5 Key Design Features to Include in Your Next Sports Trophy

Materials are the foundation of any great trophy design, and for sports trophies, they need to be premium. At Gaudio Awards, we use materials like aluminium, wood, acrylic, and glass to craft dazzling trophies for a variety of sporting disciplines. 

Take our Sir Bobby Robson Golf Trophy as an example. Designed for a celebrity charity golf event, we combined solid aluminium with inset glass-effect acrylic to showcase Sir Booby Robson’s signature and the tournament logo in elegant detail, resulting in a standout centrepiece that really packed a punch.

The best sports trophies say something about the sport itself. But that doesn’t mean filling your trophy with cliché messages like “[insert name] brought their A game”, or “because it’s a marathon, not a sprint”. It means making thoughtful design choices that reflect the energy and heritage of the discipline.

Just look at The Golf Course Awards we designed to celebrate the best-in-class golf courses around the UK. We crafted this custom trophy from metal and finished it in the event’s signature corporate green, with gold print for a striking contrast. This clean, confident design ties directly into the identity of the sport and the community it celebrates, without relying on obvious visual tropes. 

Some sports trophies mark a single moment, whereas others are designed to keep coming back year after year. If you’re designing a perpetual trophy, it’s always worth making sure that you build in room for future updates. For example, you may need space to swap out the nameplates or might want the ability to engrave winners annually. 

This is exactly the approach we adopted for The Maurice Walker Award. It features spaces for a series of sleek nameplates that can be easily added post-event and engraved with different winners’ details each year. This means the trophy can be presented to new winners time and time again, while still retaining its sharp, polished appearance.