While previous research predominantly portrayed sporting rivalry as a threat to sport sponsorship outcomes, this study aims to examine its potential benefits and the impact of gender on sponsorship outcomes in a sporting rivalry research context.
The study combines social identity theory and sponsorship research to explore (rival) sport consumers’ responses to a sponsorship leveraging strategy involving sporting rivalry in two experiments (Study 1 n = 406, Study 2 n = 327), depending on their gender and level of team identification.
The data revealed that female sports consumers with medium to strong team identification tend to respond positively to the rivalry reference of the team sponsor, while the opposite is true when the sponsor of the rival team references the rivalry in its sponsorship leveraging, and vice versa for male sport consumers. Leveraging sponsorships with a rivalry reference created ambivalent sponsorship outcomes among sports consumers, depending on gender and the level of team identification. Consequently, rivalry marketing contexts must be considered as a double-edged sword with ambivalent consequences on consumers’ behavior.
This research focused on one sponsorship case and one country, and data were gathered in a region where the rivalry between two cities does not affect only sporting spheres.
Before integrating sporting rivalry into sponsorship-leveraging measures, sponsors should carefully consider potential negative responses from some sports consumer groups.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to consider both rival sport consumer groups and to focus on the impact of gender on sports consumers’ responses to leveraging sponsorship with rivalry references. It advances the literature regarding the effects of rival sponsorship as an identity threat to the rival team’s sponsor and supporters and considers how this affects sponsorship outcomes, further providing valuable knowledge about gender dynamics in a competitive marketing or rivalry research context.
