ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on examining ambush marketing through the lens of sports sponsorship. One of the hot topics that guarantees to get debate going amongst sponsorship practitioners is the subject of so-called ambush marketing. The phenomenon tends to afflict some of the biggest sports events on the planet, including the FIFA World Cup, F1 and the Olympic Games. Other property types attract nothing like the problems encountered by sports rights holders and sponsors with respect to ambush marketing activities. Ambush marketing is a perfectly acceptable form of marketing activity for a non-sponsor to be engaged in, provided it breaks no ethical codes of conduct that may be in place to regulate sales, marketing and communication activities in its territory and provides such activities that do not infringe the intellectual property (IP) rights of others or break the law in the territory. It seeks commercial benefit from associating itself with the property without paying sponsorship fees.
