In Search of a New Defender: The Threat of Ambush Marketing in the Global Sport Arena

I: Introduction the landscape of current sports, has become one of the key revenue sources for meeting costs and making profits. The concept of sponsorship developed to match corporations with sporting events, initially fostered a strong, mutually-beneficial relationship. Corporations sought to use sport as a method of communicating to potential clients about their products or services through signage and/or product exclusivity in the arena. Sports organizations, on the other hand, sought to use their desirability with these firms to create necessary funds for the successful operation of their organization. Beginning as early as A.G. Spalding and the concept of sponsorship (Levine 1985), sport and commercial entities have been inextricably linked. the last 15 years, however, the role of has changed dramatically. The 1984 Olympic Games crystallized the interdependence of sport and entities. Peter Ueberroth, in an attempt to raise significant dollars to subsidize the Olympic Games, offered corporations the ability to affiliate themselves with the Olympic Games and the Olympic teams in an unprecedented number of ways. While extracting millions of dollars from these sponsors, Ueberroth created a corporate Olympics, with various corporations competing much as the amateur athletes were. The result of the 1984 Olympic Games was a dependence upon corporations for funding of sport, but also a dependence upon sport by corporations for global exposure. Through the efforts of first Adi Dassler, of adidas, and later Ueberroth, the Olympics became the prime location for effective through sponsorship. After 1984 and the success of the corporate Olympics, exploded. The cost of to the commercial client increased tremendously: as sport organizations sought to meet rising costs, they began to extract larger sums from prospective clients for affiliation. Sport organizations also became savvy to the tremendous impact that sport can have upon consumers, and demanded higher prices for their unique media. addition, the exponential growth of media outlets (satellite and cable sports channels, the Internet, etc) and the growth of global viewership all lead to increases in media demands and costs. This new interdependence between funding and sporting events bred a new kind of landscape, out of which the concept of marketing was born. Tactics described as ambush have altered the view of both positively and negatively, and have forced the development of new tools. Ambush has changed the face of sport and sport sponsorship. Ambush has been defined as the efforts of one company to weaken or attack a competitor's official association with a sports organization acquired through the payment of fees. Through advertising and promotional campaigns, the ambushing company tries to confuse consumers and to misrepresent the official of the (Bean 1985). However, ambush also incorporates efforts that are not aimed specifically at a competitor, but whose end result does, in fact, impact official sponsorships. In a broader sense, rather than such direct and intentional misrepresentation, ambush refers to a company's attempt to capitalize on the goodwill, reputation and popularity of a particular sport or sporting event by creating an association without the authorization or consent of the necessary parties (McKelvey 1993). Finally, ambush has also been formulated to incorporate tactics that, to date, require no consent or authorization and are wholly legal within the parameters of current advertising law, but have the effect of weakening a sport branded name or concept through the advertising message. …