Sponsorship and Ambush Marketing Effectiveness: A Field-Experimental Analysis of Print and Online Advertisements

With rising sponsorship expenditures every year, marketing practice has an essential need for information of sponsorship effectiveness. Traditional sponsorship is becoming increasingly threatened by creative ambush marketers seeking to position themselves as official sponsors, however, without paying license fees. We analyze print and online campaign effectiveness in the surroundings of the FIFA women’s Soccer world Championship and the UEFA European Championship in two field-experimental studies. Applying MANOVA and regression analyses, our findings yield heterogeneous findings in terms of brand attitude, sponsorship awareness, word-of-mouth and brand equity for print and online advertisements; suggesting that sponsors not necessarily outperform ambush marketers.