Learn Italian: Penso che lo sponsor pagherà. - I think that the sponsor will pay.

This ties into our current lesson! When a verb normally requires the preposition a (like pensare a), you must drop that preposition when it is immediately followed by the declarative conjunction che (that). Therefore, you say Penso che... and never Penso a che....

After Penso che, shouldn't the verb be in the subjunctive mood? Why use the indicative pagherà?

You are right that verbs of thinking and believing usually trigger the subjunctive in Italian. However, Italian does not have a future subjunctive tense. Whenever you need to express a future action in a che clause like this, you just fall back to the future indicative (pagherà).

Why does the English loanword sponsor take the article lo instead of il?

Even though it is an English word, Italian article rules still apply. Because sponsor begins with an 's' followed by another consonant (often called an 'impure s'), it requires the masculine article lo (and gli in the plural), just like lo studente.