Sponsorship recall and recognition of official sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™

Abstract

With escalating interest in sports globally, sport sponsorship has emerged as a platform that provides sponsoring companies with a chance of securing a competitive advantage. Events of high magnitude such as the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, which was the world's largest football event hosted in South Africa (SA), offered opportunities for simultaneous access to audiences globally. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of aided and unaided recall of official sponsors of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World CupTM. A structured questionnaire relating to official and unofficial sponsors, with unaided and aided recall of sponsors was administered to a sample of 462 participants who watched the 2010 Soccer World Cup™ games on television, read about them in the printed media or attended the games. The high frequency of inaccurate responses through unaided recall suggests that there was confusion in respondents' minds regarding who the official sponsors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ were. This has serious implications for both marketers and sponsors as the effectiveness of sponsorship as a marketing communication tool comes into question. This may work to the advantage of ambush marketers who could effectively use the confusion in consumers to market their products and brands. This study revealed that sponsorship recall is enhanced by aided recall and prior knowledge of the sponsor.