Predicting the Attentional Effect of Sport Sponsorship Information as an Innovative Evaluation Approach

Abstract

Most major sports events can no longer exist without the investments of sponsors. However, financially strong companies are increasingly adopting a critical attitude towards sponsorship since their strategic investments in a sports event cannot be evaluated sufficiently. Against this backdrop, the current approaches to the evaluation of sponsorship are discussed critically in this chapter before a more innovative approach is suggested. The new evaluation approach directs sports viewers' attention to sponsorship information, the central valuation object. At the core, it involves measuring the visual and cognitive attention in standardized experiments and using the identified patterns to predict sponsorship effectiveness. In this regard, the theoretical and methodological fundamentals of the new approach are introduced in the main part of the chapter before their applicability is illustrated based on three typical phases in sponsorship management. To close this chapter, the authors suggest topics for future research.