INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

investment, in cash or kind, in an activity, in return for access to the
exploitable commercial potential associated with this activity’
(Quester, 1997). Sponsorship is a reciprocal business agreement.
Sponsorship activities principally rely on exchange theory: an
appropriate transfer of value between parties through the sponsorship
(Stotlar, 2004). Sponsorship has often been described as a strategic
activity because it concerns decisions about the allocation of resources
to achieve organizational objectives and also it is used to align an
organization with the pressures and demands of its environment
(Slack & Bentz, 1996).
Increased competition among business organizations within the
internalisation led them seek new approaches for achieving their
objectives. The technological, cultural, and economic advances of the
world enabled organizations to reach their potential targets from only
one direction. The endeavours of searching new strategies contributed
to combine marketing studies with sports. The marketing of consumer
and industrial products or services through the use of sport has
become increasingly popular. Many scholars have confirmed sport
sponsorship as a viable component contributing to market strategies.
Sport sponsorship has become an effective marketing strategy for
many corporations and an equally effective revenue producer for sport
organizations during the last twenty years. The amount of money
spent on sport sponsorships, as well as the number of sponsors, grew
dramatically through out the 1980s. Sport retained its position as the
leading category for sponsorship spending with 69 % of expenditures
followed by entertainment 8 %, festivals and fairs 8 %, cause related
marketing 9 % and arts 6 % (Stotlar, 2004).
Sport is a natural area for sponsorship as it can carry very strong
images, has a mass international audience, and appeals to all classes
(Gwinner and Swanson, 2003). Besides these, a number of reasons
have been put forward to explain this growth:
1. Legal constraints banning liquor and tobacco companies from
traditional advertising,
2. sponsorship is perceived as a cost effective tool which
compares favourably with increasingly expensive traditional
mass media advertising
3. the social change
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