Supported persons do badly (9)
I believe the answer is:
sponsored
'supported' is the definition.
(sponsoring is a kind of supporting)
'persons do badly' is the wordplay.
'badly' is an anagram indicator (letters in the wrong order).
'persons'+'do'='personsdo'
'personsdo' anagrammed gives 'SPONSORED'.
(Other definitions for sponsored that I've seen before include "With backing" , "(Of event) supported financially" .)