Sponsorship in sport marketing and a research about institutions which sponsored in fooball

ABSTRACT Sports marketing consists of all activities designed to meet the needs and wants of sport consumers through exchange processes. Sport marketing has developed two major elements: The marketing of sport products and services directly to consumers of sport, and marketing of other consumer and industrial products or services through the use of sport promotions. A method of marketing of other consumer and industrial products or services through association with sport is sponsorship. Sport sponsorship has become an effective marketing strategy for many corporations. Sponsorship can be defined as investing in a sports entity (athlete, league, team, or event) to support overall organizational objectives, marketing goals, and/or promotional strategies. There has been an important rise in corporate spending on sport sponsorship in many developed countries. The reasons of sponsorship's development are government policies on tobacco and alcohol, escalating cost of advertising media, new opportunities due to increased leisure activity, greater media coverage of sponsored sport events, inefficiencies in traditional media, etc. Sponsorship provides many benefits for corporations. Sponsorship can increase sales, change attitudes, heighten awareness and build and maintain relationship with consumers. Sponsorship of sport has become an integral part of promotion mix. There are four categories of sponsorship: Exclusive sponsorship, primary sponsorship, subsidiary sponsorship and official supplier. The process of sport sponsorship management consists of four basic steps, which include setting sponsorship objectives, pricing the sponsorship (financial dimension of sponsorship), sponsorship publicity and implementing and evaluating the sponsorship. This thesis contains three chapters. In chapter 1, concept of sport marketing, concept of sport sponsorship and dimensions of sponsorship are explained. Chapter 2 is about management of sport sponsorship. At the last chapter of the thesis (chapter 3), there is a research on firms/institutions, which sponsored The Turkish First and Second Football League teams.