Investigation of Attitudes of Managers in Private Companies towards Sport Sponsorship as an Advertising Tool

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of managers in private companies towards sport sponsorship as an advertising tool. The method of this study was descriptive and survey and it was practical. The statistical population of research included all chief managers (executive officers, financial officers or sales officers) of private large productive companies in Esfahan that were not sport sponsors for one year. Statistical sample equaled statistical population. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data; the content validity was approved by sport management experts and professors and reliability was determined by Cronbach’s alpha as 0.90. For inferential analysis of data, t test was used. The results showed that chief managers of those private companies that were not sport sponsors believed that master sport sponsorship was not a suitable marketing or advertising tool. Mean score of managers’ attitude was 1.66 which showed the weakness of sponsorship as a suitable advertising tool (P<0.05). It can be concluded that to attract private companies and industries to invest in sport championship, it is necessary to allocate optimal space for name and brand of sport sponsors in sport fields and events and to promote media coverage of sport events which introduces sport sponsorship as a suitable advertising tool.