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1. Introduction
The effectiveness of sports sponsorship is very important for sponsors. Sponsors are looking for valuable benefits by sponsoring sports teams. However, there is confusion regarding the effectiveness of sports sponsorship. For example: Do the fans of Manchester United and AC Milan react positively to the sponsors of Manchester City and Inter Milan? On the other hand, several years ago, “Iran Furniture Market” and “Hamrahe Aval” companies, respectively, sponsored the two most popular teams of Esteghlal and Persepolis in Iran. But these sponsorships stopped after a few years. The managers of these two companies implicitly expressed their dissatisfaction with this type of sponsorship. These are examples of sports sponsorship challenges. It seems to be necessary to determine an optimal strategy to maximize the benefits of sports sponsorship for sponsoring companies. In addition, forecasts indicate a significant increase in sports sponsorships globally, with estimates suggesting that it will increase to $90 bn by 2027 (Batt et al., 2021). In other words, the market will be saturated with competitors. In the current study, we explored this type of phenomenon in depth, by examining interaction effect of sponsor-team congruence and team fan (home/rival team) on the different types of sports sponsorship (joint, corporate social responsibility [CSR]-linked and conventional sponsorship) on fans' responses.
Conventional sponsorship of athletes, teams and events has demonstrated its capacity to enhance fan attitudes and purchase intentions (Koronios et al., 2016; Kwon et al., 2016; Tsordia et al., 2018). In an effort to intertwine sports sponsorship with CSR initiatives, certain sponsors have adopted CSR-linked sponsorship practices (Flöter et al., 2016). This approach has yielded favorable outcomes, such as heightened brand credibility, positive attitudes toward the sponsor (Flöter et al., 2016; Uhrich et al., 2014), improved attitudes resulting from an understanding of the humanitarian motives behind such endeavors (Habitzreuter and Koenigstorfer, 2021) and intentions to repurchase (Kim et al., 2020).
Simultaneous and joint sponsorship of two rival teams by companies represents an intriguing communication strategy aimed at engaging broader fan bases (hereinafter referred to as joint sponsorship). Joint sponsorship is a term used in the context of sponsorship and funding of events, programmers or activities. It refers to a situation where two or more organizations or entities...