An Empirical Exploration of Sponsorship Sales in North American Professional Sport: Is It Time to Rethink Our Approach?

Sponsorship sales in professional sport is an area of increasing attention and growing investment, but the sport management literature offers only limited research about sales strategies and tactics. As a result, practitioners and academics alike have called for investigation in the area. In response to this need, the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore sponsorship sales in professional sport.
Sponsorship sales professionals working for sport properties in the four major North American sport leagues were surveyed on a variety of sponsorship sales-related variables and factors. A total of 92 sponsorship sales professionals responded to the study, for an estimated 15.3 percent response rate. At the time of the data collection, the 92 respondents worked in the National Football League (NFL) (37), Major League Baseball (MLB) (16), National Basketball Association (NBA) (18), and National Hockey League (NHL) (21). A series of practical, conceptual, and comparative results are presented, highlighted by turnover as a problem, the importance of activation/servicing in sponsorship sales,
and the high level of investment clubs are making in sponsorship sales.