About the Project
Despite challenging economic conditions, global expenditure on sponsorship has maintained a steady rate of growth over the last two decades. Of the $62.7 billion global expenditure on sponsorship in 2017 (IEG, 2018), around 70% was spent on sponsoring sport, making it the largest recipient of sponsorship monies. IEG (2017) also identify that 80% of sponsors surveyed are reporting an intention to maintain or increase their spending on sponsorship.
Sponsorship activation refers to those activities which encourage active consumer involvement and participation with the sponsor, and can include linked advertising, social media content, PR activities, experiential marketing activities and sales promotions. Without activation, sponsorship fails to achieve its full potential. However, the body of academic understanding around sports sponsorship activation is significantly less developed than that in other areas of sponsorship such as image transfer, sponsorship fit and measures of sponsorship effectiveness.
The nature of brands involved in sports sponsorship has evolved over the last 30 years, representing shifts in patterns of dominance of certain product sectors with areas of growth and decline. Taking the English Premier League as an example, twenty years ago, typical sponsors came from sectors such as alcohol, retail, sporting goods and IT. In contrast, for the 2018/19 season, ten Premier League clubs have a gambling brand as their shirt sponsor. This represents a shift in the type of brands wanting to associate themselves with sports properties and thus in the types of brands that sports teams, leagues and events are doing business with. Such a shift has raised concerns among some campaigners and government authorities over the influence of gambling brands on fans, particularly children. These debates fit into wider issues around corporate social responsibility of both sponsors and rights holders and the extent to which brands are behaving responsibly in their marketing activities.
We invite proposals for projects focusing on any aspect of sports sponsorship activation. However, in line with staff research interests, we particularly encourage students with an interest in pursuing projects relating to issues such as:
* How sports sponsorship can best be activated to achieve corporate social responsibility goals;
* The impact of sponsor choice on rights holder corporate social responsibility;
* Activation of sports sponsorship via digital and social media;
* Event and experiential marketing as a sport sponsorship activation tool.
It is expected that the successful candidate will address appropriate research questions through a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, secondary data analysis and/or experimental designs. The resultant data will be analysed using appropriate textual and statistical methods. The specific areas of focus in terms of sport and geographic location will be determined by the successful candidate and the supervisory team. It is anticipated that some or all of the research may be carried out online. Therefore, students should have a good grasp of different research methods and display a willingness to undertake further research methods training as appropriate.
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