Overview The March of Dimes Sports Luncheon is the sports and media business's December lunch for maternal and infant health, and the people who run sports television have sat on its committee: in 2025 CBS Sports' David Berson chaired it, with executives from ESPN, FOX Sports, NBC Sports, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, CAA Sports and IMG Media alongside him. Two awards go out from the stage, the Sports Achievement Award for athletes and the Corporate Leadership Award for an executive, and the 2025 edition was the 42nd. March of Dimes was founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, funded Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, and turned to birth defects, infant mortality and, from 2005, premature birth. On site The day opens with a VIP reception from 11:30 to 12:15, with a sponsor logo on the reception screen, before the room sits down at numbered tables with a name card and a gift at every seat. The program runs from a stage with in-room screens: sponsor videos and logos, verbal thanks from the stage, the award presentations and a fund-the-mission appeal where guests raise custom paddles. A digital event journal carries the program, sponsor ads and an acknowledgement page. Audience March of Dimes put more than 500 leaders from sports, media and business in the room in 2025. Companies buy tables and fill them with their own executives and guests, so the room is network, league, agency and sponsor people seated by company, over lunch rather than an evening. Talent and Influencers The 2025 Sports Achievement Awards went to Jason Kelce, the Super Bowl-winning former Philadelphia Eagle, and Katie Ledecky, the seven-time Olympic gold medalist, and NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps received the Corporate Leadership Award. Mecca Williams, a New York ambassador for the charity, told the room about the early-onset preeclampsia that led to her daughter's preterm birth. Track record The 2025 luncheon raised $1.4 million, and across more than four decades the event had raised over $21.4 million by then. Proceeds go to March of Dimes programs including its Mom and Baby Mobile Health Centers and NICU Family Support. In 2025 a card on every table welcomed five new corporate supporters. Brand presence A presenting sponsor's name joins the event mark on every piece of material and on the co-branded step-and-repeat. Beyond that, sponsors can take a speaking slot on stage during the program, a video on the in-room screens, the cover of the digital journal, the reception screen, hosted tables and the lapel pins and paddles used in the appeal, and the seat gift is the sponsor's to place.