Involvement and loyalty of runners in sponsorship effectiveness - The case of athletics races

Abstract

Running is a popular and convenient leisure activity. The most popular distance is the 5 km that amassed 8.9 million registrations in 2018. Investments by companies in sponsorship around the world exceeded US$ 65 billion in the same year. Increasing brand awareness is one of the main goals for companies to get involved in sponsorships. Most of the research to date into sponsorship has not been done from the perspective of participation-based sports. Some results obtained are contradictory and the relationship between the sponsor's brand recognition rate and the distance of the race (half-marathon, 10 km or 5 km) has not been evaluated, nor the relationship with running involvement or loyalty to running. This research aims to show the effects of race distance, running involvement and loyalty to running on sponsor brand recognition rates in runners of athletics races. A sample of 736 runners from one of Portugal's most popular athletics races completed a questionnaire. A Chi-square Test and T-Test were carried out to evaluate the differences between the groups of runners. The group of runners who completed the 5 km race showed better results in the sponsors' brand recognition rate. The runners with a low level of running involvement showed superior results, but no significant differences were found between groups with different levels of loyalty to running. The sponsorship of mass participation-based athletics races is an impressive tool to raise sponsors' brand awareness.