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Ron Seaver is in a unique position within the sport industry. He has worked on both sides of the sponsorship business, selling sponsorships for teams and assisting corporations in securing productive sponsorship. In his current role as President and CEO of Seaver Marketing Group, Ron is working to bring all parties in the sponsorhip industry together. Here he talks to Dr David Stotlar, of the University of Northern Colorado, sharing his experience and his insights.

Over the past decade, the Olympic Movement has become increasingly dependent upon financial support provided by corporate sponsors. This study explores the evolution of the Olympic sponsorship programme, presents current and future marketing strategies employed by sponsors, and discusses major challenges within the programme.

Jean-François Richard is the Director of Marketing for Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), a major organizer of sporting events in Europe, including the Tour de France: in this interview, we learn more about the Tour de France and the different events organized by ASO.

As the world becomes a global village, sports organisations have begun to extend their markets and fan bases to different groups of customers. David Beckham, a British soccer star with a high profile marriage and much media attention, has endorsed numerous products, thereby becoming an excellent case study for the current trend of athlete endorsement in the international sports industry. The results of this case study provide insights into factors that might influence the success of athlete endorsement.

The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on sponsorship‐linked marketing and to present a set of research propositions.

The approach to the research propositions was to explore the existing literature to discover areas where opportunities for further research exist.

The authors propose that not only does sponsorship‐linked marketing influence attitudes towards the sponsor, but that the relationship is that of an S‐shaped curve where the incremental impact of sponsorship is slight for brands with very little or very strong attitudes established towards the brand. The most dramatic influence that sponsorship‐linked marketing will have is for those sponsors with a moderate amount of established brand attitude. The authors also present an argument that extreme congruity or extreme incongruity will drive brand awareness more dramatically than an expected level of sponsor‐property congruity, thus suggesting a U‐shaped relationship between awareness and congruency. Moreover, while an extremely incongruent partnership may gain widespread attention, it is unlikely to positively influence an emotional or behavioral response for either the property or sponsor.

The majority of the previous literature regarding sponsorship‐linked marketing proposed or assumed a linear relationship between current brand attitudes and the impact of a sponsorship. This paper suggests that this relationship is actually non‐linear and is, in fact, an S‐shaped relationship. Further, while congruency was believed to be linearly related to awareness, this paper proposes that the association between awareness and congruency is a U‐shaped phenomenon.

Many sports properties have had great success entering into sponsorship deals with secondary ticketing companies. However, additional benefits are possible with a reshaping of the structure of primary and secondary ticketing markets. Specifically, fully integrating both primary and secondary markets can help sports properties reduce ticket fraud, monitor fan behaviour, significantly increase revenue in both markets and improve the overall fan experience. This paper details each of these benefits and provides suggestions for programme development and administration.