Sponsorship communication and the sport sponsorship market in Poland

• Published in: Journal of Physical Education and Sport Vol. 20; pp. 1225 - 1229
• Main Author: Kończak, Jarosław
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Pitesti Universitatea din Pitesti 01.04.2020
• Subjects: Brand loyalty; Communication; Corporate sponsorship; Logos; Marketing; Qualitative research; Questionnaires; Social responsibility; Sports history; Stakeholders; State Aid; Volleyball; Poland
• ISSN: 2247-8051; 2247-806X
• DOI: 10.7752/jpes.2020.s2170

Just over two decades of the history of sports sponsorship in Poland show that it can be an useful tool of communication, but its full potential has not been unlocked yet. Nowadays, the market depends mostly on the state, because it attracts private capital to a lesser extent. In large companies it is usually treated as a secondary communication tool, but sponsorship's communication potential is constantly growing, even though such an event as Euro 2012 did not help in spreading the awareness of sponsorship in Poland. However, brands no longer see it as a tool for presenting logotypes and building themselves around it, but today it resembles 360-degree communication which covers a range of marketing and communication tools. There are two important ways of financing sports in Poland: state support and private sponsorship. Club teams and national federations are the ones receiving most sponsorship. Even though sponsorship activities are considered to be strategic from the companies' perspective, over one-fifth of the surveyed companies do not have a long-term sponsorship strategy, and nearly half of them map out their actions for a period of 2 to 3 years. The sponsors considered the most important goals: building brand awareness and brand recognition, increasing brand loyalty, changing or strengthening the image and positioning of the brand, and increase in sales of own products and services. Sponsors in Poland now declare that the most important for them are branding rights, used in the sponsor's communication of license to titles, logos, including the display of logotypes on the sportswear and equipment of sponsored persons and on-site exposure Marketing exclusivity in the industry and the right to use images are no less important. By activating sponsorship projects, companies usually carry out promotional activities directly at events, use hospitality packages, tickets and gadgets to build and maintain relationships with business and key individual partners