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An Inside View of Tobacco Sports Sponsorship: An Historical Perspective

Anne M. Lavack (Associate Professor, Faculty of Administration, University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4S 0A2)

International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship

ISSN: 1464-6668

Article publication date: 1 June 2003

285

Abstract

Faced with ever-increasing advertising restrictions, sponsorship of sports has been an important promotional avenue for tobacco companies in North America and around the world. This paper examines the corporate sponsorship objectives and strategies of tobacco companies, based primarily on historical documents from the British-American Tobacco Co., which has operations in over 80 countries. The documents are part of the Guildford Depository located in Guildford, England. It contains over six million pages of corporate documents for the British-American Tobacco Company (BAT) from a 40-year span (early 1950s to mid 1990s). Tobacco company sponsorship practices include developing sponsorship evaluation guidelines, extensive prepromotion and post-promotion of sponsored events, making full use of the event site for sponsorship identification, ensuring that sponsored events are televised, and using an extensive array of public relations practices to ensure news coverage of a sponsored event. Other sponsors could benefit from emulating the sponsorship practices of tobacco companies.

Keywords

Citation

Lavack, A.M. (2003), "An Inside View of Tobacco Sports Sponsorship: An Historical Perspective", International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 14-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSMS-05-02-2003-B003

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2003 by Winthrop Publications Limited

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