Artikel

Enkele theoretische beschouwingen over sponsoring van sport in onze samenleving

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Abstract

Some theoretical considerations on sponsoring in our society - Although sponsoring is a rather new phenomenon, its importance is gradually becoming substantial. In this article, we try to give an overview of the most important motivations of sponsoring. But, first of all, one needs to ask oneself what interest a firm has in sponsoring. The main reason is that the traditional publicity structures cannot always provide an industry with the best advertising possibilities, especially when different members of a family have to be reached. Moreover, the effectiveness of traditional publicity is far from proven. Sponsoring is an interesting factor to be added to a larger campaign. This is very valuable to the „awareness”, as it reaches a large audience for a limited investment. On the other hand it can provide publicity for companies that produce goods such as tobacco or contraceptives, which fall under advertisement-restriction laws. Sponsoring can also be used to get frequent television-appearances in countries where TV-commercials are not allowed. Another important asset of this phenomenon is its genuine value for image-building, which is a useful factor in economic sectors where the output only differs slightly (e.g. tobacco industry, banking business). In the commercial field sponsoring can be interesting in many ways, especially because it reduces the cost in the phase of “awareness” and because it is rather easy to build a whole campaign around it. Sponsoring is also used for political and economic purposes. In Western Germany, the “Stiftung Deutsche Sporthilfe” tries to awaken national pride, in order to give their athletes the best opportunities of training and competing so that they can counter-balance the successes of GDR-athletes. In the Ivory Coast the government expects that the “Bandama Rally” will give the poorest regions a spectacular taste of Western civilisation and that it will socialize them for infrastructure-plans. In the U.S.A, sponsoring is largely used to get tax benefits, which is almost the sole motivation in that country. In recent years, ever more firms, political parties, pressure groups, etc. have sought to reach larger audiences through sponsoring. Therefore we believe that most authors see this phenemenon in a too restricted way. In fact sponsoring is the financial aid of some sports event, in order to receive the best guarantees of getting the desired publicity-result, whatever this may be.

How to Cite:

Henderickx, E. & Vanden Eynde, R., (1979) “Enkele theoretische beschouwingen over sponsoring van sport in onze samenleving”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 24(4), 315–334. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.96125