University Branding: The Contribution of Intercollegiate Athletics

Abstract

A recent ESPN campaign included a mock Duke University advertisement that conveyed the significant contribution of intercollegiate athletics to institutional brand equity at even the most prestigious academic institutions. The ad positioned Duke’s athletic feats as more relevant and important to prospective students and their parents than the school’s academic reputation; yet, with the exception of Alessandri (2007), the literature has not explicitly considered the contributions of intercollegiate athletics in building University brands. To date, authors that have studied brand equity in intercollegiate athletics have almost universally considered branding as it relates to building team brand equity (Gladden, Milne & Sutton, 1998; Ross, 2006), as opposed to the contribution of athletic brands to institutional brand equity.