Impact of local and international sponsors on athletics race participants

Abstract

Running is a popular and convenient leisure physical activity. The most popular distance is the 5 km that accumulated 8.9 million records in 2018. Investments by companies in sponsorship around the world exceeded $ 65 billion (IEG, 2018). Increasing brand awareness is one of the main goals for companies to get involved in sponsorships. Most of the research on sponsorship has not been done from the participation-based sport perspective. Some results obtained remain contradictory and the dependency between the sponsor's brand recognition rate and local and international sponsors. The purpose of the study was (i) to determine the brand recognition rates of sponsors, ii) the existence of differences between the recognition rate of real sponsors and false sponsors, and; iii) the existence of differences between the recognition rate of local sponsors and the recognition rate of international sponsors between the runners of the Scalabis Night Race. A sample of 736 runners from one of Portugal's most popular athletic races completed a questionnaire. A Chi-square Test and T-Test was carried out to evaluate the differences between the groups of runners. The average recognition rate for sponsors was 76.5%. The brands of the true sponsors in all product categories showed higher recognition rates when compared to the recognition rates of the false sponsors, these differences being statistically significant. Relevant results were found expressed by the high recognition rates of local brands (Bijou, Taberna Quinzena and WShopping), these differences being statistically significant, despite the fact that most of the runners have a national origin. The sponsorship of the athletics race mass participation-based sport is an impressive tool to raise sponsors brand awareness.