Strategic Sponsorship : Managers attitudes towards Sport Sponsorship

Abstract: Sponsorship investments have increased during the last decades and the largest part of sponsorship is in sports sponsorship. Nowadays sports sponsorship is a large business where organizations can make great investments. Due to the fact that it now is a large business it is of great importance to understand this phenomenon in order to learn how to achieve success with it.  There are some issues a company may consider before making the decision on sponsoring a sports team. Firstly, it could be a costly activity which can lead to a financial disadvantage if the sponsorship does not succeed, since it can involve high expense. Secondly, it could also be a time consuming activity which involves the risk of having the people within the company working in vain if failing to achieve success with the sponsorship. The literature describes many attributes that are important for managers working with sponsorships to apply in order to be successful. The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between managers’ attitudes towards sports sponsorship and their fulfillment of sponsorship attributes. To be able to answer the purpose three research questions were constructed that concerned the purpose of the study. To obtain the empirical data a case study was carried out with semi-structured interviews. The ones being interviewed were all managers working with sponsorship in their organization. With the help of their experience and answers to the questions an analysis was carried out.   The finding was that managers that worked with more of the important attributes presented in the literature were more positive towards sports sponsorship than the organization that did not work with as many.