Sports Sponsorship: Swing and a Miss or Home Run?

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Summary

Adding to research that scrutinizes sponsorship spending, this study asked: Are sponsoring brands wasting money? The focus: Major League Baseball sponsorship and four dimensions of brand equity. Researchers used the expansive BrandAsset Valuator database to reach their conclusions. A major finding: Brand personality matters. Strong personalities tend to overspend, while ‘boring’ ones can hit the ball out of the park.

AUTHOR BIOS

Lane Wakefield (lane_wakeﬁeld@baylor.edu) is a clinical assistant professor of marketing and director of the Center for Sports Strategy and Sales at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business. Wakeﬁeld, who is widely published, co-authored this research when he was at Mercer University.

Kirk Wakefield (kirk_wakeﬁeld@baylor.edu) is the Edwin W. Streetman Professor of Retail Marketing at Baylor University, where he is the executive director of the Sports Strategy & Sales (S3) program. He also is the founder of Wakeﬁeld Research Partners, a research consultancy. In addition to his research-journal publications, Wakeﬁeld is also author of the book Team Sports Marketing (Taylor & Francis, 2007).

Kevin Lane Keller (kevin.keller@dartmouth.edu) is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he is also senior associate dean of marketing and communications. Keller recently joined the JAR Editorial Review Board and is the author of Strategic Brand Management (Pearson, 2012), now in its fourth edition, and coauthor (with Philip Kotler) of Marketing Management (Pearson, 2016), now in its 15th edition.

Anne Rivers (anne@bascpartners.com) is a founding partner of basc partners, a global marketing consultancy. She co-authored this study when she was at the consultancy BAV Group, where she was managing director.