ABSTRACT
The previous chapter has demonstrated the escalating financial reliance of sport generally and major sports events in particular on revenues from broadcasting. With the demand for watching sport and broadcasting of sporting events at an all-time high, innumerable opportunities exist for companies to ‘buy into’ the broadcast of sport-related programming in order to be able to showcase themselves to a mass audience during and around that programme. This type of association can be termed broadcast and media sponsorship of sport (Schwartz and Hunter 2008) and the cost of purchasing such exposure can be very expensive depending on the profile of the sports concerned. By way of example, in the UK exotic juice drink brand Rubicon have reportedly spent up to £5 million in 2010 to sponsor a Summer of Cricket on Sky Sports, opening with the channel’s broadcast coverage of the ICC Twenty 20 World Cup in the West Indies (Talking Retail 2010).
