ABSTRACT

This chapter explains why sport is held in such high regard by brands, organizations, and governments alike. It is in this historical context that sports marketing and sponsorship has emerged as one of the fastest growing areas of marketing communications. The chapter explores the history, present, and future of sports marketing and explains commonly held views about why sports marketing is successful. It claims that theories overlook how sport has close and crucial ideological affinities with globalized capitalism and highlights how investment into sports marketing coincides with public denunciations of rampant inequality. It considers sport as exemplifying the forms of competitive behaviours and social outcomes that globalized capitalism seeks to inculcate, foster, and develop to sustain its existence. Sport brands have embraced competition as a way to communicate a distinct ideology that speaks to our time. Both James Harrison and William Hague identified how sport’s moral and social point is to produce clear winners and losers.