Soccer Sponsor: Fan or Businessman?: Iuliia Naidenova, Petr Parshakov, Alexey Chmykhov
Soccer Sponsor: Fan or Businessman?: Iuliia Naidenova, Petr Parshakov, Alexey Chmykhov
Alexey Chmykhov
Introduction
Soccer or football in Europe is one of the most popular sports. It attracts a lot of
people all over the world. Top teams attract thousands of people to stadia, millions more watch
broadcasts. Soccer is a huge and rapidly developing business involving considerable amounts
of money.
Every soccer club needs money to develop, to buy new players and to hire experienced
coaches. Professional soccer clubs, playing in national premier leagues and in international
competitions, generate considerable revenues from broadcasting deals, ticket sales and
merchandise, but almost all of them require sponsorship support. That is why most clubs seek
to sign contracts with different investors, generally companies, to attract these funds. A large
part of such contracts are sponsorship deals with local or international companies. Sponsorship
deals are based, at first glance, on the prospectively mutually beneficial partnership between
companies and soccer clubs. Such partnerships are usually based on buying a place for the
company logo or advertising message on the clubs kit or stadium banners in order to show it to
thousands of fans who come and watch their favorite teams matches. Companies also use star
players to endorse products and increase brand awareness.
Each soccer club generally has several sponsors: kit sponsor, a shirt sponsor and lowerlevel sponsors. Sponsorship has become a form of exchange between the sponsor and the club
it invests in, with both parties seeking to achieve their own strategic goals (Farelly & Quester,
2005). It looks simple: A company pays for an advertising opportunity. However, it is not as
simple as it seems.
Sponsorship is a mutually beneficial cooperation where each company has its own
commercial objectives (Jensen & Cobbs, 2014). Whether investments in soccer club help to
improve company performance is an important question for company management. However
studies have had mixed results finding positive and negative influences of sport sponsorship on
company performance.
However prior research on sponsorship efficiency did not take into account the mutual
influence of the willingness to become a sponsor and company performance. Sponsorship as a
marketing technique can result in an increase in sponsor performance. If company is efficient
and makes large profits it is more likely to become a sponsor. Thus methodological problems in
regression analysis associated with endogeneity arise. This can lead to a bias in regression
coefficients and inaccurate conclusions. The present paper addresses these issues.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides the theoretical
background on sport sponsorship and its influence on company performance. Section 3
describes sample selection, variables, research model, and analysis method. Section 4 presents
the results which are discussed in Section 5.
Literature review
The topic of sport sponsorship and its effectiveness for sponsoring companies has been
actively discussed since the 1990s. Generally sponsorship is an investment, in cash or in kind,
in a sport property in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with
that property (Smith et al., 2008, p. 387). In other words sponsors pay sport clubs or sport
events in order to promote their products and services, and to get a return on their investment.
Verity states that sponsorship may be more effective than different traditional advertising
campaigns or other promotional activities (Verity, 2002). There are a number of objectives and
benefits that corporations pursue when sponsoring sport: overcoming cultural barriers,
establishing relationships with media corporations, becoming involved with the community,
increasing brand awareness and facilitating positive brand image, reaching new target markets,
boosting sales and market share through brand loyalty, protecting against competitors,
obtaining hospitality opportunities, and even improving employee morale or facilitating staff
recruitment (Biscaia et al., 2013; Cornwell et al., 2005). However the major aim of sponsorship
is usually an increase in company awareness and brand loyalty to improve company
performance and to attract new shareholders.
Cornwell and Maignan (1998) distinguish measurement of sponsorship effects as one of
five main research streams in this area. The main difficulty in the evaluation of sponsorship is
the differentiation of its effects from those of other advertising and promotional techniques
(Pham, 1991; Miles, 2001; Miyazaki & Morgan, 2001). Most empirical studies on measuring
sponsorship effects are based on consumer surveys (Cornwell & Maignan, 1998). However the
researchers note that questionnaires can give biased results because of small samples and/or the
self-selection of respondents (Sneath et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2008).
According to value-based management, market capitalization is one of the main
indicators of company performance. Clark, Cornwell and Pruitt (2002) show sponsorship to
have an effect on share price. The study shows that, overall, sponsorships were perceived
positively by stock market investors. The event study done by Reiser, Breuer and Wicker
(2012) provides evidence that sport sponsorship announcements positively impact stock
returns, but this impact differs among sports and regions. Hanke and Kirchler (2013) find a
statistically significant impact of the results at an individual match level of the seven most
important soccer nations at European and World Championships on the stock prices of jersey
sponsors. However research based on stock market data entails the analysis of listed
corporations, thus a self-selection bias can occur.
Cornwell and co-authors (2005) used the ScholesWilliams standardized cross-sectional
market model to test whether there is a change in stock prices connected with sponsorship
announcements. They found no significant positive impact of sponsorship announcements on
stock prices during the period of 11 days around the announcement date. On the other hand
further tests considering longer periods around announcement day revealed a positive influence
of the official announcement date. Thus, there is an impact but not in the short term before or
after the announcement but the impact itself takes place. Deitz, Evans and Hansen (2013) show
a strong shareholder wealth effect connected with the date of official sponsorship
announcement.
4
Some papers, such as Biscaia et al. (2013) and Smith et al. (2008), are focused on the
analysis of consumer purchase intention which is perceived as the most useful indicator of
sponsorship effectiveness given its impact on future sales (Crompton, 2004). Smith et al.
(2008) investigate the relationship between sport sponsorship and customer purchase
intentions. Results show that fan passion and a perception of sponsor integrity can create
purchase intentions. So purchase behavior is the link between sponsorship and company sales.
Biscaia and co-authors (2013) examined the relationships between attitudinal and behavioral
loyalty with sponsorship awareness and purchase intentions of fans of a professional soccer
team. They found that sponsorship awareness significantly influences the attitude toward
sponsors, and the attitude toward the sponsor was the strongest predictor of purchase intentions.
It is becoming more desirable to integrate the company brand directly into sport
broadcasts rather than to use traditional TV advertising during commercial breaks (Jensen &
Cobbs, 2014). According to their study, sponsorship exposure during sport events is necessary
to create brand-awareness among people watching the event and it leads to the creation of
brand equity which is one of the commercial objectives for most companies.
However the influence of sponsorship on company performance can be negative.
Investigating the link between sports sentiment and stock returns Edmans et al. (2007) found an
effect from losing knockout matches in international tournaments. Norman (2012) also notes
both positive and negative comments some fans criticize frequent reminders of a sponsor
during broadcasts. Before deciding on sponsorship, a company should take into account that
becoming a sponsor means a certain transformation of marketing strategy and possible changes
in key aspects of marketing expenditures (Cornwell et al. 2005). The costs of changing
marketing strategy can have a significant negative influence on company performance.
Moreover, financial performance can be a determinant of major investment decisions,
particularly the decision to become a sponsor. Cobb-Walgren et al. (1995) show that companies
which spend larger amounts of money on marketing achieve better brand recognition, brand
equity and consequently have bigger returns on their investment which in turn, allows bigger
marketing expenditure to be made. This logic may be applied to sponsorship as a part of
marketing strategy (Cornwell et al., 2001). The bigger the budget is, the more money can be
spent on sponsorship. Not every company is large enough or performs well enough to invest
large amounts of money in non-traditional promotional strategies. Therefore sponsorship
decisions depend on financial constraints (Gomes, 2001). Becoming a sponsor is an investment
decision made by the company and there is a two-way relationship between company
performance and its decision to sponsor a soccer club. Also the studies of Love and Zicchino
(2006) and Eklund (2010) on the relationship between investments and company performance
show that earnings are significant determinants of investments.
Revenues. The main purpose of marketing techniques is to increase current and potential
customer purchase intention, to attract new customers and to improve customer loyalty.
This should result in increased company revenues. As sponsorship does not influence
company costs directly, revenue is a better measure of sponsorship efficiency than profits.
There is a lag between changes in investments and their reflection in the expectations of
stock market investors. Sponsorship is a long-term investment. It takes some time to organize
joint promotions of a club and its sponsor, and the placement of logos and banners. Also a
period of time is necessary to establish an association between company and club and its effect
on soccer fans. We use a lagged value of financial control variables in order to decrease
possible endogeneity connected with the influence of dependent variables on indicators of
financial performance. As control variables we use main value drivers: profitability, capital
structure and size. Accordingly it is possible to represent the performance of firm i at time t as a
function the following function:
Table 1 shows the characteristics and number of sponsoring companies. Soccer clubs
that play in the English Premier League are sponsored by large and growing companies.
Professional soccer clubs in France are generally sponsored by companies with a high sales-toassets ratio. Companies that have sponsorship contracts with Spanish La Liga and Scottish
Premier League have high market capitalization relative to asset value.
Sales /
Assets
Ligue 1
Seria A
La Liga
Barclays
Eredivisie
Scottish
MV / Assets
1.88
1.02
1.03
1.30
0.46
1.21
0.83
0.29
1.36
0.93
0.41
1.36
ROIC, %
11.73
5.01
11.06
8.32
10.09
16.57
D/E, %
104.96
183.64
55.82
428.31
44.85
133.91
Log(Assets,
mln. euro)
2.88
2.97
2.52
3.44
4.99
2.15
Sales
growth, %
8.55
20.01
20.54
93.23
56.22
10.00
Number of
companies
12
17
13
16
2
5
We suppose that sponsorship leads to higher sales relative to asset value. However a
two-group mean comparison test shows that we cannot fully reject the hypothesis that sales are
higher when a company is not a sponsor (Table 2).
Table 2. Comparison of company sales-to-assets ratio before and after becoming a
sponsor
Group
Obs
0 (not sponsor)
408
1 (sponsor)
243
combined
651
diff
diff = mean(0) - mean(1)
Ho: diff = 0
Ha: diff < 0
Pr(T < t) = 0.8701
Mean
1.37
1.22
1.31
0.15
Std.Err.
0.09
0.08
0.06
0.13
Std.Dev.
1.85
1.27
1.66
Methodology
However, a two-group mean comparison test does not provide us with all the required
information. The main disadvantage of this method is that we cannot control company
performance indicators (e.g. revenue or capitalization) for other sources of variance. For that
reason we use a regression analysis.
Applying a regression analysis, we should keep in mind the exogeneity restriction
which is one of the major assumptions of the OLS regression technique. There are two sources
of endogeneity in our sample. The first is the omitted variable bias: although we are trying to
control all significant variables of revenue or capitalization variance, we could easily miss an
important variable. The second problem is reverse causality: companies with higher
performance are more likely to be sponsors than companies with lower performance. These
problems can lead to a bias in the results.
To deal with the first problem, we use a fixed effect estimator. This is possible because
of the panel structure of our data. Using such an estimator, we allow an unobserved variable
which could influence financial performance to be included in our model. In other words, we
allow our sample to have cross-company heterogeneity. We assume these unobserved
characteristics to be constant in time. Using within estimator, we get rid of the endogenous
variable and the first bias. The following equation represents our first model:
Mean
79.40
0.70
Std. Dev.
551.49
1.75
Min
0
0
Max
10760
9.28
Table 4 shows the number of tweets for teams from different championships in each
year. For all championships the results have increased by the end of period. It is interesting that
the Scottish and Eredivisie (The Netherlands) championships joint popularity is higher than for
Barclays league, for instance. Though this seems to be strange, we should keep in mind that we
8
are talking about joint popularity of teams and sponsors, not about popularity of teams or
championships.
Table 4. The average number of tweets for teams from different championships in each year
Year
Barclays
La Liga
Ligue 1 Scottish Seria A Eredivisie
Total
2006
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2007
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2008
0.69
0.46
0
9.60
0.12
14.00
1.43
2009
9.56
1.08
0.08
27.80
0.82
23.50
6.79
2010
157.38
57.38
13.75
402.40
11.76
233.50
121.88
2011
378.75
54.54
45.42
845.20
30.41
784.50
244.75
2012
886.25
202.23
72.67 2190.40
105.88
2658.50
577.93
We use 2-stage LS method. In this case, the model is not super-identified, so using the
method of moments is equivalent to using the two-step OLS. At the first stage we regress our
endogenous variable on the IV. At the second we use estimates from the first stage instead of
using the endogenous variable itself. Our specification is as follows:
perf it 1 2 sponsor _ dummy _ hat it 1 3 CVit 1 f i it
sponsor _ dummy _ hat it ( 1 2 log( twitter it ) it
where sponsor _ dummy _ hatit present fitted values from the first stage of 2sls, all other
variables are as defined above. The second equation contains a probit model for instrumenting
the endogenous variable. The endogenous variable is a dummy variable so we use probit model
instead of linear regression at the first stage.
Empirical results
Table 6 shows the result of our investigations on the impact of sponsorship on company
performance. The first and the third columns represent estimations of the basic model for two
dependent variables, sales-to-assets ratio and market capitalization-to-assets ratio respectively.
In both cases sponsorship influence on performance is significant. However, two measures of
company performance react to sponsorship deals in different ways: sponsorship positively
correlates with sales volume and negatively with market capitalization. This means that
sponsorship correlates with higher sales but lower market capitalization.
Then we estimated a probit model for instrumenting the endogenous variable. In Table 5
the results of the estimation evidence that the IV is highly correlated with the sponsorship
endogenous explanatory variable. Thus it can be a good predictor of the endogenous variable.
0.301***
(0.028)
-0.654***
(0.049)
0.1202
0.0000
899
9
When possible endogeneity connected with reverse causality in variables is taken into
account and an IV is used, the effect of sponsorship on sales becomes insignificantly different
from zero (second and forth columns in Table 6). At the same time in the market capitalization
regression, the coefficient of sponsorship is still significant and negative.
First of all the difference in estimates between the basic models and the IV models show
that some endogeneity is inherent in basic models, especially in the model of sales volume.
This means that companies with higher sales are more likely to sponsor a soccer club. The high
correlation between sponsorship and sales can be connected with the fact that companies aimed
at revenue growth use various vehicles in order to increase sales. Such companies have
prospects for high sales growth not only because of the sponsorship deal but also because of
aggressive advertising or the launch of a new product. However, the regression analysis results
for sales are poor. A possible explanation is that sales variance is mostly explained by
unobserved company characteristics. We mostly control for them by using a fixed-effect
estimator, but the coefficients are unidentifiable.
Secondly, sales and market capitalization react in different ways to sponsorship even
after endogeneity is taken into account. This difference in estimates is possibly connected with
the horizon of performance measure. Sales volume reflects short-term effectiveness of
investments in customer attraction and loyalty. Market capitalization is a long-term
performance indicator that reflects the averaged expectations of stock market investors.
Theoretically, market capitalization converges to the averaged sum of expected free cash flows
a company will receive in the future discounted by the appropriate discounting rate. Thus
market capitalization takes into account future cash inflows and outflows connected with a
sponsorship contract.
The results show that sponsorship deals do not lead to a significant increase in sales.
Sponsorship, therefore, is not effective as a marketing technique and sponsorship results in an
increase of cash outflows and insignificant growth in inflows. This logic is in accordance with
the results of the market capitalization model: sponsorship decreases company market
capitalization. Thus sponsorship is not an effective investment from the shareholders point of
view. We also see that sales are almost constant and the influence of all chosen factors except
sponsorship is insignificant. The coefficients for the other variables generally conform to
intuition.
Table 6. The impact of sponsorship on company performance
Lag of sponsor_dummy
sales/FE
0,031**
(0,014)
Lag of
Sponsor_dummy_hat
crisis
-0,028
(0,027)
sales/FE+IV
-0,046
(0,056)
-0,032
(0,028)
MCap/FE MCap/FE+IV
-0,291**
(0,133)
-0,839**
(0,396)
-0,447***
-0,516***
(0,109)
(0,118)
10
-0,004
-1,192***
-1,138***
(0,059)
(0,342)
(0,373)
0,000
-0,000
-0,000
Lag of D/E ratio
(0,000)
(0,000)
(0,000)
0,003
0,027***
0,025**
Lag of Return on Capital
(0,003)
(0,009)
(0,010)
0,813***
6,406***
6,423***
Constant
(0,207)
(1,361)
(1,387)
2
R within
0,023
0,268
0,274
2
R between
0,690
0,055
0,054
2
R overall
0,339
0,018
0,016
N
226
211
211
F stat
0,69
13,62
17,11
Prob > F
0,6359
0,0000
0, 0000
Note: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
The first and the third columns represent estimations of basic model for two dependent
variables: Sales-to-assets ratio and Market capitalization-to-assets ratio respectively. The
results for the IV are in the second and the forth columns.
Lag of log(assets)
-0,050
(0,055)
0,000
(0,000)
0,003
(0,002)
0,968***
(0,204)
0,028
0,067
0,408
226
1,56
0.2062
Conclusion
Sponsorship is a marketing technique; it is done with the expectation of a commercial
return. However our results show that in soccer and perhaps in some other spheres sponsorship
is more charity than real commercial investment. Moreover stock market investors understand
the inefficiency of sponsorship and react negatively to sponsorship deals. However such
contracts are still in use as shareholders do not prohibit sponsoring sports. It is interesting
question why stock market investors are willing to invest in sports without any monetary
benefits.
These results can be interpreted as a managerial overestimation of sponsorship as a
marketing technique. Despite soccer being a very popular game, ordinary promotion of a
company through association with a soccer club does not bring enough benefits to cover funds
invested in it.
Another possible explanation for shareholder and manager willingness to invest in
soccer clubs is that they are interested in soccer and their implied utility level increases when
they invest in a soccer club. This situation is possible if there are a small number of owners
and/or the sponsoring companys managers are both managers and owners. Consequently, in
further analysis ownership structure and the ownership share of senior managerment should be
taken into account.
The results of this paper contradict previous papers. Questionnaire surveys found that
sponsorship can stimulate consumer purchase intention. However if the increase in purchase
intention is not realized, the company does not profit.
Previous papers that analyzed the effect of sponsorship on share price revealed both
positive and negative relationships. These mixed results can be explained in two ways. Firstly,
if endogeneity is present in the model, then parameter s estimates can be biased significantly.
11
Secondly, sponsorship in different sports requires different amounts of funds invested and
brings a different impact. Soccer sponsorship leads to worse company performance. Perhaps
the sponsorship mechanisms in soccer should be revised, and the sponsoring company should
consider other ways of promotion in association with a soccer club.
Soccer sponsors are rather irrational when they decide to become a sponsor. An
implication of this is that senior management should be careful concerning such decisions.
Shareholders should, at least, be aware of sponsorship deals, and carefully analyze the financial
assumptions of the cash flow forecasts of such projects.
Finally, a number of important limitations need to be considered. First, we analyze only
some sponsors. For that reason we cannot conclude that all sponsorship is irrational.
Nevertheless, our sample consists of sponsors of top league soccer clubs, so we suppose our
sample to be representational. Further research might explore sponsorship deals in countries
where soccer is less popular.
Second, we may have missed a variable which affects financial performance although
we control for commonly accepted variables and include fixed effects.
Third, we expect sponsorship to affect performance in the next period after the deal, but
there could be longer delay. This is a crucial assumption in our study. Nevertheless, we think
this limitation applies only to sales performance indicators (model 1 and 2), because market
capitalization reacts immediately to any important information. The fact that capitalization
reflects all valuable information can also be argued, but we assume a semi-strong market form
of efficiency in our study.
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Iuliia N. Naidenova
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Laboratory of Investment Analysis and Department of Financial Management
e-mail: [email protected], Tel. +79226478770