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Relationship Management in Sports (Sponsorship)

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Managing Sports Teams

Part of the book series: Management for Professionals ((MANAGPROF))

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Abstract

Professional team sports organisations have a variety of relationships with a wide range of stakeholders. The management of customer and business relationships with these different stakeholders is a central management task. This requires a fundamental understanding of relationship management and its characteristics, as well as the impact factors and determinants. Customer relationships differ from business relationships between two organisations in some of the key features presented in this chapter, which then goes into more detail on the management of sponsorship relationships. Causes for the end of sponsorship relationships are presented and management implications for sponsors and sponsee in the case of a sponsorship termination are introduced.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The three programmes are based on three different types of bonds in accordance with Berry (1995): (1) The supplier’s granting of discounts, free goods and other financial advantages allows a financial commitment to the customer to be developed. (2) Social ties arise from business meals, special treatment, entertainment (e.g. corporate hospitality measures) and personalised information. (3) A structural commitment exists when the productivity and/or efficiency for the customer is increased as a result of joint investments by the provider and the customer.

  2. 2.

    Commitment means the strong belief of a customer that the relationship with the company is so important to them that they will make every effort to maintain the relationship (Bruhn 2016).

  3. 3.

    Integration behaviour reflects the extent to which the customer feels integrated into the service provision process. Information behaviour is expressed, for example, by the degree to which the customer searches for information about the provider’s competitors and their services.

  4. 4.

    From the customer’s point of view, the share of wallet provides information on what proportion of the purchase volume for a specific product or product category is purchased from the provider.

  5. 5.

    The contribution margin results from the sponsorship sales revenues less the related variable costs of the sports sponsorship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Stefan Walzel

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  1. Stefan Walzel
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Correspondence to Stefan Walzel .

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  1. German Sport University, Cologne, Germany

    Stefan Walzel

  2. German Sport University, Cologne, Germany

    Verena Römisch

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Walzel, S. (2021). Relationship Management in Sports (Sponsorship). In: Walzel, S., Römisch, V. (eds) Managing Sports Teams. Management for Professionals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56495-7_12

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