This paper examines the landscape of sports sponsorship, comparing pre-packaged sponsorship tiers with tailored sponsorship arrangements across grassroots and professional levels. Drawing on literature about corporate decision-making, contract specification, and stakeholder dynamics, the paper identifies three key parties in any sponsorship deal — the funding organization, the sports entity, and the fans — and explores how each is affected by sponsorship configurations. The paper also discusses the career implications for sports management professionals, emphasizing the importance of understanding sponsor objectives, market research, and ongoing client relationship management to build effective and lasting sponsorship partnerships.
The sponsorship of sports has become a highly visible and powerful variable in professional sports, and to a lesser degree, in scholastic sports. The field of sports sponsorship has evolved to such a degree that sponsorship strategies have been classified into benefit packages identified by color: Gold, silver, and bronze. Selection of sponsorship packages has become de facto, which undoubtedly creates advantages for the sponsor. Recently, there has been a shift toward more flexible sponsorship proposals referred to as tailored sponsorship arrangements.
Further complicating the sponsorship arrangement is the fact that the public's response is not always predictable. Sponsors and sports organizations would do well to recognize the need for market research before engaging in costly or complex sponsorship agreements. Steinbach (2005) provides an interesting example of how sponsorship can go seriously awry. In May of 2004, Columbia Pictures and Major League Baseball (MLB) came to an agreement that would allow Spider-Man 2 logos to be printed on the pitchers' mounds, the bases, and the on-deck circles at all MLB parks for just three days in June. The sponsorship would have netted $3.6 million for the MLB. Across the United States, when fans heard of the deal, they were openly opposed. The league was able to end the promotion in time to avoid offending fans on a grand scale and incurring what would likely have been an all-time public relations disaster.
This story is a good reminder that there are really three parties in a sports sponsorship arrangement: the funding party, the sports organization, and the fans (Roy & Cornwell, 2001). This paper reviews and discusses the pertinent merits and shortcomings of both packaged sponsorship agreements and tailored sponsorship arrangements, for all three stakeholder groups.
Sponsorship agreements offered to grassroots sports organizations are nearly always of the tailored variety. Packaged sponsorship arrangements are generally not available at this level, fundamentally because the stakes are not sufficiently high. The sponsors of grassroots sports organizations are looking for very specific types of exposure: increases in business revenue and an enhanced company image as an engaged community member. Large national corporations tend to rely on gatekeepers to weigh and pass along sponsorship opportunities to key corporate decision-makers (McCook et al., n.d.). McCook et al. also found that "the top three sport sponsorship objectives for Fortune 1000 companies were to increase awareness of company, to improve company image, and to demonstrate community responsibility."
The configuration of grassroots sponsorship typically shows the highest sponsorship expenditures to be for uniforms — at 69.6% in a study conducted with community baseball and softball teams (Obsniuk & Smith, 2007). This category was followed by the following, in order of expenditure: facility (43.5% for scoreboards and outfield signs), equipment (34.8% for gloves, cleats, bats, and balls), and field (26.1% for stadiums and diamonds) (Obsniuk & Smith, 2007). The study results showed that 76.7% of all respondent organizations had sponsorship arrangements, and that 86.4% of respondents from organizations that had been in place for 20 years used sponsorships (Obsniuk & Smith, 2007). Interestingly, sponsorships were not effective in reducing the individual expenses of players (Obsniuk & Smith, 2007).
Corporate sponsorships are of a different caliber than grassroots sponsorships, though not necessarily for reasons one might expect. Certainly, increased revenue is a goal for corporations that fund sports organizations, but there may also be other very particular goals on the agenda. It is not uncommon for corporate sponsorships to be embedded in public relations goals designed to cast the corporation in a particular light, or to achieve — through the sponsorship — specific changes indicative of an organization's mission.
Crisp and Swerissen (2003) found that contract specification was an issue for collaborations between funding bodies and sporting organizations. Particularly in cases where the funding body is interested in taking a programmatic approach to its sponsorship arrangements, it is important that a framework for monitoring and evaluating expectations be included in the contract language (Crisp & Swerissen, 2003). One outcome measure that funding organizations may request is structural changes at the venues where sponsored sports activities take place. An example of a structural change that could be measured and monitored is the establishment of a smoke-free sports environment as requested by the sponsor — generally, there is a logical association between the structural change criteria and the mission, service, or product of the funding organization. The contracts in the Crisp and Swerissen study contained just "a paragraph regarding structural change, which stated only the outcomes to be achieved with few, if any, details as to how structural changes were to be implemented…there were only a couple of examples in which an incentive was paid if the structural change was achieved" (2003, p. 150). Crisp and Swerissen also found "that the requirements of structural change were not tailored to fit the varying capacity and structure of sponsored organizations" (2003, p. 150). The underlying issue then became that sponsored organizations were asked to implement structural changes they had not been able to collaboratively develop with funding partners, and they received no funds to implement those changes, nor any incentive should they manage to effect the structural changes at their own cost.
Understanding different types of sponsorship arrangements, and the manner in which these strategies can affect career trajectories, is essential for individuals working in the field of sports. Sports sponsorship, as the literature illustrates, is not a simple undertaking. The days when a hardware store would purchase, install, and paint a stadium board with its logo — to help support the local team and drum up some business — are now relegated to the smallest of venues and budgets. The four verticals of sports sponsorship include sports marketing, media, events, and sports hospitality. The stakeholders across these verticals include renowned sponsors, event organizers, media owners, sports clubs, and the governing bodies of sports associations. A wide range of media can be engaged in sports sponsorship services, including radio and television broadcasting, online digital content strategies, and traditional offline advertising. All of these strategies can be further complicated through association with talent and celebrity representation.
Consider the example of a sports marketing offering by a university athletics program. One such program has targeted corporate sponsors with the following marketing collateral:
"Sponsorship knowledge applied to sports management careers"
"Key takeaways for sports marketing professionals"
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