ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the use of sponsorship in sport marketing and explains the major principles and tools of its deployment. It outlines five essential aspects of sport sponsorship: sponsorship objectives, sponsorship targeting, sponsorship leveraging, sponsorship evaluation and ambush marketing. Sport sponsorship occurs when a sporting organisation, club, league, venue, cause or athlete is supported by a separate company. The aim of leveraging is to promote the association between the two brands from every angle possible, and not just leave it up to the sport property. Leveraging also helps to combat ambush marketing. Ambush marketing attempts to undermine the brand equity of official sponsors at the same time as it aims to increase the brand equity of the ambusher. There are five major elements of an ambush prevention strategy: control of intellectual property, control of the event environment and locality, control of the event partners, design of the sponsorship programme and leverage official sponsorships.
