The sponsor-global event relationship: a business-to-business tourism marketing relationship?

Abstract

The Olympic Games are well established as a global event with vast marketing benefit. Two major benefits from the Olympics derive from sponsorship and tourism. In terms of sponsorship, The Olympic Partner (TOP) sponsorship programme is widely recognized as one of the most successful, profitable and effective sponsorship arrangements, if not marketing relationships in general. The purpose of this research is to explore these special TOP sponsor–International Olympic Committee relationships, as a case study, to explore the ‘sponsor–mega-event’ relationship as an example of a business-to-business (B2B) tourism marketing relationship. Indeed, a variety of perspectives on key attributes of the relationship are explored, including the nature of the relationship, key elements of the sponsorship (e.g. evaluation) and the specific location (e.g. the impact of the location of the host city/country of the Olympic Games). As exploratory research into a new area, the paper reviews relevant literature and reports on an expert interview with a TOP sponsor to support conceptual and empirical development of the concept. Results of the interview are assessed in to the context of existing literature and summarized in a proposed B2B marketing relationship.

Keywords:

• B2B marketing
• sponsorship
• destination marketing
• event marketing
• Olympic marketing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge and recognize the generous support of Kevin Tessler and Petro Kacur of the Coca-Cola Company, as well as the assistance of Richard Pound and Timo Lumme of the International Olympic Committee. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is also acknowledged.