Data sources: HubSpot CRM (deal records, total revenue), OpenSponsorship platform deal database (engagement metrics, deliverables, athlete-creator records), public Instagram posts. Industry benchmarks: Statista, Influencer Marketing Hub 2025 reports.
Last updated: 2026-05-05.