North American marketers are sinking 12 percent of their budgets into sponsorship, up from nine percent just one year ago, according to a new survey of 200 companies commissioned by Chicago-based IEG, Inc. and executed by Newport, RI-based Performance Research.
More than half of the companies surveyed said they would decrease spending on sponsorships in a down economy, while 41 percent said they would spend the same or five percent said they would spend more.
The wide-ranging survey also found that golf and motorsports are considered to be the most cooperative sports properties to deal with. It also found that sponsorship decisions are increasingly being made without regard to the personal tastes of corporate executives, unlike the trend in the early 1990s. Motorsports, for example, absorb more sponsorship dollars than any sport, but ranked 8th among decision-makers’ favorite sports.
Total sponsorship spending hit $8.7 billion in 2000, up 14.5 percent from $7.63 billion in 1999, per IEG. The figure is expected to jump to $9.55 million in 2001. Sports sponsorship spending jumped to $5.92 billion in 2000, up from $5.1 billion in ’99.
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