bibliometric analysis of the global trends on sport marketing research

The objective of the current study is conducting bibliometric review on research undertakings in a sport marketing enabling comprehensive understanding of its trend. Accordingly 1537 articles up to 2021 were retrieved, analyzed and ultimately visualized via vos viewer software. Findings represent growth in quantity of researches, specifically since 2016 as hit highest record in 2020 with 157 articles. This research in the first step identified leading authors ,articles, journals, universities and countries in this field and then using co-citation which facilities the understanding the intellectual structure in a field, four clusters were identified including: sponsorship, branding, consumer behavior and service marketing. In addition keywords co-occurrence analysis depicted the research streams in sport marketing. Correspondingly, in addition to knowing the key role of sponsorship, social media and branding topics in a sport marketing within years, it became clear that researchers in this field shifting towards consumer centric perspective which appreciates the role of fans and sport consumers as a co-creators of value in sport