Ambush marketing: The undeserved advantage

Abstract

The Olympic Games, as the world's largest and most prestigious sports event, has heen a m^jor target for amhush marketing activity. The position of the Intemational Oljonpic Committee is that the practice of amhush marketing represents a deliherate attempt to mislead consumers into helieving that the companies involved are supporters of the Olympic Games. The opposite is in fact the case. The activities of amhushers erode the integrity of msgor events and may potentially lessen the benefits to official sponsors, who are the real supporters of such events. Amhush marketing hreaches one of the fundamental tenets of husiness activity, namely, truth in advertising and husiness communications. The IOC, as custodian of the Olympic Games, successfully adopts a twofold strategy of protection and prevention to counter the threat of amhush marketing. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The sponsorship of sport is big business. It is an important revenue source for the owners of major sports events, and it simultaneously provides considerable commercial advantages to sponsors who choose to associate with those events. The scales of the revenues involved can be seen from recent market reports. Sponsorship Research International reported the value ofthe worldwide sponsorship market at $16.57 billion in 1996 (Sponsorship Research Institute, 1997), and sponsorship expenditure in the U.S. market for 1996 was reported at $5.5 billion (International Event Group, 1997). The increasing level of investment is testimony to corporate belief in sponsorship's ability to perform mar