ABSTRACT
Sponsorship is a marketing communications tool that has been applied to various sectors including sport, arts, music, cause, and education. The ability of sponsorship to have great impact from the community to the global levels makes it an attractive marketing communications strategy for many firms. This chapter examines event sponsorship from the sponsor's perspective, and both the sponsors' and events' motives and objectives for partnering together. It presents key brand-related concepts important for sponsees and sponsors and details the notion of activation so critical to sponsorship. This is illustrated using a variety of sponsorship activation cases at local, national, and international levels. By sponsoring an event, sponsors are able to create relationships with various stakeholders and activate those relationships to co-create value within stakeholders systems. The chapter concludes with some reflection about the current research issues in the sponsorship literature and future research perspectives.
