Source: www.marketingcharts.com, October 2019
While a majority of consumers feel that sponsorship of things like sports teams or sporting events is considered advertising, this does not necessarily mean that sponsorship is seen in the same negative light as other advertising. In fact, there’s evidence to the contrary, as adults in a recent survey [download page] by The Integer Group report that they are likely to find sponsorship of events involving the community, sports and arts to be meaningful.
Sponsorship has a broad range of avenues with which to reach audiences. One-quarter (25%) of the more than 1,200 US adults (ages 18 years and older) say that community events are one type of event where sponsorships are more likely to be meaningful to them. Community events are followed closely by football (24%), other non-sports related events such as festivals (19%), health fairs (17%) and museums (17%) as areas where sponsorship is likely to be meaningful.
Earlier data confirms that sponsorship of sports events is especially high in North America. The Integer Group, for example, cites IEG sponsorship data showing that sports account for 72% share of total sponsorship spending in North America. In addition to football, other sports events such as basketball (18%), the Olympics (17%) and baseball (16%) are ones where respondents find sponsorship to be meaningful.
Common sense dictates that sponsorship effectiveness, as with any form of advertising, can also be dependent on the audience. The survey’s female respondents reported that sponsorship of community/local events (30.4%), health fairs (22.8%), food, beer and wine festivals (19.2%), music festivals (19.2%) and museums (18.9%) were likely to be meaningful to them.
For men, though football (31.2%), basketball (23.2%), video games (22.7%), baseball (20.7%) and community/local events (19.2%) were those where sponsorships were more likely to be meaningful.
When asked how much influence sponsorships have over actual purchasing decisions, almost 3 in 5 respondents say that they find them either slightly influential (38%) or highly influential (20%). Although the remaining 42% share of respondents say that sponsorship is not influential, the share of people not influenced by sponsorship has decreased since 2011. At that time, about half (49%) of respondents were not influenced by sponsorship when it came to making a purchase and only 9% found sponsorship to be highly influential.
Download the full report on promotions and sponsorships here.
About the Data: April 2019 report results are based on a survey of 1,207 US adults.
