We talk about “supporting local business” as though it is a nice community sentiment.
And it is.
But economically, these businesses are doing a huge amount of the heavy lifting.
At the start of 2025, there were around 5.69 million private sector businesses in the UK.
More than 5.64 million of them were small businesses employing fewer than 50 people.
That means small businesses make up 99.18% of the entire UK private sector business population.
And when you include medium-sized businesses, SMEs employ around 16.9 million people – 60% of private sector employment – and generate an estimated £2.8 trillion in turnover.
Those are huge numbers.
Behind them are businesses employing people, training apprentices, paying suppliers, taking risks, supporting charities, buying from other businesses and putting money back into the places where they operate.
So when we talk about supporting local businesses, we think it should mean something.
Right Now, Our Finalists Are Preparing
In around ten days, our 2026 finalists will start walking into their interviews.
Some will be excited. Some will be nervous. Most will probably be both.
And they have already done brilliantly to get this far.
This year, nominations for the Wigan Business Awards increased by 30%, while completed entries rose by 17%.
Getting through that field and reaching the finals is something worth celebrating.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking a lot about our finalists.
We want to champion all of them.
But there’s another group of businesses involved in the Awards that we think deserve recognition too.
The businesses choosing to back them.
Putting Your Name Next to Someone Else’s Success
Sponsorship helps us pay for the Wigan Business Awards, obviously.
There’s the venues, production, people, marketing, trophies and a very long list of other things involved in putting an event like this together.
But sponsorship means something else to us too.
When a business chooses to sponsor an award, it is choosing to put its name next to somebody else’s success.
We think that says quite a lot about that business.
It says you’re confident enough in what you’re doing to champion what somebody else is doing.
It says you want to be part of the business community around you.
It says that when you talk about supporting local business, you’re prepared to put something behind it.
And yes, there are commercial benefits as there should be.
Because supporting your local business community and doing something positive for your own business are allowed to happen at the same time.
Good Sponsorship Should Make Sense
There’s evidence behind that too.
Research published by IPSOS in 2026 looked at what makes sponsorship work. While the study focuses on sports sponsorship, some of its conclusions make a lot of sense in a local business setting too.
One of the things Ipsos identifies is geographical fit, the connection created when a brand shares a place or community with the event it supports.
It also argues that businesses should avoid the “one and done” approach to sponsorship, with consistency over time helping to build stronger recognition and associations.
That makes sense to us.
A Wigan business backing an event that celebrates Wigan businesses has a pretty obvious connection.
And when that relationship continues year after year, people start to recognise it.
Visibility matters too. Nielson’s research across thousands of marketing campaigns found that, on average, a one-point increase in measures such as brand awareness and relevance correlated with a 1% increase in sales.
So no, we don’t expect businesses to sponsor the Wigan Business Awards purely out of the goodness of their hearts.
We want it to work for them, and we want people to see them.
We want them to build relationships, and we want businesses in that room to remember their names.
That’s part of the deal.
Some of Our Sponsors Know Exactly How Our Finalists Feel
This is probably one of our favourite things about the Awards.
Some of the businesses sponsoring categories this year have sat where our finalists are sitting now.
They’ve entered; they made the shortlist.
They’ve prepared for the interview; they’ve stood on the stage then they’ve won!
And then they’ve come back and said:
“Right. Now we want to help celebrate somebody else.”
Just two examples are:
Safeseal Roofing won Trade Business of the Year in 2025 and returned to sponsor the Awards again this year.
McGinty Demack won Professional Services Business of the Year in 2025 and came back in 2026 to sponsor the exact category they won.
We also have sponsors who have supported the Wigan Business Awards for several years.
That means a lot to us.
Because we never wanted this to be about businesses turning up for one night only, collecting an award and disappearing again.
This Is Why We Do What We Do
The Wigan Business Awards was always meant to create connections as well as celebrate success.
We wanted businesses to discover suppliers on their doorstep, make introductions, recommend each other, collaborate and buy from one another.
We wanted people to notice the businesses around them and celebrate them when something goes well.
Because there are thousands of businesses quietly getting on with it every day. They might not have national advertising campaigns, household-name CEOs or huge marketing budgets, but collectively they employ millions of people and generate trillions of pounds for the UK economy.
And they deserve to be talked about.
Supporting Local Business Has to Mean Something
Putting #SupportLocalBusiness on a post is easy. Actually supporting other businesses takes a bit more.
Strong local business communities grow when people take part in them, build trusted relationships and choose to back each other.
Over the next ten days, our finalists will be getting ready for interviews, and we’ll be championing every single one of them.
At the same time, we want to recognise the businesses standing behind them.
Every Wigan Business Awards sponsor has chosen to put their name, time and money behind celebrating somebody else’s success.
Want to be part of it?
A small number of sponsorship opportunities remain for the Wigan Business Awards 2026, and we’ve started conversations for 2027.
If your business wants to support, celebrate and connect with Wigan’s business community, we’d love to hear from you.
Find out more about Wigan Business Awards sponsorship >> here <<
