ABSTRACT
The central objectives of this chapter are to explore the factors that make sport a unique entertainment medium for marketing communications and to place the factors into a theoretical context. Sport is an important type of entertainment with some special characteristics that imply a need for a sophisticated understanding of how it operates psychologically. Sporting events are characterized by an inherent intensity that is central to its entertainment function, and the source of this intensity is the competition for a limited resource-winning. Sport fans seek to affiliate with teams and players characterized by associations that they view as desirable, such as winning. After addressing these issues, the chapter then turns to the unique psychological consequences derived through sport properties, such as compliance, identification, and internalization. Through this description of the sport product and sport fans, we focus on the reasons a company seeks to align with sport properties. Sponsorship, hospitality, endorsement, product placement, and the Internet are presented as tactics employed by marketing practitioners in an effort to market their product through sport.
