ABSTRACT
Ambush marketing has become an expected part of the marketing and sponsorship landscape that surrounds modern sport events. Its origins are often tied to the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles when Kodak ambushed the official sponsor, Fuji. The proceeding years have seen the cost of staging major sporting events skyrocket and along with this the required investment of sponsors. For instance, the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games are reported to have cost $1.6 billion USD (Anonymous, 2009) with domestic partners injecting $756 billion US, TOP (“The Olympic Partners”) sponsors contributing more than $196 million US and $447 million US coming from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for television rights (Anonymous, 2009). This level of investment creates an expectation from sponsors that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and national organizing committee (NOC) will protect their rights to exclusivity in order to ensure they receive maximum value for their money. The biggest threat to sponsorship exclusivity is ambush marketing.
