Sport Sponsorship Insights

Sponsorship is a vital area of contemporary sport business. This book offers a concise and practice-focused introduction to sport sponsorship, including an explanation of key concepts, a survey of the key tools required to be a successful practitioner, and insights into real-world practice from authors with extensive industry and academic experience.

Covering sport at all levels, from professional to grassroots, and including international cases and examples throughout, the book demonstrates that sport sponsorship works if done correctly. Drawing on the latest cutting-edge research, it introduces the core principles of sport sponsorship and shows how to get maximum value at each stage of the sponsorship process, from plan to activation, servicing and evaluation, for sponsor, property or agency.

Requiring no prior knowledge of sport sponsorship, and full of real-world examples of best practice, this is the perfect primer for any student or industry professional looking to improve and deepen their understanding of this core element of modern sport business.

Norm O'Reilly is Dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Maine. Recognized as a leading scholar in the business of sports, he is widely published and is highly engaged in the sponsorship industry globally as Partner Consultant with the T1 Agency. He is the lead researcher on the Canadian Sponsorship Landscape Study, now in its fifteenth edition. Dr. O'Reilly is a Fellow of the North American Society for Sport Management and was awarded the Career Achievement Award by the American Marketing Association's Sport Marketing Special Interest Group.

Gashaw Abeza is Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Towson University, USA and currently provides consultancy services to a range of sport organizations around the world. He also serves on the editorial boards of eight different academic journals: International Journal of Sport Communication; Sport, Business, and Management; Journal of Relationship Marketing; International Journal of eSports Research; Journal of Global Sport Management, Sport Marketing Quarterly; International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship; and the newly launched Sport Management Digest.

Mark Harrison is Founder of the T1 Agency in Toronto, Canada, and a leading figure in the sponsorship and marketing industries. He also created the global sponsorship conference, SponsorshipX. Mark also inspired and launched several new initiatives in 2020, collectively referred to as The MH3 Group, a group of ventures spanning from advertising and sponsorship marketing to integrated communications and education.