Lagae: Sports Sponsorship and Marketing Communications

Lagae, W. (2005) Sports Sponsorship and Marketing Communications: A European Perspective. FT Prentice Hall, Harlow.
ISBN 0-273-68706-9

This is a translation of Wim Lagae’s 2003 book ‘Marketing Communicatie in die Sport’. It was translated by Alison Fisher (presumably not the snooker player) according to the acknowledgements. Given the effort involved and the clarity of the text, perhaps more fulsome praise or acknowledgement could have been made. The translating of texts into such readable English does not always happen, and certainly not easily. This is a relatively slim volume (248p) clearly targeted as a text book for sports marketing courses. Pearson have done their usual sound job on the format and the text is clean and user friendly (though see below).

There are seven chapters covering in order:
• Sport, marketing and communications
• Sports sponsorship
• Sports sponsorship and public relations
• Sports sponsorship and advertising
• Sports sponsorship and direct marketing
• Sports sponsorship and sales promotion
• The effectiveness of sports sponsorship communications

As the cover notes, a key feature of the book is the ‘full pedagogy including chapter overviews, teaching objectives, tables and diagrams, mini-cases, worked out examples and comprehensive follow-up cases’. Some of these are interesting and useful. It certainly is a change and a pleasure to read cases and examples that are European based and focused, as opposed to American. A much wider range of sports is also included than in many US textbooks, another strength. This is not only from a pedagogical and an interest or engagement perspective but also because many of the practices in Europe are subtly and sometimes blatantly different. Sports marketing and sponsorship in Europe has something to offer and if this book helps reduce the ‘cultural cringe’ towards the USA then it will be valuable. The focus on some sports e.g. women’s tennis and cycling does suggest a particular current Benelux interest however, a bias that is perhaps understandable.

So this volume has much to commend it. It is a welcome counterpoint to the raft of American textbooks. It is comprehensive and authoritative in its topic coverage. The author and translator have done fine jobs and the publisher has produced a volume to an exacting standard. It will, and deserves to, find its way onto reading lists for sports marketing courses both generally and specifically in units on sports sponsorship and communications. Perhaps some more far-sighted colleagues on general marketing communications courses will adopt it as a counterpoint to the ‘normal’ communications examples. After all sport is a shared experience for many and provides for rich and deep examples and engagements.

But yet, this book made me a little uneasy. This is not the fault of the author nor the translator. Rather my unease comes from the style and approach adopted in this and other recent textbooks. Publishers have derived a pedagogical template which they believe works. This basically involves ‘bite-size’ components of writing and learning. Chapters have to contain overviews, objectives, outcomes, mini-cases and in this case ‘outlines’. There is so much surrounding material that the core writing gets lost or gets reduced to short, even meaningless chunks. So in this volume, ambush marketing can be stopped or blocked by following the four bullet points in ‘outline’ 7.3. The text becomes both cluttered by a series of these reductio ad absurdum lists and also imbued with a certainty of outcome that is at odds with business and commerce reality.

And then there are the ‘mini-cases’. What are these and why are they there? Mainly they consist of c100-150 words of description of an example. They are not ‘cases’ in any true sense of the word, either broadly or pedagogically. They simply get in the way and add another bite-size chunk to the ‘learning’ experience. But what does anyone really learn from 150 words on ‘Feyenoord supporting Unicef’ or ‘Helly Hansen feeling…..alive!’ Students would be better off reading newspapers or internet newsletters and thinking through the current issues from basics themselves.

So this book interests and annoys me in equal part. I could see myself using the major cases and balancing my examples with some of these interesting and different viewpoints. But the rest of it scares me. By reducing uncertainties and ambiguities to checklists and bullet point outlines we ignore the nature of the world and business reality and we encourage ‘learning by numbers’. Are we sure this is a good road to be travelling?

Leigh Sparks
Department of Marketing
University of Stirling
leigh.sparks@stir.ac.uk