Olympic Sponsorship in Small States; Strategies and Partnerships for Caribbean National Olympic Committees

Jeeyoon Jamie Kim (SPM) PI
2019-2020 Falk Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Seed Grant Award

The Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (“CANOC”) consists of 28 National Olympic Committees (“NOC”) in the Caribbean region. A key agenda of CANOC’s member NOCs is developing an Olympic sponsorship program to provide the needed support for their national team and sport events and to diversify the revenue stream heavily reliant on the International Olympic Committee and government subsidies. Being placed in a unique sport market of small states (cf. characterized by a small population, confined economy, small private sectors), Caribbean NOCs have struggled to bring sponsorship revenue and existing knowledge on sponsorship had limited applicability (cf. as mainly derived from advanced sport markets).

Therefore, upon request from and with a partnership with CANOC, this project aims to understand the current state (e.g., objectives, properties and its appeal/popularity, current sponsors and leveraging strategies) and desired state (e.g., the ultimate goal, opportunities, challenges) of Caribbean NOC’s sponsorship. Further, the partnerships among NOCs and current/potential sponsors will be investigated to derive strategies to effectively build sponsorship relations. Data will be collected based on surveys with the 28 NOCs and interviews with selected NOCs and sponsors. Data analyses will be conducted based on a part-to-whole process (using NVIVO); Leximancer (i.e., a text analytics visualization software) and MACTOR (i.e., Multi-Actor Analysis; for partnership assessment).