Official Sponsors Research Articles

메가스포츠이벤트 후원 기업의 스폰서십 활동이 브랜드자산및 구매의도에 미치는 영향

메가스포츠이벤트 후원 기업의 스폰서십 활동이 브랜드자산및 구매의도에 미치는 영향

Criminal infiltration in amateur football: the case of the Netherlands

AbstractIn the past five years involvement of criminals in socially beneficial activities and philanthropy has received increasing attention in the Netherlands. Amateur football clubs appear to be particularly vulnerable to criminal infiltration. This paper presents the results of three exploratory studies conducted to answer two main questions. First, to what extent does criminal infiltration in amateur football occur, who are involved and what are their motives? Second, how may criminal infiltration be better prevented, both by clubs and public institutions? Suspected criminals have been active in amateur football as official and covert sponsors, as clubs’ presidents and coaches, or have misused clubs’ facilities for illegal activities. Our studies showed that in 2020, 19% of Dutch amateur football clubs reported to have been confronted with indications of attempted criminal infiltration and in this year the authorities had 40 cases under investigation. Criminal involvement in amateur football can be explained primarily from the perspective of social embeddedness and the aim to improve one’s status and social acceptation within local communities. Although awareness of the problem has been growing, preventing, detecting and tackling criminal infiltration may still be improved.

Regulating Ambush Marketing in an Increasingly Social Era

The practice of ambush marketing continues to proliferate around mega sport events, notably during the Olympics. The ongoing commercial threat to official sponsors and event organizers threatens the sponsorship model on which the events rely. The current situation is further complicated by increased social media activity and engagement by competing athletes to engage not only with their followers on social media but also with endorser brands who may not always also be official sponsors of the event. The increasing role of Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter as a regulatory tool on social media to prevent ambush marketing is discussed as an additional brand protection measure beyond traditional legal enforcement. The commentary explores advances in recent scholarship related to ambush marketing and suggests directions for future research. Legal, policy, and practical implications for social media in sport are discussed.

Online Esports Engagement: Motivational Antecedents and Marketing Outcomes

Esport is becoming one of the fastest-growing sports branches and providing remarkable advertising and sponsorship opportunities for brands. This research aims to understand what motivates online esports spectators to engage in esports and the way that motivations and engagement influence their purchase intention toward advertised and sponsored products during esports events. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling with 436 esports spectators. The results imply that esports engagement has mainly been driven by parasocial interaction between online esports spectators and players. Various motivations were found to act upon the emersion of different esports engagement dimensions, among which a hierarchy of effects existed. Affective and behavioral esports engagement positively influenced advertising sponsorship effectiveness during esports events. Along with providing a definition of esports engagement, this research creates a theoretical linkage between uses and gratifications theory, sports consumption motivations, and esports engagement; and explores how esports engagement leads to the willingness to buy products advertised during esports events and/or products of official esports sponsors. Keywords: esports, motivation, sponsorship, uses and gratifications, parasocial interaction

The Stock Market Reaction to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics: Evidence from Japanese Sponsors and Taiwanese Olympic-Related Firms

Abstract: This study aimed to examine the impact of a major sporting event, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, on abnormal returns of Japanese sponsors and Taiwanese Olympic-related stock prices during three different periods, including the hosting announcement, the postponement in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the holding as scheduled. Using the event study approach, secondary data were collected to investigate the fluctuation of abnormal returns of official Japanese sponsors and Taiwanese Olympic-related stocks. The empirical evidence showed that Olympics-related news disclosures significantly affected the abnormal returns of official sponsors’ stock prices during both the periods of the hosting announcement and the postponement announcement but not during the period of holding as scheduled. This study also verified that the postponement announcement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and its holding as scheduled would generate positive and negative spillover effects on the stock market of a non-host country.

Avoiding a lost decade—an interim update

Abstract All sovereign debt restructurings are inherently messy, expensive, exasperating, time-consuming, and contentious. These are the familiar pathologies in the international system to resolve unsustainable sovereign debts. But the period since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis has revealed (to use a term we all learned during pandemic lockdowns) several new co-morbidities. These include a breakdown in the ability of the major external creditor groups (traditional Paris Club lenders, non-Paris Club bilateral creditors like China and bondholders) to coordinate their debt relief efforts, the increasingly diverse nature of the private-sector entities holding claims against a debtor state, and the total absence of any mechanisms—statutory or contractual—that can be used to ensure that the sacrifices made by the vast majority of claimants and official sector sponsors in the economic recovery process cannot be exploited by the uncooperative few.

Sponsorship and social justice: brand positioning on diversity and inclusion in sport marketing during the 2020 UEFA European football championship

PurposeContextual changes in communications, social activism and perceptions of commercialization have changed the dynamics in sponsorship. This paper investigated the patterns in sponsorship and social justice within the context of a major sports event.Design/methodology/approachThe European Football Championship serves as an impactful platform for sponsors due to its global reach. The sponsorship activations of the twelve official sponsors were investigated by analysing sponsorship expressions on the LED boarding during every match of the tournament. Furthermore, additional data on sponsorship characteristics and brand positioning was collected for every sponsor to define relevant factors to understand the differences in sponsorship communications.FindingsDuring UEFA EURO 2020, five official sponsors changed their sponsorship activations. Adjustments were made in sponsorship expressions to position the brand on diversity and inclusion. The analyses of over 90,000 press photos and 51 official match videos clarified the dynamics of brand positioning, sponsorship characteristics in perspective of globalization patterns and different sponsorship approaches in different geographical, social and political contexts.Practical implicationsDecision makers in the global sports industry are challenged in their brand management and sponsorship approaches for the social good. This study supports to understand the sponsorship approaches and factors affecting these different strategies.Originality/valueDespite the growing attention to social justice issues in sports, there is a need to understand inclusive marketing strategies in sponsorship relationships. Using data triangulation, the findings enabled to clarify differences in sponsor approaches to social justice and illustrate the complex dynamics of brand positioning on diversity and inclusion in the sponsorship ecosystem.

Increasing women's participation in biomechanics through National Biomechanics Day events

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) occupations represent one of the broadest gender gaps in any professional field, with women and girls grossly underrepresented in STEM education and careers, particularly engineering and biomechanics. Factors such as bias, stereotyping, and a lack of female role models can significantly influence women's and girls' decisions to enter and remain in the field of biomechanics. A critical first step in increasing the number of female biomechanists is to create early opportunities for girls to explore biomechanics. To address this, international initiatives, such as National Biomechanics Day (NBD), have been developed to expand the awareness, influence, and impact of biomechanics by engaging young people in school biomechanics programs. The Biomechanics Initiative, the official sponsor of NBD, offers grant programs aimed at empowering women to host an NBD event designed to promote biomechanics to girls and women in an immersive, interactive, and engaging manner. In 2021, Biomechanics Research Laboratory (BRL) Ph.D. student Maddison Kirk was a recipient of the grant program. In this paper we describe the BRL NBD event, which involved 20 female athletes from diverse backgrounds, demonstrating to them how biomechanics can be used to assess their physical fitness and performance. Female biomechanists and research assistants running the NBD event acted as female role models to participants, increasing the visibility of women in biomechanics and, in turn, helping to address current bias and stereotyping in STEM. By diversifying biomechanics and ensuring STEM fields are representative of the society in which we live, we can advance the field of biomechanics both nationally and internationally.

An Examination of Sponsor Outcomes at Different Tiers of IndyCar Sponsorship

Abstract: While frequently examined in events and service research, satisfaction has received little examination in the context of sponsorship. Given the shared characteristics of both service and sport-derived products, this study, which was framed by the theory of planned behavior, aimed to examine the influence of event satisfaction, motorsport involvement, and sponsor-event fit on both sponsor image and behavioral intentions for a title sponsor of an IndyCar event. In addition, the study explored the influence of satisfaction and motorsport involvement on sponsor awareness and image for official event sponsors. The results indicated that the measured constructs generally exhibited similar relationships with title and official sponsors and that there was no significant relationship between satisfaction and behavioral intention. Thus, an individual’s preconceptions of an event may be more important than their event experiences in developing behavioral intentions. Further implications for future strategy for IndyCar sponsors and event organizers are also discussed.

Sponsor and ambush marketing during the 2018 Commonwealth Games on Twitter and Instagram

Purpose This research explores ambush marketing on social media during the 2018 Commonwealth Games held in Australia. Two social media platforms – Twitter and Instagram – served as the dataset to uncover how official sponsors of the Canadian and Australian Commonwealth Games teams were ambushed.Design/methodology/approach Employing a content analysis of all official team sponsors and their competitors, the study’s findings offer an original and multi-national look into social media ambushing.Findings Results indicated that promoting Games’ links was the most common social media post type used by official event sponsors, followed by sharing results of their endorsed athletes and behind-the-scenes information.Research limitations/implications In an effort to provide connection to the event, posts by ambushers focused on promoting athletes endorsed by their brand. All ambushers were more likely to use Twitter to promote their endorsed athletes. Instagram, however, was not fully embraced in their ambush marketing.Originality/value Discussion and implications of the results provide sport marketers with information on how to leverage one’s link with a major sporting event.

Historical stories in children’s literature in Iraq (narrative production in the eighties as an example): القصص التاريخي في أدب الأطفال في العراق (النتاج القصصي في الثمانينيات –أنموذجاً- )

This study aimed to highlight the historical story directed at child in Iraq during 1980s, a decade that witnessed a remarkable prosperity and development of children's literature. The study also focused on the role of Children's Culture House, the official sponsor of child's culture in Iraq, in presenting and enriching this kind of story. Moreover, the study explained the circumstances of that historical phase and its implications on the child's story in general and the historical story in particular. The study also covered the methods and means of writers in dealing with facts and events of history and presenting them to the child in line with the requirements of children's literature. The study then supported the theory with an artistic analysis of a historical story published at that point.

Marketing of unhealthy brands during the 2018 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup UK broadcasts – a frequency analysis

ABSTRACT Sport mega-events including the FIFA World Cup are a central component of consumer culture. Major brands are long associated with the World Cup, with many known for unhealthy products. This study quantified visual marketing references to unhealthy brands in the UK broadcasting of the 2018 Men’s World Cup. Eight matches were recorded, and all segments of the recordings were coded for marketing references to unhealthy brands using predefined criteria. A total of 1794 such marketing references were recorded, an average of 224 per broadcast and 1.2 per minute, 95.4% of which were official sponsors. The total time of exposure to unhealthy brand marketing was six hours, 30 minutes and 45 seconds, with 22.7% of the footage including at least one unhealthy brand marketing reference. The results show the World Cup is a platform for the marketing of unhealthy brands with implications for those responsible for public health and television broadcasters.

The phenomenon of match-fixing in football

One aspect of the security of sport, which is rarely considered by the organizers of sports events, concerns the different manifestations of match-fixing. The match-fixing of the result of a sports event or any component of it contradicts the established norms and values of the sporting competition, drawn up at the end of the XIX century by Baron Pierre de Coubertin and known as Olympism. Today, match-fixing is one of the phenomena in modern sport. Advertising, publicity, profit largely regulate relations in professional sport, and in full force, this applies to football as the most popular sport in the world. If we look at what has been said so far through the prism of Bulgarian football, it is enough to look at the Bulgarian football championships, whose official sponsor is an online betting company at sporting events and the first football league is named after this company. This same company has sponsorship relations with more than 10 football clubs, and to them we can add the volleyball and basketball federations, as well as some of the brightest representatives of these federations. Noticing this trend of business entering the sport, we set out to explore the opinion of players and their coaches about the manifestation of the phenomenon of match-fixing in Bulgarian football. The results of the survey show the existence of match-fixing at both professional and amateur level and allow us to indicate some steps to prevent such non-sporting techniques from winning.

Peso de las marcas de ropa deportiva dentro del fútbol europeo de élite a través del patrocinio. 'Marketing' y competencia entre Adidas y Nike

https://doi.org/10.33732/ixc/11/01Pesode La presente investigación pretende dilucidar cuál es el peso que ostentan las grandes marcas de ropa deportiva en cuanto a patrocinios dentro del futbol profesional europeo de élite. Se determinará además si Adidas y Nike tienen un protagonismo parejo en cuanto a su capacidad de activación de patrocinios dentro de este sector, clave en su batalla global por ser líderes del mercado en el que compiten. Para obtener información relevante al respecto se pone en marcha una primera etapa destina a construir un marco teórico a través del uso de la revisión bibliográfica y documental. La segunda etapa desarrolla una investigación ‘ad hoc’ que utiliza el análisis de contenido para registrar a los principales agentes del sector del futbol europeo de élite, y cuáles son sus patrocinadores oficiales de ropa deportiva. Los resultados obtenidos indican que Adidas y Nike dominan claramente la activación de este tipo de patrocinios. Nike es la marca hegemónica sobre la activación de patrocinios individuales de futbolistas, mientras que en los patrocinios colectivos de clubes y federaciones destaca discretamente Adidas. Se puede concluir que no existe un peso exactamente equilibrado entre los logros de activación de patrocinios conseguidos por ambas marcas.

Ends justify the means! Attitude toward ambush marketing

PurposeThis study explores why consumers view ambush marketing as an ethical marketing approach.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study was devised to investigate what ambush marketing means to those consumers who find it ethical or are not annoyed by it. Data were collected via focus groups.FindingsThree main themes emerged from the data analyses. The most dominant theme was Machiavellianism. Favorable evaluations of ambush marketing lean on a Machiavellistic understanding. The second was the Robin Hood effect, which is observed when the ambusher is a smaller or local brand. In the third theme, ambush attacks are considered as charismatic or enjoyable action, in what is termed dark charisma.Practical implicationsFindings of the current study suggest considerable implications both for businesses that deal with sponsorship and for organizing committees.Originality/valueThe extant literature on consumers' attitudes toward ambush marketing mostly focuses on ethical issues and/or the effectiveness of ambush marketing (i.e. harm to official sponsors), using qualitative techniques. However, the literature is devoid of studies exploring consumers' perception on ambush marketing, and more specifically, explanations of what is ethical and unethical from consumers' point of view. To best of the author's knowledge, it is the first study that seeks an explanation about consumers' positive evaluation of ambush marketing.

Ultraviolet Materials and Devices

The UV community for the fourth time took part in the International Workshop on Ultraviolet Materials and Devices (IWUMD4), which was organized in September 2019 by the Ioffe Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia. This event, following the successful meetings in Beijing, China (2016), Fukuoka, Japan (2017), Kunming, China (2018), was intended to show new horizons beyond the UV-blue LEDs based on wide-bandgap III-Nitrides. Material science, modeling and technology for the “UV gap” (200-300 nm) are at the frontier of applied physics. The studies are aimed at developing devices for such areas as medicine – for human-safely disinfection and rapid detection of viral threats, communication – for noise-protected and solar- blind UV-optical communication, nanotechnology – for high- resolution photolithography and for many other applications in the field of biology, pharmaceuticals and forensics. The Workshop was attended by 125 scientists from 15 coun- tries, including half from Asia and half from Europe and the DOI: 10.1002/pssa.202000378 USA. The Program was very eventful and included 2 plenary talks by Prof. Chris G. Van de Walle (UCSB) and Prof. Michael Kneissl (TU Berlin&FBH), 4 keynotes, and 25 invited papers, as well as 35 oral presentations and 36 poster contributions displayed during two poster sessions. Prior to Workshop, the Tutorials on the basic properties of wide-gap semiconductor materials and nanostructures with lectures of outstanding experts in this field were held for one and a half days. The scope of the presentations at the Workshop was quite wide. Besides the fundamental properties of wide-gap semiconductor materials and nanostructures, their optical and structural characterization and applications, it highlighted new trends, such as the growth, basic properties and applications of Ga2O3 and physics of BN from bulk to 2D materials. This issue features selected reports from the Workshop participants. Recent results on the manufacture of high-quality templates of the nitrides and oxides by using different technological approaches are presented. The fundamental problems of low-dimensional heterostructures and the techno- logical challenges of various epitaxial growth methods, such as molecular beam epitaxy and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, are examined in detail to further improve the quan- tum efficiency and output power of UV light-emitting devices. A study of the optical properties of AlGaN layers and laser diode heterostructures are presented, which elucidate the nature and characteristics of spontaneous and stimulated emis- sions in AlGaN laser structures. In addition, the fabrication and radiation of GaN hexagonal microcavities are discussed. A variety of topics reflects the wide range of interests of the Workshop. The Editors would like to thank all the members of the International Advisory and Program Committees for their encouragement and great help during the Workshop organization. We are grateful to the referees for their efforts and time devoted to the paper review process. We owe our best thanks to the official partners and sponsors of the workshop, as well as all participants at the symposium exhibition. Finally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Stefan Hildebrandt and the production team of physica status solidi for their friendly assistance and collaboration in the editorial process. The next 5th International Workshop on Ultraviolet Materials and Devices (IWUMD5) is planned to be held in November 2020 in Jeju, Korea. We wish the organizers a gorgeous and successful meeting.

Ambush Marketing – Need for Legal Protection for Official Sponsors of Major Sports Events

Ambush Marketing – Need for Legal Protection for Official Sponsors of Major Sports Events

Smokeless tobacco Olympics: the US Tobacco Company, the IOC and the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Winter Games

Throughout much of the 20th century, cigarette manufacturers have sponsored sporting events and used sports figures in advertising and marketing their products. The United States Tobacco Company (UST) became a...

CrossFit Athletic Identity’s Relationship to Sponsor Recall, Recognition, and Purchase Intent

Background: The CrossFit Open is a physical activity competition that allows athletes from across the world to compete in fitness challenges online, whereby participants document their progress via an event website. No apparent studies have examined participant event sponsorship in a case where sponsor messages are delivered primarily via an event website. Furthermore, current research has yet to consider the differential impact of audience athletic identity on sponsor messaging in such a context. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between CrossFit Athletic Identity (CAI) and the ability to recall and recognize official sponsors of a participant event conducted on an online platform. Methodology: A cross-sectional research design was used with a convenience sample (n=170) of CrossFit Open participants from 36 affiliates in the South Central United States. A concurrent treatment validation with a subset of four participants utilized laboratory eye-tracking to evaluate the attention and viewing patterns within the CrossFit online platform. Results: CAI was not a significant predictor for sponsor recognition or recall (α = 0.05). Only one of the case study participants had a recorded brand image fixation (0.29 seconds) during the eye-tracking assessments of their typical website interaction. Conclusion: While CAI was not associated with improved sponsor recognition and recall, the assessment of the participant website interactions suggest that participants in this study were not likely exposed to sufficient sponsor images. This highlights the need for critical evaluation of event website designs using eye-tracking or some other metric of visual exposure.

The impact of name and shame disclosure strategies on sponsor and ambusher brand attitude

Official sport event sponsors are increasingly confronted with companies that try to create an association with the event without paying sponsorship fees (“ambush marketers”). This study explores if, why, and when official event sponsors can gain from disclosing ambush marketing activities with negative communication frames (“name & shame” disclosure). Three experiments show that with name & shame disclosure, ambush marketers perform worse than brands with no link with the event. In addition, event sponsors benefit from name & shame disclosure. Results indicate, however, that name & shame disclosure is effective only if disclosure information is highly accessible in consumers' mind. Implications of these findings for sponsorship research, event organizers, event sponsors, and ambush marketers are discussed.