Turun kauppakorkeakoulu •  Turku School of Economics 
 
 ABSTRACT 
 
 Bachelor’s thesis 
x Master’s thesis 
 Licentiate’s thesis 
 Doctoral dissertation 
 
Subject International Business Date 26.5.2020 
Author(s) Katja Hakala Number of pages 101 + appendices 
Title 
Sponsoring women’s football − Attracting sponsors in the Finnish sponsorship 
market 
Supervisor(s) D.Sc. Niina Nummela, D.Sc. Riikka Harikkala-Laihinen 
 
Abstract 
Sponsorship can provide an effective solution to many companies seeking a unique way to reach 
their stakeholders and, therefore, the popularity of this marketing instrument continues to thrive. 
While companies’ main aim is to achieve their commercial objectives through sponsorship, the 
financial aid given to the sport entities themselves is often crucial for their operation. This 
applies also to women’s football. The sport has witnessed a significant growth in recent years, 
culminating to the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2019, which attracted a record of 1 billion 
viewers for the first time since the competition began in 1991. Women’s football has also 
become more professional in Finland, but it is evident that the sport needs to receive more 
sponsors to cooperate with. The origins of this research lay in the Finnish Football Association’s 
need to find out how also the Finnish female football could attract more sponsors and how to 
build and develop the commercial side of the sport even more.  
The study is as a qualitative research, utilizing an exploratory approach. The existing 
sponsorship literature is extensive up to date, covering both women’s and men’s sports from 
various perspectives. However, specifically women’s football in Finland has not been studied 
from the business perspective before. To fill this gap, data has been gathered by interviewing 
both global companies and domestic companies already supporting women’s football and 
studying the motivations behind their commitment. Moreover, to understand better the Finnish 
sponsorship culture, three pilot interviews were conducted. The theoretical setting of the 
research was built on value creation and relationship marketing theories.  
The research found five critical attributes that can be recommended to women’s football 
teams to build their image and marketing messages on. Ability to reflect persuasive values, 
growing interest towards the game, channel to reach a wide consumer base, cost-effectiveness 
and appealing brand players are the elements valued by sponsors. Specifically, as a novel 
contribution of this study, the element of player brands was added to the previous widely cited 
model of the four main criteria that companies use when selecting the entity to be sponsored. 
Moreover, the research found that the modern comprehensive sponsorship approach appears to 
be more effective than the old-fashioned view of sponsors requiring only pure logo presence 
and visibility. The main finding of the present thesis is that even if companies identify some 
challenges related to women’s football as a sponsorship partner, the sport can be regarded as a 
legitimate business opportunity for companies, not only in the largest leading football countries 
in Europe and the US, but also in Finland.  
 
 Key words sponsorship, value creation, relationship marketing, sports marketing, player 
brands 
 

        Turun kauppakorkeakoulu •  Turku School of Economics 
 
 
 TIIVISTELMÄ 
  
 Kandidaatintutkielma 
x Pro gradu -tutkielma 
 Lisensiaatintutkielma 
 Väitöskirja 
 
Oppiaine Kansainvälinen liiketoiminta Päivämäärä 26.5.2020 
Tekijä Katja Hakala Sivumäärä 101 + liitteet 
Otsikko 
Sponsoring women’s football − Attracting sponsors in the Finnish sponsorship 
market 
Ohjaajat D.Sc. Niina Nummela, D.Sc. Riikka Harikkala-Laihinen 
 
Tiivistelmä 
Sponsorointi tarjoaa ainutlaatuisen ja tehokkaan tavan tavoittaa sidosryhmiä, minkä ansiosta tämän 
markkinointikeinon suosio on edelleen merkittävä. Yritysten tavoitellessa kaupallisia tavoitteitaan 
sponsoroinnin avulla, rahallinen avustus urheilutoimijoille on usein erittäin kriittistä. Tämä pätee 
myös naisjalkapalloon. Laji on kasvanut merkittävästi viime vuosina, mistä yhtenä tärkeimmistä 
osoituksista oli vuonna 2019 Ranskassa järjestetyt naisten jalkapallon 
maailmanmestaruuskilpailut. Tämä tapahtuma rikkoi miljardin katsojan rajan ensimmäistä kertaa 
kisojen vuonna 1991 alkaneen historian aikana. Naisten jalkapallosta on tullut ammattimaisempaa 
myös Suomessa, mutta laji tarvitsee lisää sponsoreita tuekseen. Tämä Pro Gradu -tutkielma 
perustuu Suomen Palloliiton tarpeeseen selvittää, kuinka suomalainen naisjalkapallo voisi saada 
uusia yrityskumppaneita ja miten lajin kaupallista puolta voisi entisestään kehittää.  
Tämä tutkimus on toteutettu laadullisena tutkimuksena eksploratiivista lähestymistapaa 
käyttäen. Jo olemassa oleva sponsorointitutkimuskirjallisuus on ajankohtaista ja kattavaa, ja siinä 
on keskitytty sekä mies- että naisurheiluun useista eri näkökulmista. Suomalaista naisjalkapalloa 
ei kuitenkaan ole tutkittu kaupallisesta näkökulmasta. Aineisto tähän tutkielmaan oli kerätty 
haastattelemalla sekä kansainvälisiä että suomalaisia yrityksiä, jotka jo nykyisellään tukevat 
naisjalkapalloa. Tavoitteena oli tutkia näiden yritysten motiiveja ja näkökulmia sponsoroinnille. 
Lisäksi tutkimuksessa käytettiin kolmea pilottihaastattelua suomalaisen sponsorointikulttuurin ja 
sen nykytilanteen kartoittamiseksi. Teoreettinen viitekehys tutkielmalle perustuu 
arvonluontimalliin ja suhdemarkkinoinnin teoriaan.  
Naisten jalkapallojoukkueiden suositellaan jatkossa perustavan imagonsa ja 
markkinointiviestintänsä viiteen tutkimuksessa löydettyyn attribuuttiin. Sponsorit arvostavat 
naisten jalkapalloon assosioituja arvoja, lajin kasvavaa kiinnostusta, kanavia laajojen 
asiakasryhmien saavuttamiseen, kustannustehokkuutta sekä asiakkaisiin vetoavia pelaajabrändejä. 
Lisäksi modernin sponsorointilähestymistavan on havaittu olevan tehokkaampi verrattuna 
perinteiseen logonäkyvyyteen keskittyvään sponsorointiin. Vaikka naisten jalkapallon 
sponsorointiin liittyykin haasteita, laji voidaan nähdä varteenotettavana 
liiketoimintamahdollisuutena paitsi maailman johtavissa jalkapallomaissa, myös Suomessa.  
 
 
Avainsanat urheilusponsorointi, naisjalkapallo, arvonluontimalli, suhdemarkkinointi, 
pelaajabrändit 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SPONSORING WOMEN’S FOOTBALL 
 
               Attracting sponsors in the Finnish sponsorship market 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Master´s Thesis 
in International Business 
 
 
Author: 
Katja Hakala 
 
Supervisors: 
D.Sc. Niina Nummela 
D.Sc. Riikka Harikkala-Laihinen 
 
26.5.2020 
Helsinki 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The originality of this thesis has been checked in accordance with the University of Turku quality 
assurance system using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. 
3 
 
CONTENTS 
 
1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 6 
1.1 Background for the study ................................................................................ 6 
1.2 Women’s football in Finland ........................................................................... 8 
1.3 Research questions and structure of the thesis.................................................. 9 
2 SPORT SPONSORSHIP ...................................................................................... 11 
2.1 Defining sponsorship ..................................................................................... 11 
2.2 Creating value through sponsorship ............................................................... 13 
2.3 Sponsorship as a marketing tool .................................................................... 15 
2.4 Pros and cons of sponsorship ......................................................................... 18 
2.5 Sponsorship target selection .......................................................................... 21 
3 WOMEN’S SPORTS MARKET .......................................................................... 25 
3.1 Women’s sports marketing ............................................................................ 25 
3.2 Equality in sports context .............................................................................. 26 
3.3 Examples of sponsorship cases in women’s football ...................................... 28 
3.4 Synthesis ....................................................................................................... 30 
4 RESEARCH DESIGN ......................................................................................... 32 
4.1 Research approach ........................................................................................ 32 
4.2 Data collection .............................................................................................. 33 
4.3 Analysis ........................................................................................................ 38 
4.4 Evaluation of the study .................................................................................. 39 
5 SPONSORING WOMEN’S FOOTBALL ............................................................ 41 
5.1 Sponsorship as a marketing method ............................................................... 41 
5.2 Advantages found in sponsoring women’s football ........................................ 44 
5.2.1 Growing interest ................................................................................. 44 
5.2.2 Channel to reach target consumers ..................................................... 46 
5.2.3 Relatable values .................................................................................. 48 
4 
 
5.2.4   Player brands ..................................................................................... 51 
5.2.5 Reputationally safe sponsorship target ............................................... 54 
5.3 Sponsorship target selection .......................................................................... 55 
5.3.1 Sponsorship decision making process ................................................... 56 
5.3.2 The importance of mutually benefitting proposal  .............................. 59 
5.4 Risks and challenges related to sponsorship of women’s football ................... 61 
5.4.1 Challenges related to inequality.......................................................... 62 
5.4.2 Perceived quality of the game and facilities ....................................... 65 
5.4.3 Spectator numbers ............................................................................... 67 
6 DISCUSSION ...................................................................................................... 71 
6.1 Finnish sponsorship environment .................................................................. 71 
6.2 Attractiveness of women’s football ................................................................ 73 
6.3 Motives behind sponsorship decisions ........................................................... 76 
6.4 Factors behind successful sponsorship decisions ............................................ 77 
6.5 Overcoming present challanges ..................................................................... 79 
7 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................... 81 
7.1 Managerial implications ................................................................................ 81 
7.2 Theoretical contribution................................................................................. 83 
7.3 Limitations and future research suggestions ................................................... 84 
8 REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 86 
APPENDICES .......................................................................................................... 102 
Appendix 1 Interview questions for sponsors ..................................................... 102 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5 
 
List of Figures 
 
Figure 1 Creating value through sponsorship............................................................... 13 
Figure 2 Pros and cons of sponsorship as a marketing method ..................................... 20 
Figure 3 Sponsorship selection criteria ........................................................................ 23 
Figure 4 Liverpool Ladies’ team ................................................................................. 29 
Figure 5 FC Barcelona’s new jerseys .......................................................................... 29 
Figure 6 Creating value through women’s football sponsorship................................... 31 
Figure 7 Football passes per game in major international tournaments and leagues ..... 65 
Figure 8 Attributes making women’s football attractive for sponsors .......................... 82 
 
List of tables 
 
Table 1 Evolution of sponsorship definitions............................................................... 12 
Table 2 Pilot interviews .............................................................................................. 34 
Table 3. Interviews ..................................................................................................... 36 
Table 4 Operationalisation table .................................................................................. 37 
6 
 
1 INTRODUCTION 
This chapter sets the scene for this study. It first discusses the rationale behind sport 
sponsorship and introduces elements to illustrate its current global magnitude and the role 
it plays in football. Next, the chosen research topic, Finnish women’s football, is 
introduced and background is provided with current status. The chapter ends with the 
introduction of the research questions and the structure of this study. 
 
1.1 Background for the study 
Sport sponsorship has attracted a good number of marketing researchers during last 
decades, as for many companies and organizations, sports sponsorship has become one 
of the major channels to promote their brand. Meenaghan (1983, 9) defines sponsorship 
as a “provision of assistance either financial or in kind to an activity by a commercial 
organization for the purpose of achieving commercial objectives”. Traditional 
sponsorship entails the concept that when investing in a sports club, team or a single 
athlete, the corporate sponsor gets the right to use the sponsored entity’s intellectual 
property, such as logos, trademarks and slogans. The modern relationship marketing 
approach, in turn, highlights the mutual benefit and cooperation between the parties 
(Chadwick 2002, 65-66). In many cases, the financial aid gained from the deal is a 
prerequisite for the sponsored team to continue operating (sponsorship expert, interview 
21.10.2019). 
Even if sport sponsorship has started to gain larger interest among academic 
researchers only since the 1980s, sponsorship as a marketing method has been around 
much longer. According to Meeghan (1991), the concept was known already in the 
ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Bigger corporations started to realise the potential 
of sponsorship as from the 20th century. For instance, before Adi Dassler turned the 
company’s name into Adidas in 1948, he sponsored a well-known gold-medal winner 
Jesse Owens in the Olympic games in Germany in 1936 by offering him a pair of sprint 
shoes. These shoes gained enormous amount of interest and visibility, as the photos of 
Jesse Owens posing with the shoes spread all around the world (Aaker & Joachimsthaler 
2000).  
Sponsorship has provided a solution to many companies seeking a unique and effective 
way to reach their stakeholders and the popularity of this marketing method is not slowing 
down. Global sport sponsorship numbers have quadrupled within the past 20 years, 
amounting to $62.8 billion in total in 2017 (IEG 2017, 2) compared to 1996, when the 
investments in sponsorship were estimated to total $16.6 billion in a global scale 
(Meenaghan 1998). Sponsorship allows companies to reach their commercial objectives 
but also clubs and teams across all fields of sports recognize the importance of sponsors. 
7 
 
For instance, one of the most famous football clubs in the world, Manchester United, state 
in their annual report (2018) that media distributors and commercial sponsors massively 
increase the global opportunities for the sport. Despite having an own retail, 
merchandising, apparel and product licensing business, their primary sources of revenue 
are sponsorship deals. Manchester United’s sponsorship revenue reached £173.2 million 
in the year 2018 which indicates that the sponsoring companies truly believe to benefit 
from sponsorship investments.  
One of the companies having realised the opportunities of sponsorship is Barclays 
bank headquartered in London. The Guardian newspaper revealed in March 2019 that the 
bank has signed a multi-million sponsorship deal with the newly professional Women’s 
Super League in the UK. According to the article, this was the biggest ever seen deal in 
women’s sport in the UK. Even if sponsorship activity in general has witnessed a 
significant growth recently, in the field of women’s football – and in women’s sports 
generally – deals like this are still surprisingly rare. The financial difference between 
men’s and women’s sport sponsorship deals is significant (Shaw & Amis 2001). Not too 
many studies have calculated the actual difference but according to one estimate 
(Womeninsport 2016) women’s sports sponsorships accounted for just 0.4 per cent of all 
sports sponsorships between years 2011 and 2013.  
Good news is, however, that the professionalism of women’s football has seen a 
notable rise recently (Morgan 2019) and this has been a wake-up call to many sponsors 
around the world. Between 2013 and 2017, the increase in annual number of women’s 
sports sponsorship deals announced was 37% and the increase in average monetary size 
of deals signed was 49% (Nielsen 2018). Additionally, the leading football countries, 
such as the USA, France, the UK, are constantly investing in their female football players 
and commercializing their leagues. This sets the foundation for the present master’s 
thesis; the origins of this research lay in Finnish Football Association’s (FFA) need to 
find out how also Finnish female football could attract more sponsors and how to build 
and develop the commercial side of the sport even more. This will be done by 
interviewing both global and local Finnish companies already supporting women’s 
football and studying the motivations behind their commitment.  
Academic marketing literature has not tackled the special nuances of sponsorship of 
women’s football yet. Several studies on sponsorship of women’s sports have been 
conducted, Sparks and Westgate (2002) setting an example with their research on 
sponsors’ attitudes towards Canadian women’s ice-hockey. They found out that some 
sponsors have limited knowledge on the differences between the men’s and women’s 
game and thus, are not able to set suitable marketing strategies for both teams. In addition, 
limited media coverage and lack of paying spectators can set a restriction to sponsoring 
women’s sports. What makes women’s football in Finland especially interesting target 
for research is the fact that the sport has relatively short history in the Finnish sports 
8 
 
culture but yet, it is one of the most popular sports among girls and women in the country 
(Vehviläinen 2008). Through this study, Finnish women’s football will be given the 
scholarly attention it lacks up to date. Moreover, this thesis intends to contribute to the 
women’s sport sponsorship literature, which is underrepresented given the growing 
professionalism of women’s sport globally. 
 
1.2 Women’s football in Finland 
Sports has not always been thought as an appropriate activity for women and therefore 
women’s football was banned in many countries until the 20th century. After the second 
World War, women’s football began to take its first steps in Europe, with England, 
Sweden and Germany leading the way (Hjelm & Olofsson 2003). Finland followed other 
countries’ example in the 1970s, when the governing football association (Finnish 
football association, FFA) started to organize the women’s game more systematically 
(Vehviläinen & Itkonen 2009, 35–38). When the FFA had its 100 years’ anniversary in 
2007, the name of the highest league level was changed from “Naisten SM -sarja” to 
“Naisten Liiga” and, since then, the league has contained either ten or twelve teams. The 
current system allows the ten best female teams around Finland to play in the league.  
(Palloliitto 2020). Since February 2020 the highest league level on the women’s side has 
been called “Subway National League” which is currently described as an amateur league 
since most of the players are not paid for playing football.  
While there were only roughly 5000 girls playing football in Finland in 1990 
(Tuunainen 2007, 249), the number has grown to 33 000 today (Palloliitto 2020). Not 
only has the number of players risen, but people are slowly finding also their way to the 
stands of women’s football games; the average number of spectators in a Women’s league 
game was 168 during the season 2011, 193 in season 2016 (Uefa 2016) and rose to 283 
in 2019 (Palloliitto 2019). To compare, the average number of spectators in the 
neighbouring country, Sweden, was 895 per first league game in 2018 (SVT Sports 2019). 
Despite the relatively low spectator numbers, Subway National League has been able to 
provide a competitive environment for players to develop and make progress in their 
careers, since increasing number of talented players move abroad to become professional 
footballers. Accordingly, the league has set three values that describe women’s football 
in Finland: equality, success and courage 1. These are the attributes Subway National 
League hopes their brand to be associated with (Pihlaja interview, 24.10.2019).  
Even if female football has taken huge steps forward since its early years, there are 
some barriers affecting the interest in women’s football in Finland. According to a recent 
UEFA National Association research (2017) covering the popularity of different sports in 
 
1 These values are translated freely from Finnish: samanarvoisesti, menestyen, uskaltaen. 
9 
 
Finland, the respondents listed several reasons why they do not follow women’s football 
on a regular basis. The main reasons were that the sport is often not covered in the media 
and the quality of the game is not good enough. Also, the lack of both inspiring players 
and local female teams were mentioned among the answers. The Subway National League 
was listed as the 14th most followed football competition among the Finnish people, well 
behind all the international competitions, such as UEFA Champions league and the 
British Premier League. The popularity of Subway National League was much lower than 
that of the Finnish men’s football competition, Veikkausliiga, which ranked as the fifth 
most followed league amongst Finns. Then again, it must be noted that the study was 
conducted in 2017 and the recent good performance of the women’s national team in the 
UEFA European Women's Championship games has not been reflected in the answers 
given.  
The above results obviously raise concerns how the Finnish female football can profile 
itself to be more interesting. FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), 
the international governing body of association football, has already set clear goals to 
boost the competitiveness of women’s football on a global scale (2019). The organization 
aims to grow strongly the participation, enhance the game’s commercial value and build 
foundations to govern and regulate a more sophisticated women’s football ecosystem. 
Overall, the recent surveys agree that the investments in the sport and its visibility, 
together with the gradually changing attitudes, will establish promising foundations to the 
future of women’s football. Finland and its governing federation of football is determined 
to take part in the global progress and boost the game’s commercial value. This thesis 
aims to contribute to this ambitious project of the Finnish football federation by providing 
some recommendations for the future development work.   
 
1.3 Research questions and structure of the thesis 
Women’s football has recently attracted rapidly increasing attention in Finland, and it 
seeks to benefit from the momentum. The need for more sponsors is evident, however, 
for implementing the growth potential. It is crucial for the actors in women’s football to 
understand why an organization would start to cooperate, amongst many other alternative 
sponsorship targets, with women’s football. While aiming to give concrete solutions to 
the problem described, this thesis also intends to cover a gap in the existing academic 
sponsorship literature. Moreover, the author of the present thesis possesses a great interest 
in women’s football, and therefore, wanted to deepen her knowledge on the sport and its 
sponsorship. These overviews present an informed basis to explore sponsorship of 
women’s football more profoundly and for these reasons, the need of the present thesis 
can be well justified. To summarise the purpose of the present thesis, the main research 
question was formulated as follows: 
10 
 
How could women’s football become an attractive target for sponsors? 
 
The sub-questions are as follows: 
 
• Why do companies use sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy? 
• How do companies make sponsorship decisions? 
• What are the challenges in sponsoring women’s sports?  
 
The level of women’s football and its sponsorship differ between various countries 
and therefore, the scope of this study is limited to study how women’s football in Finland 
could attract more partners. In Finland an active decision has been made to improve the 
commerciality and attractiveness of the sport and thus, the demand for the present 
research is well justified. In addition, this study focuses on high level football, excluding 
the lower-level leagues and junior sport. The nature of sponsorship in junior level – where 
the income mainly comes from the players’ parents – differs considerably from 
professional sports and, therefore, it is not meaningful to study them in a single study.  
This thesis has the following structure: First, chapter 2 introduces the various 
definitions by which sport sponsorship has been characterized in the academic literature. 
The chapter continues to explain how sponsorship is linked to a company’s overall 
marketing strategy and what distinctions it has, compared to a traditional form of 
advertising. Next, the various selection criteria for sponsorship will be covered. In 
addition, this chapter describes the pros and cons of sponsorship as a marketing method. 
In summary, this chapter aims to study what are the characteristics of sponsorship and 
why companies are increasingly implementing it as part of their marketing strategies.  
Chapter 3 covers the characteristics of women’s sports and addresses also gender 
equality issues evolving around the topic. To introduce certain example cases to women’s 
football in Finland, a number of benchmark cases between sponsors and women’s football 
entities are also described. In chapter 4, the research design of the thesis will be 
introduced. First, the chosen research approach will be justified, and the data collection 
method explained. In this chapter, also the companies interviewed will be described and 
classified based on their sponsored entities. The interviewees are divided into two 
different classes; the ones cooperating with football federations and football leagues and 
as a second class, Finnish companies supporting football club(s). Chapter 5 presents the 
results obtained from the interviews. When moving on to chapter 6, each research 
question will be answered separately based on empirical evidence. Moreover, comparison 
to existing literature, as covered in chapters 2 and 3, is made to find out similarities and 
possible differences. In chapter 7 the managerial implications and theoretical 
contributions of the research will be addressed. The chapter will be concluded with 
suggestions for future research in the research field of sponsorship.  
11 
 
2 SPORT SPONSORSHIP  
This chapter comprises the literature review of the thesis. It begins with defining sport 
sponsorship and moves on to explaining why companies opt for this specific marketing 
tool in their strategy. To provide a comprehensive understanding of this marketing 
instrument, the pros and cons of sponsorship will be listed. Finally, the criteria that 
companies typically rely on when making sponsorship decisions will be introduced. 
These themes were chosen in order to, firstly, familiarize the reader to the concept of 
sponsorship and, secondly, to show what the existing literature says to be important 
factors for companies when investing in a sports team or a single athlete. This chapter 
provides an overall picture of the current sponsorship literature and paves the way to the 
next chapter where characteristics of women’s sports are elaborated.  
 
2.1 Defining sponsorship 
Most of the research aiming to define the nature of sport sponsorship date back to the 
1980s and early 1990s (Walliser 2003, 8). According to Walliser (2003, 6) sponsorship 
research field has attracted most attention in Europe, especially in Germany, France and 
Ireland, and in the Northern America. Even if researchers have not been able to agree on 
one specific definition to sport sponsorship, the common understanding is that “it relates 
to the purchase of an association with a team, event, etc. in return for the exploitable 
commercial potential linked to that activity” (Thwaites 1995, 149). Since the foundation 
of sponsorship research, one of the most cited definitions has been that of Meenaghan 
(1983, 9) stating that, in general, sponsorship is “provision of assistance either financial 
or in kind to an activity by a commercial organization for the purpose of achieving 
commercial objectives”. A few years later Gardner and Schuman (1988, 44) published a 
broader definition on sponsorship (see Table 1). These definitions emphasize the financial 
value expected to be achieved through investment into the sponsored target. Both 
Meenaghan and Gardner & Schuman state that sponsorship has clearly the same 
objectives as any other marketing method. These definitions mirror strongly the 
prevailing sponsorship trend at that time, which was to give financial resources to the 
target without really investing in promoting the commitment. Later these “leveraging 
operations” have been understood to have an important role, when the more modern way 
of sponsorship developed.  
 
 
 
 
 
12 
 
Table 1 Evolution of sponsorship definitions 
 
Otker (1988, 77) was the first one who highlighted the purchase of an intangible asset 
from the sponsor’s point of view, in his sponsorship definition. This reveals that the 
desired association between the sponsor and the entity being sponsored is what really 
differentiates sponsorship from other marketing methods. Later these various distinctions 
between sponsorship and other methods have received a lot of scholarly attention (see 
chapter 2.2). In 1995, Cornwell (15) built on Otker’s (1988, 77) finding highlighting the 
fact that there will be no association between the brands without leveraging. As 
sponsorship requires “the orchestration and implementation of marketing activities” 
around the commitment, sponsorship must be seen as a serious investment that needs 
careful planning. Based on an international review of sponsorship research by Björn 
Walliser (2003), it can be identified that the research conducted throughout 1990s 
generally concentrated on strategical objectives (e.g. Cégerra 1994; Copeland et al. 1996; 
McCook 1997) and the image transfer and recognition (e.g. Gwinner 1997; Arthur et al. 
1998; Gierl & Kirchner 1999) which had an influence on the new definitions formulated 
during the decade.  
A more recent definition (see Table 1) is produced by Cornwell et al. (2005, 21), who 
make a clear distinction between traditional advertising and sponsorship; whereas the 
Author(s) Definition 
Meenaghan (1983, 9) “Sponsorship is provision of assistance either financial or in 
kind to an activity by a commercial organization for the 
purpose of achieving commercial objectives” 
Gardner and Schuman 
(1988, 44) 
“Sponsorship may be defined as investments in causes or 
events to support corporate objectives or marketing 
objectives.” 
Otker (1988, 77) “Commercial sponsorship is buying and exploiting an 
association with an event, a team, a group etc. for specific 
marketing (communications) purposes.” 
Cornwell (1995, 15) “Sponsorship-linked marketing is the orchestration and 
implementation of marketing activities for the purpose of 
building and communicating an association to a sponsorship.” 
Cornwell et al. (2005, 
21) 
“Whereas sponsorship involves a fee paid in advance for 
future potential communication values, advertising offers a 
more knowable and more controlled communication.” 
IEG (2017, 5) “Sponsorship is fee in cash and/or in kind, to be paid to a 
property in exchange for access to the exploitable commercial 
potential associated with that property”. 
13 
 
formulation of the desired association in sponsorship is uncertain, the outcomes of 
advertising are more controllable for the management. Moreover, this definition was the 
first one to consider the time span over which the association is built; it takes substantial 
amount of time before the cooperation between two parties will be recognized and 
recalled by consumers.   
 Sponsorship is a versatile marketing tool and, therefore, there is no single way to 
define it. The table 1 demonstrates the evolution of the definitions. In the present thesis, 
however, the definition by internationally recognised sponsorship service provider and 
market analysis conductor within the sponsorship field, IEG agency, will be used: 
“Sponsorship is fee in cash and/or in kind, to be paid to a property in exchange for access 
to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property” (2017, 5). This 
definition reminds that the commercial value associated with the target being sponsored 
can vary; some may partner with a sports team due its relatable values, whereas some 
may highlight the large visibility of the target, instead. This dual aspect is also emphasized 
when sponsoring women’s sport and, thus, this was chosen to be the most suitable 
definition for the purposes of present thesis.  
 
2.2 Creating value through sponsorship 
Given the exploratory nature of the present research, sponsorship related theories were 
used to develop the structure of the thesis. Instead of aiming to test a specific theory or a 
model, theories covered in the existing sponsorship literature are used as a foundation to 
the present study. Amongst many theories associated with sponsorship, value creation 
model and relationship marketing theory were chosen to be most relevant for this study. 
Both theories stress the relational process when generating sponsorship value, which is 
the common agreement among researchers (e.g. Meenaghan 1991b; Farelly, Quester & 
Burton 2006; Lund 2010). Figure 1 visualizes the mutual benefit that a sponsor and 
women’s football aim to reach together; both parties have resources that together create 
commercial value. As the purpose is to investigate what are the attributes of women’s 
football appreciated by the sponsor, the main focus of the current thesis is to study what 
women’s football has to offer to sponsors.   
 
 
 
 
Figure 1 Creating value through sponsorship  
14 
 
In business-to-business context, value is often defined as the perceived difference 
between benefits and sacrifices (Flint et al. 1997, Biong et al. 1997). Walter et al. (2001, 
366) adds that those benefits and sacrifices can result from a single relationship “as well 
as from connected relationships on which the focal relationship has an impact or is 
effected by those other relationships”. This value statement applies to sponsorship, as the 
value perceived between the sponsor and the target is strongly influenced by the input of 
the customers. By using each other’s unique resources (e.g. networks, brand, visibility), 
new kind of value can be generated between the sponsorship parties (Austin & Seitanidi 
2012). To paraphrase the famous service-dominant logic by Vargo and Lusch (2008), 
what is driving economic activity is service-applied knowledge. All economic exchange 
involves knowledge and skills and, therefore, they are regarded as key components in 
value creation. Within sponsorship context, partners are recommended to learn from each 
other to create value more effectively together by sharing their knowledge (Lund 2010). 
Moreover, systematic incorporation of resources based on knowledge in sponsorship is 
central. Even if the focus of the current thesis is to study what is the knowledge and input 
that women’s football can offer to their partner, it is crucial to understand that without 
efficient investments also from the sponsor’s side, no value can be created.  
A growing number of researchers stress the importance of business relationships when 
commercial value is being created (Ravald & Grönroos 1996; Biong et al. 1997). Pioneers 
in sponsorship research, Farrelly & Quester (2005b), state that in sponsorship, the value 
does not stem from discrete transactions but from the unique business relationship 
between the partners. Sponsorship can be described as a commitment to a relational 
exchange involving a series of interrelationships and interactions. Sponsorship relations 
in football context have been studied to be successful, if the level of commitment, 
cooperation and satisfaction are high (Böhler et al. 2007). Commitment refers to a 
continuous desire to maintain a valued relationship (Moorman et al. 1992,316). Then 
again, the definition by Anderson and Narus (1990, 45) stresses the aspect of cooperation: 
“Complimentary actions taken by firms in interdependent relationships to achieve mutual 
outcomes or singular outcomes with expected reciprocation over time”. Thirdly, 
satisfaction can be reached in relationships when expectations of the participants are 
exceeded (Schellhase et al. 2000). It can be assumed that the above three qualities will 
have a positive influence on the sponsorship relationship also when partnering with 
women’s football, even if these variables have not been investigated academically. All in 
all, before investigating why women’s football would be an attractive target for sponsors, 
it must be understood that, without intent of value co-creation and relationship building, 
the commercial objectives of sponsorship are difficult to reach. 
 
15 
 
2.3 Sponsorship as a marketing tool 
Sponsorship has established its role as a valid tool of marketing communications mix 
among the other more traditional vehicles, such as sales promotions, public relations and 
advertising. The selection of the sponsored target needs to be in line with the other 
communication strategies of the company (Tripodi 2001, 89). There are, however, clear 
distinctions between sponsorship compared to the more traditional marketing tools. Also, 
from FFA’s point of view, it is crucial to understand what special nuances sponsorship 
has compared to other marketing tools and what aspects companies are taking into 
consideration when opting for sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy.  
Meenaghan (1991b, 8) created a widely-cited (e.g. Bennett 1999; Amis, Slack & Berrett 
1999; Gwinner & Bennett 2008) list of characteristics that are typical for sponsorship; the 
diminished control of the marketing message, the association perceived by audience, the 
importance of leveraging, and finally, the role of goodwill and personal motives. This 
chapter goes through these elements elaborated by scholars’ later findings. 
Controlling the marketing message differs between traditional advertising and 
sponsorship. Compared to traditional advertising, in sponsorship, a marketer has a weaker 
control over the marketing message conveyed to the audience. Often diverse and complex 
networks of the sponsor and the sponsored target are involved in the marketing process 
and, thus, many stakeholders may influence the message that finally reaches the audience 
(O’Reilly & Horning 2013). These networks contain other B2B partners and sponsors, 
customers, fans and media. A common threat to the controllability of the marketing 
message is ambush marketing. Schmitz (2005, 205) defines ambush marketing as “one’s 
direct efforts to weaken or attack a competitors official association with a sport 
organization acquired through the payment of sponsorship fees”. In other words, ambush 
marketers’ purpose is to exploit the success of sports sponsorship without taking the 
responsibilities of an official sponsor (Burton & Chadwick 2009). There are numerous 
examples companies utilizing the brand of a specific sports event in their marketing, 
without being the official sponsor. For instance, while McDonald’s was one of the official 
sponsors of the 2006 Football World Cup, its competitor Burger King organised a “Burger 
King Kahn” promotion in Germany, where the German national team’s goalkeeper Oliver 
Kahn featured in Burger King’s TV commercials (Nufer 2016). 
The formulation of the marketing message is unique in sponsorship. In sponsorship, 
the marketing message sent to public is formed based on matching, or “fit,” between the 
sponsor and the object it is associated with (Rifon et al. 2004). By partnering with a target 
with similar brand values, the sponsor can increase the efficiency of the message, as the 
customer response is stronger, when consumers perceive that there is a consistent fit 
between the partners (Speed & Thompson 2000). The sponsor’s goal is that the 
company’s brand becomes embedded in customers’ minds in a meaningful context with 
16 
 
the help of the sponsored sport. In the article “In sponsorship, one message doesn't fit 
all”, Green (2003) demonstrates that customized brand message is the key to a successful 
sponsorship. He highlights that the message the sponsor aims to deliver to the target 
audience has to match with the demographic and social characteristics of the message 
receiver. For instance, it is not beneficial for a car manufacturer to display their finest 
luxury car at the entrance of the sports venue, if most of the fans are not likely to be able 
to afford it. This may even cause the customer to think that this specific car brand is out 
of touch with their reality and therefore, they will never even consider buying the lower-
price cars of the same brand.  
Companies involved in sponsorship should aim to find a sport fitting with their own 
brand not only because of the effectiveness of the marketing message but also due to 
financial reasons. If the audience perceives a coherent fit between the sponsor and the 
target being sponsored, they do not only express a positive attitude towards the sponsoring 
brand, but they also exhibit a significantly greater purchase intention compared to those 
who perceive less fit between the two properties (Koo et al. 2006). Therefore, companies 
deciding to engage in sport sponsorship should consider effective ways to communicate 
the desired fit to those following the sport and attending the sport events, especially those 
consumers regarded as the core fan base (Gwinner & Bennett 2008).  
Sponsorship requires leverage for companies to gain full potential of their investment 
(Keller 1996, Grohs et al. 2004). Tripodi (2001) extends on this by saying that the 
sponsorship must be advertised, publicized, personally sold by the sponsor to their 
customers and involve various communication techniques, such as direct marketing 
activities and online visibility. Even if these additional operations require extra funds, the 
overall marketing impact will be improved. It is often agreed that the investments made 
on leveraging are even bigger than the actual investment made in the sponsorship deal. 
Companies must decide, which channels are in line with the corporate sponsor’s strategic 
goals, objectives and measures (Grant, 2006).  Moreover, the more often the established 
sponsorship association is promoted and used, the more valuable the deal becomes to the 
sponsor (Grùnhaug and Nordhaug 1992). The ways to leverage the sponsorship 
commitment are restricted only by the marketer’s imagination. One of the most famous 
examples was when Nike showed some brave leveraging techniques in 1984 by signing 
a sponsorship deal with a young basketball player called Michael Jordan. At that time, 
Nike’s market share was heavily in decline and they decided to bet on sponsorship to get 
the company back on the right track. Even if Michael Jordan had certainly shown some 
great potential, nobody knew, whether he would ever become good enough to make a 
breakthrough in the sport. Paying 2.5 million USD to a young unproved athlete, while the 
company was suffering from poor financial results, was publicly criticized but turned out 
to be a highly successful deal. “Air Jordan” sports line became successful worldwide, as 
Nike managed to leverage the done deal with various methods, such as motivational talks, 
17 
 
hosted sales meetings and product developments, all conducted in cooperation with 
Michael Jordan who became the most successful basketball player of all times. (Amis et 
al. 1999). 
The concept of goodwill is common, when exploring the sponsorship literature. 
Corporate sponsors often find that the public appreciates sponsorship as a marketing 
medium more than other methods. Colin McDonald (1991) is known for his research 
around the topic of “goodwill”. He argues that sponsors fund, or even make possible, 
something that is dear to one’s heart and, in this way, the sponsor can buy one’s support. 
Consumers value the fact that companies are taking risks when entering – usually – a 
long-term contract on behalf of a good cause. The image of benevolence generates 
positive attitudes towards the sponsor, which leads consumers to purchase the sponsors’ 
products (Dees et al. 2010). This indicates that consumers are happy to see companies 
promote themselves in ways which do good and are willing to recompense this by 
favoring the sponsor’s products over those of competitors.  Especially relevant to this 
current study is Lough and Irwin’s (2001) finding that investments in women’s sports are 
seen as more socially responsible compared to sponsorship of men’s sport. Goodwill may 
often be mixed with donations. As covered in chapter 2.1, sponsor pays the sponsorship 
fee in exchange for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with the 
sponsored property (IEG 2017, 5). This differs from donations, however, in that a donator 
does not assume to get anything in return for the financial contribution offered.   
It has been researched that personal motives of the decision makers within the 
sponsoring company have a vast influence on the sponsorship selection. Even if 
sponsorship investments should be rational economic decisions, they often are influenced 
by personal interests, motivated by a desire to be associated with the specific sport 
(Chadwick & Thwaites 2005). According to Johnston (2010), it is the gender, leadership 
status and sponsorship expertise gained that influence the sponsorship target choice. Men, 
senior management and more experienced managers tend to opt for sport over other 
categories, like festivals, music events and arts. Sport is seen to embrace masculine 
values. In addition, informal discussions in the hallway of the workplace - which are often 
built around sports - may also influence the sponsorship decisions made (Whitson 1990). 
To summarize, sponsorship as a marketing technique has clear distinctions from other 
methods when it comes to control, marketing message, implementation, audience reaction 
and the influence of personal motives. Whereas advertising can be strictly managed from 
the advertiser’s side − as the target audience, message conveyed, and frequency of the 
advertisements can be planned more precisely − in sponsorship, the message is built 
around the association between the sponsor itself and the sponsored target. A single 
investment in the partnership is often not enough, as the deals require leverage by the 
sponsor’s side. Even if the decision to sponsor a certain target is often influenced by the 
decision makers’ personal motives, sponsorship is not considered as “cold” as traditional 
18 
 
advertising from consumers’ point of view. The money invested does not only fulfil the 
sponsor’s commercial objectives but is also extremely important for the club, team or 
athlete being sponsored. These findings indicate that even if sponsorship deals require 
active maintenance and may not be in the sponsor’s full control, the association between 
the sponsorship partners can have strong positive influence on consumers’ purchase 
intentions. 
 
2.4 Pros and cons of sponsorship 
Often sponsorships funds are the economic lifeblood for sports clubs. According to a 
sponsorship expert used as a pilot interviewee (Kuuluvainen, interview 21.10.2019), in 
Finland, where sports as a commercial market is not as developed as in many other bigger 
countries, the general rule is that 70% of sports clubs’ earnings come from sponsors and 
the remaining 30% stem from ticket sales and other merchandise. But what about the 
sponsors then, how do they aim to benefit from entering sponsorship deals?  
Crimmins and Horn’s (1996) statement that sponsorship is ultimately about companies 
seeking to fulfil their commercial objectives and building a unique competitive marketing 
strategy, is still valid today. There are numerous advantages associated with sponsorship 
when it comes to companies’ aim to differentiate themselves from their competitors 
(Cornwell et al. 2001). Firstly, Farrell and Quester (2005a) stress that partnering with a 
sports entity is seen as one way to enhance corporate image and brand awareness. They 
explain that sports are associated with universal feelings of hope, joy and victory, for 
instance. As a sport sponsor these kinds of images can be actively utilized in marketing 
operations.  
Sponsorship is also an effective way to build networks and create new business 
development opportunities (Olkkonen 2001). As a practical example, businesses can 
utilize their sponsorship relationship by using it as a means to host various stakeholders 
for business purposes (Apostolopoulou & Papadimitriou 2004). The success of 
sponsorship alliances, networks between two or more parties engaged in a sponsorship 
arrangement, is dependent on their formal and informal governance and leadership 
mechanisms (Ireland et al. 2002). These alliances can contain myriad parties, such as the 
sponsor(s), sponsorship target, media, government, cities and municipalities that are all 
working towards same objectives.  The better expectations, values and responsibilities 
are shared within the sponsorship network, the better the network functions from a 
strategic viewpoint (Morgan et al., 2014). 
Sponsorship can be used as a tool to gain public attention, to improve brand image and 
form valuable business networks, but it acts also as a method to enhance employer 
motivation. Khan and Stanton (2010) propose that the success of the sponsorship 
activities is dependent on the effectiveness of the marketing of the sponsorship to the 
19 
 
sponsor’s employees. This view suggests that it is crucial to justify the investment 
decision to the employees of the sponsor. Moreover, it has been researched that the 
subordinates who happen to possess an interest in the company-sponsored sport hold a 
strong sense of firm identification and are generally more committed to their work 
(Hickman, Lawrence & Ward 2005). Thus, companies can use sponsorship as a tool to 
meet their marketing objectives but also as a means to improve employee engagement.  
While research lists the various objectives companies can gain through sponsorship, 
the latest trend in the field suggests that companies should rather focus on what they could 
offer straight to their customers through sponsorship rather than thinking solely their 
commercial objectives. Sponsorship can be seen as a customer engagement tool through 
which the company can nurture new connections and relationships with their target 
audience (Skildum-Reid 2003). Also, Olkkonen et al. (2000) argue that the outdated 
perspective of sponsorship as a mass-communicative means should make room for the 
approach emphasizing interaction and networking with the customers. The fans should 
be seen as value creators together with the sponsor and the sponsored sport, not just as 
receivers of marketing messages. The goal is, after all, to transfer the fans’ positive 
attitude and loyalty toward the sponsor’s brand, even if this may take years to achieve 
(Thompson & Speed 2000). According to Farelly et al. (2006), the desired association is 
easier to reach, if the sponsorship partners (the sponsor and the sponsored entity) enter 
into “co-marketing alliance”, where they invest resources together to develop a shared 
sense of a strategic intent. Auvinen and Kuuluvainen (2017, 57) mention a relatively new 
phenomenon, where companies sponsor directly the consumers instead of the sports 
teams; this can be done, for instance, by offering exclusive material about the sports team 
to the fans via a mobile application or sponsoring away game tickets to some of the fans. 
In this way, companies can build even stronger bonds with the fans. 
Even if sponsorship can create competitive advantages to the engaging partners, no 
sponsorship deal comes without risks (Figure 2). For instance, sponsors cannot know 
beforehand, how the sponsored entity will perform during the season and how the deal 
done will be perceived by customers that the sponsor is trying to appeal (Amis et al. 
1999). Crompton (2015) argues that the sponsorship literature has focused too much on 
the positive outcomes, neglecting the downsides associated with the commitment. He 
found many different types of risks that can be divided into the ones that the sponsor can 
influence and the ones that are beyond their control. The list consisted of various 
downsides, such as ignoring workers and stockholders before entering into the agreement, 
or, insensitivity to customer sentiments when breaching long-standing traditions of the 
club sponsored. Then again, issues that the sponsor can hardly influence are, for instance, 
risks related to the entity’s engagement into disreputable behavior or involving into 
sporting events that ultimately fail. Due to the commercialization of sports, modernization 
of technology and shift in journalism culture, the reported scandals within sports have 
20 
 
increased tremendously in recent years (Connor & Mazanov 2010). Thus, possible bad 
news harming the sponsor’s reputation can spread much quicker than ever before. 
 
 
Figure 2 Pros and cons of sponsorship as a marketing method 
 
However, not only the sponsor but also the sponsored entity, must be prepared for 
various risks. If the sponsor’s reputation is harmed, it will automatically affect also the 
team, or an athlete being sponsored. For example, the fans of a Premier League club 
Newcastle went furious after finding out that a short-term consumer loan provider Wonga 
entered into a sponsorship agreement with their local football team. The company has a 
bad reputation for exploiting its low-income customers’ vulnerability, especially in the 
North East of the UK, where the insolvency rate is the highest of the country (Gibbs 
2012). This shows that both parties should carefully assess the potential drawbacks 
related to the sponsorship. Researchers have tried to help sponsorship practitioners by 
inventing various sponsorship evaluation models to prevent unexpected risks. For 
instance, O’Reilly and Foster (2008) examined dangerous sports and suggested sponsors 
to implement an evaluation framework, including sponsored entity selection, risk 
management, strategic tactics, contingency planning, contract elements and post-contract 
tactics, before deciding to invest in such sports. Eventually to succeed in sponsorship, 
however, it is crucial to pay attention on sponsorship target selection. The next chapter 
provides selection criteria that are often used to gain legitimate competitive advantage 
through sponsorship.   
• Enhanced corporate image  
• Increased brand awareness 
• Network building 
• Creation of new business 
development opportunities 
• Transfer of fans’ loyalty 
towards the sponsor 
• Enhanced employer motivation 
• Tool to engage directly with 
customers  
• Poor performance of the 
sponsored target 
• Unknown perception by the 
target consumers 
• Possible ignorance of 
employees 
• Disreputable behavior of 
sponsored target 
• Failure of the sporting event 
involved with 
Pros Cons 
21 
 
2.5 Sponsorship target selection 
Sponsorship has established an important role in many companies’ marketing strategies. 
Especially in the 1990s, many scholars researched screening criteria that companies 
should use when evaluating their sponsorship decisions (e.g. Cornwell 1995; Crompton 
1993; Irwin & Assimakopoulos, 1992; Thwaites & Carruthers 1998). One of them was 
Meenaghan (1991b), who gathered a four-item list on the classification of sponsorship 
selection criteria that many scholars have later cited and agreed with (e.g. Scott & Suchard 
1992; McCarthy & Irwin 2000). Firstly, the sponsored entity should reflect the company’s 
vision and strategical objectives and the deal should be tailored according to the 
company’s specific needs. Colin McDonald (1991, 36) agrees with this stating that the 
sponsor’s and target’s values must be in line with each other. He gives an example of a 
“good match” sponsorship deal between the British Barclays bank and the country’s 
national football league. The bank’s image as a traditional and solid firm corresponds 
well with image of a national game of the UK, and thus, the parties gained mutual benefit 
from each other.  The cooperation turned out to be beneficial, and the bank decided to 
broaden its sponsorship deal to cover also the women’s side of the sport lately. The 
“mutual fit” between the sponsor and the target should be highlighted actively 
(Postdoctoral researcher at Turku School of Economics, interview 16.10.2019.) If these 
two parties’ image and values are in contrast with each other, the connection will confuse 
the audience. Therefore, it is important for the sponsoring company to select a target that 
represents the same ideology and supports the sponsor’s values. 
 Secondly, the coverage of the defined target audience matters to sponsors. When 
evaluating a potential sponsorship deal, the audience of the selected sport should match 
with the company’s target market. The matching process can take place according to 
demographic, geographic and lifestyle factors. Firstly, each sport tends to have its own 
fan property base with its own demographic features, such as gender, age, education and 
socio-economic position (Milne et al, 1996). Amis et al. (1991, 262) give an example of 
a carefully chosen sponsorship target based on demographic attributes: A watch company 
located in Canada decided to sponsor a specific Winter Olympic sport due to its “upper-
class image”. It was considered as a “a good fit for the image of the brand they wanted, a 
nice upper level, clean, good looking sport”. Secondly, geographic visibility matters, 
when sponsors ponder, whether they want to promote their brand locally or 
internationally. International audience requires bigger sponsorship investments, whereas 
companies that seek only for local visibility may be satisfied with donating money to 
smaller local sports clubs (Postdoctoral researcher at Turku School of Economics, 
interview 16.10.2019). Thirdly, the everyday life of the sport’s target audience should 
reflect the company’s image. Therefore, Volvo decided to sponsor both tennis and golf, 
22 
 
both considered as high-class sports, while brewing and cigarette industries have been 
observed to sponsor darts and snooker (Meenaghan 1991b). 
The third attribute that matters when selecting the sponsored target is the level of 
coverage of the target audience. By this Meenaghan (1991b, 43) means “the amount of 
likely exposure and the audience size likely to be exposed to the company's message”. 
The potential media coverage is one of the key contributing elements, when it comes to 
the sponsorship selection. In a survey conducted in Ireland (Crowley 1991), the potential 
media coverage was rated as the most valuable element within companies operating in 
the consumer sector, when entering a sponsorship deal, whereas companies operating in 
the industrial sector rated it as a third most important element. 
The final criteria in sponsorship are the costs of the actual sponsorship deal and the 
possible leveraging operations.  Even if this factor is not directly linked to the sponsorship 
goals, it is a crucial element when selecting the sponsored target. If a company is willing 
to sponsor globally followed events, such as Super Bowl or famous sports leagues such 
as NBA, they must be ready to pay several hundreds of thousands, sometimes even 
millions of dollars. These price tags decrease the number of companies that are able to 
invest in such targets. However, this fact leaves room for niche sports that have their 
competitive advantage as a more cost-effective sponsorship target and, therefore, actively 
promote the cost aspect when seeking for sponsors. (Greenhalgh & Greenwell 2013) 
The figure 3 reflects the understanding of academic researchers on the relevant criteria 
in sponsorship selection process. These four are the common criteria featuring in the 
sponsorship literature, but also other selection criteria have been found. Greenhalgh and 
Greenwell (2013) researched the sponsorship attractiveness of niche sports that women’s 
football can be considered to belong to. They state that apart from cost effectiveness, a 
more refined target market, flexibility and avoidance of sponsorship saturation attracts 
sponsors in niche sports. Niche sports are often followed by a more homogeneous fan 
base compared to popular mainstream sports, and these sport organisations are more 
willing to work together with their sponsors to fulfil their objectives. In addition, some 
mainstream sports are so cluttered with sponsors they have reached their saturation point.  
 
23 
 
 
Figure 3 Sponsorship selection criteria (adapted from Meenaghan, 1991b) 
 
In order to enter a successful sponsorship agreement, the representatives of a sports 
club or team need to understand the sponsorship selection criteria (Aguilar-Manjarrez et 
al. 1997). This increases their chances to create a tempting sponsorship proposal. Amis et 
al. (1999) propose that sports clubs should market themselves as a resource that can be 
the basis of competitive advantage for the company to differentiate itself from the 
competitors. The proposal offered to the sponsor could include the factors listed in the 
Chapter 2.4 to ease the sponsor’s evaluation task. 
A Finnish sports business and sponsorship expert Arto Kuuluvainen (interview, 
21.10.2019) highlights the importance of concrete sponsorship proposal when 
approaching sponsors. Having a long experience in mentoring sports clubs around 
Finland, he states that too many clubs ask for sponsorship funds only in exchange for 
visibility. He says that sponsorship proposal should contain both strategic and tactical 
level. The strategic aspect of the proposal for the potential sponsor includes the vision of 
the improved brand image and the “fit” of the values of the parties. The tactical level, 
which is often bypassed by the sports clubs, should list the methods how the sports club 
would generate new sales leads for the company and, further, how they could acquire new 
customers. He recommends sports clubs to include data on how they will improve the 
sponsor’s customer acquisition or at least some estimates of it. The proposal should 
outline when and how the entity will endorse the sponsoring brand, what products or 
services are going to be promoted through the sponsorship, and what the entity’s duties 
will be as the company’s brand ambassador. 
By using the selection criteria introduced in the present chapter some companies have 
ended up partnering with women’s sports. Despite the growing professionalism and 
increased interest in women’s sports around the globe, women’s sports market is 
underutilised and only fraction of sponsorship investments have been dedicated to 
The target’s ability to fulfil
strategical objectives
The match between the 
target’s follower base and the
sponsor’s target audience
The level of the follower base
and media attention
Costs related to deal and 
leveraging the partnership
The sponsored
target
24 
 
women’s sports. Next chapter describes how marketing of women’s sports has developed 
recently and how some sponsors have cooperated with women’s sports successfully.  
25 
 
3 WOMEN’S SPORTS MARKET 
After covering the nature of sponsorship as a marketing method, it is necessary to explore 
the characteristics of women’s sports market. Women’s sports have been 
underrepresented up to date and this has influenced the way how marketing is conducted 
in sports environment. Since the Finnish women’s sports marketing has not been widely 
covered in the existing sponsorship literature, this chapter focuses on presenting findings 
on a global level.  
 
3.1 Women’s sports marketing 
Watching sports has always been a popular way to spend free time. Sports marketing has 
been dominated by men for a long time but the number of female athletes, as well as the 
number of female spectators, has escalated at a phenomenal pace (Lough & Irwin 2001). 
A common belief among sports marketers has been that female athletes must look good 
to attract spectators. More media coverage has been provided to female athletes 
highlighting their femininity or looks (e.g. Bissel & Duke 2007). However, Kane & 
Maxwell (2011) proved this presumption to be inconsistent; they found that athletic 
competence of female athletes received the highest level of fan interest among all age 
groups studied, while sportswomen being “sexy” received the lowest. Support for 
women's sport opportunities and the role model image of athletes have been found to be 
important to female fans and the fans of women’s sports (Ridinger & Funk 2006). 
According to Daniels and Wartena (2011), sexualised marketing of female athletes may 
even devaluate the image of women’s sports. Based on the above studies, it can be 
concluded that when marketing women’s sports, the appearance of the athletes should not 
be emphasized. Instead, women’s athletic talent and their image of powerful highflyers 
should be at the centre of the marketing message. 
Various media channels allow sponsorship partners to gain visibility to their 
cooperation. Some might think, however, whether the media interest in women’s sports 
expands when actual audiences expand, or do audiences expand due to an increased media 
coverage? Messner (2013) argues that the answer is ‘‘both-and”. He suggests that even if 
the interest levels of women’s sports have raised, the mass media’s ever-lasting focus on 
major men’s sporting events and games might diminish the commercial potential 
women’s sports have. Therefore, to increase interest in women’s sports, media is expected 
to perform its role as a visibility enhancer. However, it has been noted that some attempts 
to devote visibility to female athletes have failed sadly. For instance, “Sports Illustrated 
Women” and some other magazines focusing on professional women’s sports have not 
been able to attract enough readerships to sustain publication (Sheaffer 2005). In some 
cases, when gaining the media coverage, women’s sports are often devalued by 
26 
 
commentators and journalists. As an example, the success of male athletes is frequently 
associated with hard work, talent and athletic superiority whereas women’s success in 
sports environment is more often due to good luck or a strong male influence (Eastman 
& Billings 2001). These perceptions do not make women’s sport marketing or 
sponsorship any easier. 
The spectatorship behaviour has gained research attention during the 2000s. Whiteside 
and Hardin (2011) state that women watch less sports compared to men. This is not 
because women would not be interested in sports but too often, they are tied with 
housework and family duties. It is evident, though, that both genders still prefer watching 
men competing in sports over women (Apostolou et al. 2014). Also, the motives for 
watching sports differ between men and women; males consider themselves more often 
as “sports fans”, as they tend to acquire greater sports knowledge and convey a deeper 
interest towards sports. On the contrary, women’s motives to watch sports stem from 
social reasons, such as wanting to spend more time with family or friends (Dietz-Uhler et 
al. 2001). In addition, women watching sports value that female athletes can pursue their 
interest and that these women can act as role models for the society (Funk et al. 2003). 
This may stem from the fact that gender inequality issues have dominated sports industry.   
 
3.2 Equality in sports context 
Gender equality issues in sports and marketing have been highly visible. From the mid-
nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, the legitimate usage of female body 
shifted towards a symbol of more active role, nonetheless subordinate compared to men 
(Hargreaves 1985). It is agreed that institutions such as the military and traditional blue-
collar workplaces still contribute to the assumption that large body size, physical strength 
and aggression are elements needed to succeed (Charles & Grusky 2004). Women 
instead, are naturally associated with feminine and soft characteristics, which has 
influenced companies’ marketing strategies strongly in the past. When these associations 
are deeply rooted in people's minds, it lucrative to utilize them in promotional activities 
still today. The stereotyped images have influenced also sponsorship investments; as 
sports are considered as a masculine activity and thus, more appropriate for men, 
companies tend to direct their sponsorship resources to men’s sports. Consequently, 
professional female athletes earn a fraction of men’s earnings and sponsorships 
(Women’s Sports Foundation 2015). According to a UK-based charity organisation that 
researches sports, only 0.4% of total sports sponsorship between 2011 and 2013 was 
dedicated to sponsor women’s sports in the country (Women in Sport 2020).  
Not only sponsorship, but the overall coverage of women’s sports has lagged behind 
men’s sports. When researching the televised coverage of sports, Musto et al. (2017) 
observed a clear decline in overtly sexist and insulting commentary about women 
27 
 
recently. Instead, the new trend amongst commentators has been to focus on female 
athletes’ feminine roles as wives, mothers, or girlfriends instead of praising their athletic 
performances. In addition, they noticed the lack of action-packed, humorous language, 
lavish compliments and dominant descriptors routinely found in men’s sports 
commentary. Hardin et al. (2013) studied the representativeness of women in a sport-talk 
radio in the US and found that there is a real demand for increased women’s sport 
coverage. By interviewing 285 sports editors in the southeastern United States, Hardin 
(2005) found, however, that many of the respondents assume that women’s competition 
is of lesser quality and that any story possibly attracting women readers is therefore less 
valuable. This might be due to the sexist objectification of the female body in history, 
which has resulted women’s sporting performances and achievements to be flattened 
(Wheaton & Beal 2003) and influenced by the fact that Southeast is one of the most 
conservative areas in the US.  
Not only the scholars are calling for equal treatment between men and women in 
sports, but also athletes themselves have kept fighting for a bigger movement. For 
example, the players of the United States women’s national football team have profiled 
themselves as ambassadors for gender equality. They recently wore jerseys with the 
names of women who inspire them before playing in a “SheBelieves Cup” football match 
(Mervosh & Caron 2019). Moreover, they filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against 
the United States Soccer Federation, which raised a lot of public awareness. In 2017, 
Norway was the first country signing an equal-pay agreement meaning that both men and 
female players in the national team level will be paid the same wage (Lovett 2017). This 
was a markable recognition for women’s football and was made even more extraordinary 
by the fact that women’s football was not even officially recognized by the Norwegian 
Football Association until 1976. Also, the Finnish FA has heavily invested in developing 
the sport in the country recently. They followed Norway’s example by agreeing to pay 
equal wages to their national team players. Futhermore, they gained international 
recognition by dropping “women’s” prefix for league to promote equality in February 
2020 (Kansallinenliiga.fi 2020). Cases like this show that the battle towards equal 
treatment is gradually shifting attitudes globally.  
Commercial and community objectives do not have to be necessarily mutually 
exclusive (Cornwell et al 2001; Morgan 2019). Corporate social responsibility (CSR) 
increasingly addresses gender issues in various company operations such as in corporate 
leadership, in enterprise development, in supply chains and in marketing practices 
(Grosser & Moon 2019). Thus, women’s professional sports may provide a marketing 
answer for companies aiming to satisfy both their commercial and CSR objectives. A 
recent shift in leadership style may as well have its influence on sponsorship decisions, 
as the “feminization” of leadership (e.g. Eagly & Carli 2003) highlights the supportive 
and deferential approach that is highly valued in today’s workplaces. When sponsorship 
28 
 
targets are often expected to mirror the values of the sponsor, women’s sports may be an 
attractive investment target for many companies. Some enterprises have already spotted 
this opportunity and signed big sponsorship deals with influential women’s football clubs.  
   
3.3 Examples of sponsorship cases in women’s football  
The present chapter presents the latest findings on the current state and future potential 
of women’s football around the globe, following by successful sponsorship cases on a 
global level. The purpose is to demonstrate that many companies have already signed 
fruitful sponsorship deals with women’s football clubs which indicates that the positive 
image of women’s sports has started to attract larger corporate interest.  
Nielsen Sports, a global leader in producing analytics, market data and insights within 
the sports industry, conducted a research on the consumption of sponsorship in women’s 
sports in 2018. The study reveals that football, out of many other sports, holds the biggest 
future potential fanbase of 105 million people across the eight markets surveyed. The 
countries researched were the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia 
and New Zealand. They also found that the general image of women’s football around 
the globe is highly positive by being more inspirational, less money-driven and more 
family-oriented compared to the men’s sport. Furthermore, attributes such as cleanness 
and progressiveness were associated with women’s football. Also, other researches have 
ended up to the same conclusions; a leading independent brand valuation consultancy 
Brand Finance (2019) calculated the total brand value of women’s football sponsorship 
globally to be 1.2 billion USD higher than where the market currently stands. Sports 
Marketing Surveys (2004, 14) states that “football continues to represent by far the most 
heavily sponsored sport globally in both the number and total value of reported deals”, 
and gradually, women are starting to get a bigger portion of the investments.  
Some first movers have realized this hidden potential and they have been able to create 
innovative marketing campaigns by shifting their sponsorship funds to female sports. The 
growing professionalism has accelerated specifically the interest of women’s football 
(Morgan 2019). One of the companies recognizing the power and growth of women’s 
football was cosmetics company Avon who partnered with Liverpool Ladies’ team in 
2017 (Liverpoolfc.com 2017). This beauty brand became the first female-focused brand 
to sponsor a professional women’s football club. Moreover, this was the first time when 
the women’s team got their own shirt deal separate from the men’s squad (Figure 4). In 
addition to the shirt-sponsorship, the partners launched the “I Can Be” campaign, with a 
mission to inspire girls and women to challenge gender stereotypes and achieve their 
goals. This sponsorship deal was marketed in many channels as an “evolution in female 
sports marketing” (Connelly 2017). A proof of the mutual success was the recognition as 
the “Partnership of the Year” at Football Business Awards, which is an international 
29 
 
annual UK-based event awarding companies dedicated to supporting clubs and the game 
itself. 
 
 
Figure 4 Liverpool Ladies’ team (Liverpoolfc.com 2017) 
Companies sponsoring women’s elite football do not necessarily need to be female-
focused brands. Another benchmark case comes from Spain; Black & Decker, the world’s 
largest tools and storage company, has been a strategical partner of FC Barcelona’s men’s 
team since the 2014-2015 season. Starting from the season 2017-2018, the company 
entered into a sponsorship agreement also with the football club’s women’s team with 
their brand called Stanley. Even if Stanley is the first jersey-partner of the women’s team, 
the partnership covers a lot more than just a logo in the players’ shirt (Figure 5). For 
example, the partners created a persuasive digital content series enabling the fans of the 
FC Barcelona women’s team to get closer to the sport and the players. Futhermore, they 
have organized “meet and greet” events together with the club’s fans and hosted many 
guests during the team’s games. This shows that there are countless opportunities to 
utilize sponsorship in businesses’ marketing strategies. (FC Barcelona 2018).  
 
 
Figure 5 FC Barcelona’s new jerseys (Forbes 2020) 
30 
 
A third example of a fruitful cooperation agreement with a professional women’s 
football club was closed between a Hong Kong-based direct selling company Qnet and 
Manchester City women’s squad. In addition to carrying its logo in the team’s jersey, the 
company naturally became the direct selling platform for the club’s women’s side. Qnet 
will also provide led presence at the stadium, exclusive fan competitions and tailored 
digital content with players. The partnership is seen as a valuable channel to connect the 
club with its growing fanbase in Asia. The sponsor, in turn, gains more acquaintance in 
Europe and sends a clear signal that it is committed to empower women around the globe. 
Having a strong female workforce, the company also aims to target its sponsorship 
investments into women’s sports. (Manchester City 2018).  
 
3.4 Synthesis 
Sponsorship has become an important channel for many companies to reach their target 
audience through sports. Finnish female football seeks to take part in this rising trend 
more effectively and is keen to identify how they could attract more sponsors in the future. 
The investments would not only help the Finnish footballers to train more professionally 
and to commercialise the sport, but these would generate more wellbeing to the whole 
country. It has been researched that football produces 770 Million Euros per year to the 
Finnish society in a form of social, financial and health-related benefits (UEFA SROI 
2019). Moreover, many example cases from abroad show that partnering with women’s 
football can be regarded as a real business opportunity for companies generating value 
for both partners.  
However, before Finnish women’s football can brand themselves and sign new 
partnerships with companies, it is crucial to understand how sponsorship works from the 
sponsor’s point of view. The sponsor needs to consider how sponsorship differs from 
other marketing methods and how they can concretely benefit from their investments. As 
stated above, research has found that  many stakeholders influence the marketing message 
conveyed through sponsoring (O’Reilly & Horning 2013) and the investment made into 
a sponsorship deal is often not enough, the connection between the sponsor and the entity 
needs to be leveraged actively (Keller 1996, Tripodi 2001). As already discussed, 
sponsorship, as a marketing method, has its pros and cons. Sponsors hope their 
investments enhance their corporate image among stakeholders and that they can build 
new business and trade relations through the entity being sponsored (Irwin and 
Asimakopolos 1992). Although sponsorship is a popular channel to gain visibility and 
positive brand image, academics list also a number of possible downsides, such as risks 
related to the sponsored entity’s engagement into disreputable behavior or involving into 
sporting events that ultimately fail (Crompton 2015). To avoid these possible problems, 
sponsors may follow certain criteria when selecting the sport to be sponsored. 
31 
 
Meenaghan’s (1991b) list is one of the most cited ones still today saying that the target’s 
ability to fulfil the sponsor’s objectives, costs, the type of coverage and the level of 
coverage of the defined target audience should be carefully evaluated before entering into 
a sponsorship agreement.  
The example cases show that women’s football can be regarded as a legitimate 
business opportunity. Figure 6 lists the attributes that describe how a sponsor benefits 
from the relationship with women’s football and, on the other hand, what a women’s 
football team can gain through cooperation with a corporate sponsor. However, the list is 
not extensive up to date which indicates that there is a demand for the present type of 
research which intends to find out all the various commercial opportunities associated 
with sponsorship of women’s football.  
 
Figure 6 Creating value through women’s football sponsorship 
 
As IEG states, sponsors seek for an “access to the exploitable commercial potential 
associated with a property” (2017, 5). It has been already seen that women’s football 
holds a lot of commercial potential in an international scale, but the Finns have not quite 
yet found the local female football attractive enough. To find out what exactly the 
commercial potential associated with women’s football really is, six sponsors involved in 
female football will be interviewed in the following part of this thesis. Moreover, the 
following empirical phase of the research will study, how the companies interviewed use 
sponsorship as a part of their marketing strategies and how a sponsorship selection 
process is implemented in their organisations. Finally, sponsorship literature highlights 
gender inequality issues women’s sports have faced but through the following empirical 
part it will be found out, whether there are any other challenges to sponsoring women’s 
football. 
 
 
• Networks 
• Financial aid to commercialise the 
game and train more 
professionally 
• Media exposure 
• Networks 
• CSR objectives 
• Positive visibility 
• Employer motivation 
 
32 
 
4 RESEARCH DESIGN 
This chapter presents the chosen research approach for this study, followed by the 
justification and description of the data used. In addition, the data analysis process will 
be outlined, together with a demonstration how the final conclusions were reached. 
Finally, this chapter evaluates the study carefully by addressing issues related to validity 
and reliability.  
 
4.1 Research approach 
This thesis intends to find out what makes women’s football an attractive partner for 
companies to invest in and to cooperate with. This topic has not been researched before, 
even if the sponsorship literature is quite extensive up to date. Due to the increasing 
interest in the female football phenomenon – both in Finland and abroad – the demand 
for this type of research is growing. The qualitative research approach was selected as the 
most suitable method to respond to the formulated research questions. Multi-layered, 
complex and rich data is recommended to be gathered when conducting qualitative 
research (Alasuutari 1994). Based on the data, the aim is to be able to make 
generalizations on the topic researched. According to the policies of qualitative research 
the world is described as “complex, dynamic, interdependent, nuanced and understood 
through stories” (Patton 2015, 13). Hereby, analysing the sponsors’ stories and 
perceptions, their underlying beliefs in sponsorship decision making can be understood. 
Bryman (1988, 94) highlights that qualitative research intends to create theory, not 
confirm the existing one. Hirsjärvi et al. (2000, 152) adds that it is crucial to study the 
phenomenon as holistically as possible and aim to reveal unfound facts. These rules apply 
also to the present study, as the purpose of the research is to create new findings on the 
unique aspects of women’s football, which in turn helps the sport to understand its 
commercial value. Quantitative and statistical methods would have limited studying the 
interpretation of these perceptions.  
This research is exploratory by its nature. This research design aims to get insights and 
understanding of the topic researched leaving room for further investigations. Desirably 
this work acts as an academic base for future studies on the commercialization of 
women’s sports. Furthermore, the exploratory research process is often described as 
flexible (Sandhursen 2000) and so was the selection of the suitable interviewees in the 
present research. The intention was to reach out to multiple big global sponsors that have 
gained attention due to their investments in women’s football lately. However, this 
aspiration turned out to be more difficult than thought due to gate keepers in big 
corporations and the busy schedules of the desired interviewees. Therefore, the 
composition of the data providers was restructured; instead of just gaining insight from 
33 
 
big multinational corporations, also domestic sponsors were interviewed. This enabled a 
comparative analysis to be conducted between the two categories. From football teams’ 
and football associations’ point of view, it is beneficial to know whether bigger 
international sponsors’ intentions and motives differ from those of domestic companies 
and how the global sponsorship culture differs from the Finnish one. This enables the 
sponsorship targets to adjust their sponsorship proposals better to match the sponsor’s 
expectations in each case, and thereby raise the possibility to get new partners.  
 
4.2 Data collection 
The interviewees were selected by using convenience sampling method. According to 
Suri (2011), this may be even the most common sampling strategy used in qualitative 
research. It involves choosing data that is easy to access and inexpensive to study. It is 
described as a convenient way of doing research – sometimes even criticised for being 
too convenient and biased (Mackey & Gass 2005). In convenience sampling, the members 
of the target population interviewed must be chosen according to pre-decided criteria 
(Dörnyei 2007). In the case of the present study, the respondents had to have experience 
on women’s football sponsorship, had to be available at a given time and had to be willing 
to participate. It was relatively difficult to reach the interviewees for the present study; 
especially the PR and marketing professionals representing global companies in 
sponsorship related matters were busy and hard to get in contact with. In addition, some 
of the last interviews were scheduled to take place at times that coincided with the 
outbreak of an ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which meant that the companies’ focus 
was directed on rescuing their daily operations and did not allow time for an interview.  
However, getting a direct contact with the company representatives was seen to be a 
necessary method to gain knowledge on the sponsorship cases, since publicly available 
sources did not contain comprehensive explanations behind the sponsorship decisions that 
were looked for. At the end, it was possible to successfully conduct six interviews in total 
with the companies investing in women’s football.  
This thesis contains both pilot interviews and sponsor interviews.  First, to understand 
better the current sponsorship culture and challenges in Finland and to gather emerging 
ideas of the topic, three sport sponsorship experts were interviewed which are listed in 
Table 2. These interviewees were selected due to their previous knowledge and 
experience in the field. The first two of them were chosen due to their understanding of 
the general sponsorship culture and sports business environment in Finland. The first pilot 
interviewee asked to be represented anonymously in this study. The second expert chosen 
was Arto Kuuluvainen who has profiled as one of the most experienced sponsorship 
experts in Finland having worked with many sports clubs and having given university 
lectures on the topic. On the other hand, Heidi Pihlaja, the development manager of the 
34 
 
Finnish Football Association, shared her experiences in the field from women’s football’s 
perspective. These were semi-structural interviews and were all held as face-to-face 
meetings. Questions presented to the experts were rather standardized, but some 
customizations were made based on their backgrounds. For instance, the general 
sponsorship traditions in Finland were addressed through questions with the first two 
experts, whereas Heidi Pihlaja was asked about sponsorship acquisition and commercial 
side of the sport, since she has gathered first-hand experience on these subject matters 
through her job. 
 
Table 2 Pilot interviews 
 
In the empirical phase of the thesis, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 
companies having sponsored women’s football. Only one of the global enterprises having 
partnered with the European football federation FIFA asked to stay anonymous and, 
therefore, will be just presented as a “Sponsor X” in the present study. Each company 
interviewed has either partnered up with the international football federation, with 
women’s football leagues or individual club(s). The intention was to find out what their 
motives and goals have been behind the sponsorship decisions, what do they value in 
women’s football and how do they describe their target audience. The purpose for 
selecting international sponsorship cases, Sponsor X, Visa and Obos from abroad, was to 
search for international benchmark cases and then to implement the lessons learnt to the 
Finnish context.  
The first interview was set up with the PR representative of a large global company 
having invested heavily in women’s football during the past decades. This international 
company was chosen to be interviewed due to their long track record of partnering with 
women’s football in a global context and due to their understanding of both sponsorship 
Profession Person  
interviewed 
Type of  
interview 
Date Duration 
(Minutes) 
Postdoctoral 
researcher 
Anonymous Face to face 16.10.2019 69 
Sponsorship 
expert & D.Sc. 
Economics 
Arto 
Kuuluvainen 
Face to face 21.10.2019 51 
Development 
manager, Finnish 
Football 
Association 
Heidi Pihlaja Face to face 24.10.2020 58 
35 
 
and its requirements. Currently the Sponsor X is proudly supporting women’s football by 
having partnered with FIFA, the international governing body of football. The second 
interview was conducted also with a big international enterprise proudly supporting 
women’s football by cooperating with the Union of European Football Associations 
(UEFA). During the interview, Irina Kasatkina, the Head of UEFA Women’s Football 
Sponsorship at Visa explained her views on sport sponsorship. She has a long track record 
working with brand, marketing and sponsorship related tasks in Visa that became the first 
ever sponsor of UEFA women's football in a partnership running from 2018 until 2025. 
The third interviewee was Ulrika Liiv, the Head of Communications and sustainability at 
Obos Sverige AB. Obos is the largest housing developer in the Nordic region and they 
became a title sponsor of Damallsvenskan, the highest women’s league level in Sweden, 
in 2018. What is exceptional in their deal is the fact that they are going to invest in the 
league and its development over 40 Million SEK (almost 4 Million Euros) over a five-
year period. Moreover, Obos has launched several campaigns to promote awareness of 
women’s football.  
In addition, companies sponsoring a single or multiple women’s teams playing in the 
Finnish league were also interviewed. The choice of the domestic interviewees was based 
on the desire to select bigger Finnish organisations having traditions of sponsorship who 
would be able to reflect on their experiences and aspirations based on longer time frame. 
With the diverse data, it was possible to identify similarities and differences between the 
answers given by the global players and domestic companies. As the general hypothesis 
is that the bigger sponsors having partnered with a federation or a league have different 
motives compared to Finnish sponsors supporting individual clubs, it will be interesting 
to see whether these respondents share any same intentions.  
The fourth interview was conducted with an account manager of LocalTapiola, Hannu 
Juhola. LocalTapiola is a large Finnish insurance service provider consisting of 20 
regional companies owned by its customers. The account manager shared his thoughts on 
the Finnish sports and sponsorship market and what it has to offer for a regional company 
located in the Helsinki Metropolian area from marketing and sales point of view. Usually 
LocalTapiola have supported the junior level within various sports but they have also 
invested into women’s teams playing in the National League. In addition, they have 
partnered up with the Finnish Football Association. In the fifth interview, Anna Knihti, 
the marketing coordinator of Rantalainen, shared her insights on the sponsorship decision 
making process within the financial management organisation and explained why and 
how they consider benefitting from the investments made in the sport. They employ 
roughly 850 people in Finland. The final interviewee was Teemu Hintsanen, The Head of 
Sports from Pohjola Insurance who takes care of sponsorship operations in the 
organisation. Pohjola Insurance is part of OP Group, which is one of the largest financial 
companies in Finland. OP Group consists of more than 100 cooperative banks, their 
36 
 
central organization, Pohjola Insurance and Pohjola Hospital. Each of them has a unique 
approach to sponsorship and Teemu explained how these entities’ goals and strategies 
differ.  
 
Table 3. Interviews 
 
Both the sponsorship experts and the corporate sponsors were interviewed in a semi-
structured format. This means that the standardized questions, planned in advance, should 
be asked from each interviewee, but the interviewer is allowed – or even expected – to 
elaborate on them and ask specifying questions (Berg 2004). With the choice of this 
method, it was possible to get comparable answers but also, gain insights that might not 
have been brought up without further elaboration. The pre-defined interview question 
format was intentionally left rather concise to leave time to further questions and 
explanations.  
Organisation 
represented 
Person  
interviewed 
Sponsorship 
target 
Type of  
interview 
Date Duration 
(Minutes) 
Sponsor X PR representative FIFA Phone call 28.11.2019 42 
Visa Irina Kasatkina, 
the Head of 
UEFA Women’s 
Football 
Sponsorship 
UEFA Skype call 24.1.2020 30 
Obos Ulrika Liiv, the 
Head of 
Communications 
and sustainability 
Swedish 
league 
Skype call 21.1.2020 40 
LocalTapiola Hannu Juhola, 
Account manager 
Finnish 
club, 
Finnish 
Football 
Association 
Skype call 5.2.2020 38 
Rantalainen Anna Knihti, 
Marketing 
coordinator  
Finnish 
clubs 
Skype call 12.2.2020 36 
Pohjola 
Insurance 
Teemu 
Hintsanen, Head 
of Sports 
Finnish 
clubs 
Teams call 16.4.2020 56 
37 
 
The interview questions assigned to the sponsors were built around the literature 
review of sponsorship which is demonstrated in the table 4. After an intensive research, 
the themes chosen were understood to be important for companies using sponsorship as 
part of their marketing. Topics such as the nature of sponsorship as a marketing tool, the 
motivation behind the sponsorship selection and goals of the commitment were all 
discussed with the interviewees. Furthermore, all the possible pros and cons were also 
covered.  
 
Table 4 Operationalisation table 
 
The question format used can be found in the appendix 1. Each interviewee was 
offered to see the questions in advance and thus, they had an opportunity to prepare 
themselves for the interview. The interviews were conducted either in English or Finnish 
depending on the nationality of the respondent. Each respondent gave their permission to 
record the interview and the researcher, in turn, committed to deleting the recordings after 
capturing the data for the research. Despite conducting all the sponsor interviews 
remotely, no major technological issues arise during the interview meetings.  
 
Research problem Sub-problems Themes Concepts in 
literature 
Interview questions 
Why would 
women’s football 
be an attractive 
target for sponsors? 
 
Why do companies 
use sponsorship as 
part of their 
marketing strategy? 
Definition 
 
Characteristics of 
sponsorship 
 
Pros & cons of 
sponsorship 
 
 
Target selection 
 
 
Characteristics of 
women’s sport 
 
Equality in sports 
 
 
Benchmark cases 
 
 
2.1 
 
2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 
2.2.4, 2.2.5 
 
 
 
 
 
2.4 
 
 
3.1 
 
 
3.2 
2 
 
2, 4, 10 
 
 
 
 
 
1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 
 
 
 
1, 2, 3 
 
 
2, 3, 5 
 
 
 
 
What are the 
obstacles to funding 
women’s sports? 
 
3.3 
2.3 
 
10,11 
2, 5 
 
38 
 
4.3 Analysis 
Data analysis has been referred as “a process of resolving data into its constituent 
components, to reveal its characteristic elements and structure” (Dey 1993, 31). 
According to Attride-Stirling (2001) the full process of analysis can be divided into three 
distinctive stages: first it is important to break down the text, then comes the deeper 
exploration of the text, and finally, the integration of the exploration takes place. This is 
not the only way to conduct data analysis in qualitative research, but it was seen as 
appropriate process due to the nature of the collected data. Data collected in form of 
interviews is often complex and diverse which requires careful analysation.  
Before the actual analysis phase took place, the interviews recorded were seen as 
necessary to transcribe. According to Seidman (2006, 115) researchers who transcribe the 
interview audio files become more familiarized with the data collected. Each interview 
was transcribed word by word as the total amount of interviews was not substantially 
extensive. Having transcribes the interviews, initial encoding took place which is seen as 
the first step in Attride-Stirling’s analysis process (2001). Initial encoding refers to the 
process where the analysis is started with breaking the qualitative data down into smaller 
parts (Saldaña 2013, 100–101). The researcher then examines these parts closely and 
decides whether they should be analysed deeper. When familiarizing oneself with the 
data, the researcher may already find emerging themes and categories and code them. 
Initial coding prepares the data for the next phase of data analyzation where more specific 
themes are expected to be found. 
Initial coding was followed by thematic analysis, which is described as a deeper 
exploration of the text by Attride-Stirling (2001). Thematic analysis, a common analysis 
technique, aims to help the researcher to process the data collected from interviews 
(Bogdan & Biklen 1997). This analysis method is suitable for identifying, analyzing and 
interpreting features of themes in qualitative data research (Clarke & Braun 2017, 297). 
The interpretations made through this analysis method can be then linked to the themes 
found from literature. Thematic analysis was chosen as an appropriate way to conduct the 
analysation due to the method’s ability to construct the respondents’ views, beliefs and 
motivations which were in the researcher’s interest. In a practical level, this was done by 
highlighting comments and statements in the transcriptions and drawing linkages with the 
existing sponsorship literature. Do the respondents agree with the earlier represented 
researches on subjects such as the nature of this marketing tool, various benefits and risks, 
target selection criteria and sponsorship proposal creation? Is there something special that 
must be considered when entering into a sponsorship agreement with a women’s football 
team or league? Are there some aspects or nuances the existing literature has totally 
ignored up to date? These were some of the questions that helped with the identification 
of the most vital themes rising from the transcriptions.  
39 
 
Finally, after analysing the themes deeply, the integration of the exploration took place 
(Attride-Stirling 2001). This means that the researcher is expected to return to the original 
research questions and the theoretical background of the research and combine these 
together with the patterns and themes found from the data collected. The aim is, after all, 
that the theory and empirical data complements each other and form a comprehensive 
research.  
 
4.4 Evaluation of the study  
During the past decades, data collection methods, organization of data and analyzing 
techniques have become more sophisticated. Hence, the scope of research has expanded. 
The expansion has increased concerns about the ethics of research and researchers (Berg 
2004). The researcher bears a high responsibility, as the reader has to rely on the 
researcher’s description and evaluation about the phenomenon, which raises questions 
about the research validity and reliability (Silverman, 2009, 286). According to Noble 
and Smith (2015), there are three main concerns that every researcher should pay attention 
to: truth value, consistency and applicability. Firstly, “truth value” refers to the 
researcher’s ability to exclude personal experiences and viewpoints in order to represent 
the participants’ perspectives as clearly and trustworthy as possible. The researcher 
should always aim to represent their findings so that they reflect accurately the researched 
data. The researcher conducting the present study has gained abundance of experience on 
sports and women’s football, having played in various teams and countries. However, 
objectivity and neutrality must be ensured, as personal opinions should not affect the 
research, nor the interviews conducted. Furthermore, truth value requires the researcher 
to build all statements presented on trustworthy academic references, not on the personal 
experience. However, the researcher’s personal experience gained within the football 
environment can also be seen as an advantage, as the interviews with the sponsors 
contained often deep and field-specific conversations. This may not have been possible 
in case the researcher would not have had any personal experience on the matter. For 
example, when the discussions covered topics such as the quality of game or the image 
of women’s football in Finland, the experience gained enabled the researcher to ask 
specifying questions and reflect the answers given to the researcher’s personal 
experiences.  
Secondly, consistency requires one to be consistent, clear and transparent on decisions 
made throughout the research. In other words, any other researcher should be able to 
arrive to same conclusions, when using the same data and analyzing techniques. For 
instance, the researcher must not lead the discussion into the direction that is thought to 
be the right one according to him or her. As an active player of the sport, the researcher 
had to bear in mind that strong personal opinions on the topic must not be brought up 
40 
 
during the research. In addition, consistency requires the researcher to justify the 
decisions made during the research process. For instance, the researcher openly explained 
the difficulties in acquiring the interviewees and, thereafter, justified how the six sponsors 
interviewed were chosen to be part of the research.  
Thirdly, Noble and Smith (2015) highlight the applicability of the research. This means 
that the results presented to Finnish female football clubs and the governing association 
of the country should be applicable also to other contexts. In the present case, it is believed 
that the findings are also useful in other countries, where the sponsorship culture and 
development of female football are at a similar level to Finland. In addition, the findings 
may be used also in other female sports struggling with sponsorship acquisition. 
However, due to the rather small number of interviews, one must be careful when making 
generalizations about the research findings.  
Finally, an aspect worth highlighting beyond Noble and Smith’s (2015) criteria is the 
fact that this research has been conducted in cooperation with the Finnish Football 
Association. They have enlightened the researcher about the challenges and opportunities 
that women’s football is currently facing, and the contact person from the organization 
has helped in getting an access to some the companies interviewed through their contacts. 
Even if the Finnish Football Association had a role in the implementation of the research, 
there is no concern that they would have manipulated the findings at any rate. It is also in 
their interest is to get as objective and as trustworthy findings as possible on how to attract 
more sponsors to women’s football in the future. However, it is obvious that they have 
interfered in the research by providing subjective information on the current state of 
women’s football in Finland and by letting the researcher utilize their existing networks.  
 
41 
 
5 SPONSORING WOMEN’S FOOTBALL 
Before being able to improve sponsorship acquisition and commercialization, women’s 
football must first understand the current expectations and motivations companies 
sponsoring the sport hold. This will be done by presenting the results from the interviews 
conducted with six companies having invested in women’s football. While describing the 
answers given, comparisons will be made between the different-sized companies. The 
aim is to study whether bigger global companies see the possibilities and challenges of 
the sport similarly to smaller local ones sponsoring individual women’s clubs. The 
structure of this chapter will follow the sequence of themes described in the literature 
review, instead of contemplating the answers sponsor by sponsor.  
 
5.1 Sponsorship as a marketing method 
Before uncovering what potential the interviewed companies see specifically in women’s 
football sponsorship, it was considered necessary to understand why these organisations 
have chosen sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy. This section also provides an 
answer to the first sub-question “Why do companies use sponsorship as part of their 
marketing strategy?”. To recall, sponsorship enables companies to reach their target 
audience with a creative and appealing way, such as investing in sports – either as a 
strategic decision or based on pure goodwill – and is widely seen as a highly appreciated 
way to do marketing (McDonald 1991). Furthermore, sponsorship activities have been 
seen to lift employee motivation (Hickman, Lawrence & Ward 2005) and provide 
opportunities to build new business networks (Olkkonen 2001). However, businesses of 
different size may have diverse reasons to opt for sponsorship as a way to raise awareness 
and boost company image. 
The sponsor X, representing the big-sized company category, expressed their strategy 
to sponsor federations and tournaments in order to gain larger exposure to their brand and 
to reach many geographical markets at once. Visa agreed with this stating that they have 
sponsored, for example, the Olympic Games for more than 30 years and the FIFA and its 
tournaments for several years. Moreover, Visa has been a sponsor of NFL league’s Super 
Bowl, which received more than 102 million TV viewers only in US in 2020 (Yle 2020a). 
A long track record as a sponsor of multiple big events and organisations indicates that 
sponsorship has been seen as a valuable method to build brand image and accelerate 
business around the world.  
 
“.. And we really believe that sponsorship drives our business. As you may know Visa 
is a B2B company and we have a lot of activities and business together with banks and 
merchants all over the world. We are really proud that we can bring sponsorship to our 
42 
 
clients and our belief is that the results of our campaigns really show that sponsorship 
changes the way how you may drive the business for your client...” [Visa, interview 
24.1.2020]. 
 
The Head of UEFA Women’s Football Sponsorship at Visa described various examples 
having utilized cooperation with sporting events in many creative ways. For instance, 
they provided additional benefits to clients, partners and Olympic Games visitors using 
their Visa cards when buying tickets to the Olympics. She explained that due to these 
promotional campaigns, people are ready to pay more and use their card more often which 
is the consumer behaviour that Visa is obviously looking for. This shows that even if 
sponsors must often have giant sponsorship budgets, they eventually benefit from the 
investments via increased sales and enlarged customer numbers. The strategy of coming 
up with creative marketing campaigns – instead of just focusing on pure logo visibility – 
in sporting events is exactly what defenders of modern sponsorship are calling for. As 
Olkkonen et al. (2000) emphasize, the old-fashioned perspective of sponsorship as a 
mass-communication means is slowly making room for an approach emphasizing 
interaction and networking with the customers. 
Rantalainen, categorized as a small-sized club sponsor in the present research, also 
highlighted the importance of cooperation with clients. They consider sponsorship more 
as a cooperative partnership rather than a “one-way marketing channel”. According to the 
company’s marketing coordinator, it is important to be visible in those segments where 
the customers are. As a financial administration company, they also provide their services 
to sports clubs and thus, it is natural to sponsor specifically sports organisations. Similarly 
to bigger global-level sponsors, also Rantalainen states that the opportunity to gain larger 
exposure has lead the company to invest in sponsorship activities. 
Companies can, however, have sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy for other 
than pure financial reasons. The Swedish Obos stresses their focus on sponsorship targets 
that represent sustainability and social responsibility. As an operator in the housing 
industry, they explain to face a lot of inequality in their every-day-business and thus, 
promoting sustainable actions is seen as a natural way to do good for the society.  
 
“We do (have also other sponsorship targets in addition to sports) and that’s also part 
of our plan “Obos gives back”. We have a cultural programme but we also give money 
to environmental initiatives that we think are good for the society in a way or another.” 
[Obos, interview 21.1.2020]. 
 
These kinds of actions can stem from gaining goodwill. Naturally, putting money into 
a good cause is seen as an appreciated thing to do among the public, which leads to an 
improved company image. Corporate social responsibility has been a raising trend among 
43 
 
businesses lately and is nowadays seen as a necessity, rather than something extra that 
only few companies used to do to stand out. Also, the Finnish LocalTapiola understands 
the importance of goodwill in their operations. By supporting various sports and cultural 
organisations, the company hopes their customers to acknowledge them as an active 
member of the society and appreciate their committed engagement by acquiring their 
insurance and banking services from LocalTapiola. In the desired case, when supporting 
a junior sports team by covering their insurances, parents of these junior athletes form a 
positive attitude towards LocalTapiola. As it is more convenient and cost-effective to 
purchase all insurances from the same service-provider, it is natural to get also the home 
insurance and health insurances for the whole family from LocalTapiola. This way sport 
sponsorship can generate more revenue to the business. Even if the account manager of 
one of the regional companies within LocalTapiola stated that sponsorship does not 
generate profits for the company, businesses should aim to support their local 
communities. This is also in line with the company’s new strategy; instead of being just 
an insurance provider, LocalTapiola wants to be known as a lifelong companion for their 
customers. Being visible in consumers’ free time too, such as in sports and culture, 
strengthens this desired image.    
The Head of Sports from Pohjola Insurance took his time to explain how the 
approaches to sponsorship differ between the entities inside OP Group. Pohjola 
Insurance, the organization he represents, has partnered up with many sports federations 
around Finland, covering more than 80 different sports all the way from ice-hockey and 
orienteering to basketball. They focus on offering their sport insurances to the federations 
and this way, aim to gain more sales within sport context. Even if they are not cooperating 
with FFA, they promote their sport insurances also to football players. The cooperative 
banks instead, are sponsoring individual teams of all sports, including football. The Head 
of Sports states that the banks’ cooperation is more about giving back to the local society, 
often without having any commercial objectives. The cooperative banks are owned by 
their local customers and, thus, they want to share part of their profit with the clubs and 
this way, be actively part of the local society. However, an example bank from Western 
Uusimaa, a regional area in Southern Finland, has taken a more strategic attitude towards 
sponsorship lately. For instance, when applying for sponsorship funding, the clubs and 
teams need to carefully asses how they will spend the money, how they will measure the 
outcomes and how their values match with those of OP Group.  
The above answers indicate that including sponsorship in a company’s overall 
marketing strategy stems from various reasons. Sponsors of different size can share same 
sponsorship objectives, such as the aim to reach the customer target market in a more 
meaningful way and to boost the company’s image. In addition, sponsors seem to seek to 
fulfil their CSR related objectives through sponsorship, no matter how big or small the 
size of the business is. Sponsorship of amateur sports is generally undertaken to foster 
44 
 
goodwill (Quester and Thompson 2001) but Obos shows that also by sponsoring elite 
sports businesses may fulfill their CSR goals. The Finnish sponsors, however, 
acknowledged the smaller audiences of their actions and therefore, do not expect to gain 
big profits through sponsorship. No matter what the reasons for selecting sponsorship as 
the method to attract interest are, it is vital to select the target of the investments carefully 
to reach the intended target groups. The interviewees seemed to agree with Green’s 
(2003) finding, which stressed the fact that the sponsor’s target audience, with specific 
demographics and social characteristics, require certain sponsorship partners to be able 
to reach them. As all the interviewed sponsors shared at least one sponsorship target, 
women’s football, the interviewees were next asked what made them team up with this 
specific sport.  
 
5.2 Advantages found in sponsoring women’s football 
“…we are a brand for everyone, we are the brand that everyone talks about. Sports 
have the same idea, to unite and accept everyone, especially women’s football, 
somehow the connection happens there.” [Visa, interview 24.1.2020]. 
 
What do sponsors see particularly in women’s football? Asking this question from the 
interviewees often led to deep and critical discussions and it was evident that the sponsors 
had their distinct reasons to pair up with women’s football. As covered in chapter 2.4, 
there is a long list of benefits that can be associated with sponsorship. It was interesting 
to learn, which ones were associated with women’s football as a sponsored target and 
whether there were any other advantages that sponsors had identified during their 
commitment. This section plays a major role when answering to the main question of the 
present research “How could women’s football become an attractive target for 
sponsors?”. 
 
5.2.1 Growing interest 
The sponsor X, like some other interviewees, stressed that women’s football has begun 
to flourish recently. Even if sponsor X have supported the sport already for decades, the 
recent World Cup in France showed that there really is demand for women’s football. 
From their point of view, there will no longer be just boys and men playing and watching 
the game, it is now girls and women who will form a new consumer base for the game. 
Not only the number of players and attendees in female football events, but also social 
media trends indicate that women and girls are really interested in football. Currently, the 
return of investment level in women’s football is much higher than in many other sports 
45 
 
that they have been sponsoring. This finding confirms the view of the pioneer of 
sponsorship literature, Meenaghan (1991b, 43), who listed the level of coverage of the 
target audience as one of the main criteria why certain sport attracts sponsors.  
 
“A few years ago, it was quite evident that there is a momentum that is constantly 
growing, the product (women’s football) is improving, the investments are coming, and 
we did say that we believe that this is going to be a spiritual moment for women. - - We 
know there will be no more boys in football on average. Women’s football is a whole 
new demographic for us. It’s a legitimate growth opportunity. It will be played by 
women, there will be more women watching, so it will be commercially also relevant for 
us.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
Also, Visa had noted the growing interest towards women’s football and, thus, wanted to 
do their part to make it even more popular and visible. However, they do recognize that 
the sport is still lagging behind the interest shown in the men’s game. Therefore, to get 
most out of the partnership, the interviewee stressed that one must be fully committed 
with their sponsorship to drive the game. The bigger the game is and the more followers 
it has, also Visa as a company associated with the sport gains wider positive exposure. 
 
“As you may know we partnered with UEFA about a year ago, in December 2018. And 
when we were doing it, we did understand that there is potential behind the game and 
also we truly wanted to do as much as we can to change the situation of the game. 
Because it is football, there is high potential for game development as well as making it 
work for our brand.” [Visa, interview 24.1.2020]. 
 
Many companies mentioned the increasing interest towards women’s sports and that it is 
worth taking part in this rising trend by investing in it. From women’s football point of 
view, it was noteworthy to observe that even if some companies support the sport mainly 
to promote goodwill within the local community, such as LocalTapiola or the OP 
cooperative banks, some organisations recognize the sport as a real business case with 
expected financial returns. Obos agrees with this by saying that: 
 
“…So yes, we do think that women’s football is valuable to our brand. It is super 
important that we show that there is a business case in sponsoring women’s sports as 
well.” [Obos, interview 21.1.2020]. 
 
Obos and Visa referred to women’s football as a “business case”, and sponsor X talked 
about it as a “commercial opportunity”. These big sponsors have made considerable 
investments in the sport and were passionate about the growing interest towards the sport. 
46 
 
For them, this kind of sponsorship is more profoundly part of their strategy in building 
their corporate image, where it is important to be part of a bigger worldwide movement 
where women and women’s sports are slowly becoming equal to men’s. When 
interviewing the Finnish club-level sponsors, instead, it could be interpreted that women’s 
football sponsorship is not seen as a strategy level investment, even if the rising popularity 
of the sport was acknowledged. This is understandable, since football is not as 
commercialized yet in Finland as it is in the UK and in Sweden, for example. It can be 
predicted that after the sport gains more followers and players, it attracts more and more 
companies to join the development. The interviewee from Pohjola Insurance explained 
that they, nor the OP cooperative banks, do not sponsor directly women’s football teams. 
Instead, when supporting a specific football club, they expect the club shares some of the 
funding with the women’s team, too. He notes that women’s and girls’ football will gain 
more attention in the future but also form the future growth potential in numbers of 
players:  
 
“Girls and women will be the target group that has the biggest growth potential and it 
is also our interest that the sport grows.” [Pohjola Insurance, interview 16.4.2020]. 
 
5.2.2 Channel to reach target consumers 
In addition to the raising interest towards the game, there were also other reasons that 
companies outlined, when asked about the reasons behind sponsoring women’s football. 
A second big theme identified was the ability to reach the desired target audience through 
women’s football. This is in accordance with the findings of Meenaghan (1991b) and 
others (e.g. McCarthy & Irwin 2000). Sports contain strong emotions and sponsors hope 
to benefit from the strong connection between the spectators and a sports club. A fan 
associating his or her favourite sports team with its sponsoring brand is on every sponsor’s 
wish-list.  
The spectator base of women’s football differs from the men’s game. The interviewee 
from Visa stated that it has been acknowledged that families, younger children and 
women are the core consumers of women’s game, whereas men’s football is traditionally 
consumed by males gathering together with their friends. The followers of women’s 
football are often also the target market for the organisations sponsoring women’s 
football. For instance, an interesting example given by the interviewee from Finnish 
LocalTapiola explained that they have researched that mothers are often the ones that 
make insurance related decisions within families and thus, sponsoring women’s and 
junior’s football is seen as a way to address the marketing message to the decision makers 
in families. If the mothers associate LocalTapiola as a benevolent supporter of football 
47 
 
and as a high-quality sports insurance provider, they are more willing to select 
LocalTapiola over its competitors also for purchasing other insurances.  
The other interviewees agreed with the statement that the sponsored target must be 
valued by its follower base. Reaching female consumers through the sport has gained 
wider interest due to the change in the target group’s behaviour. For instance, previously 
football stadiums were seen as men’s territory, but women have recently found their way 
there, too. Sponsor X addressed this fact by saying that: 
 
“For us women’s football is the gate way to reach women… But we had realised that 
women have never been to the stadium before and they have been quite intimidated by 
that environment. However, they (women) could relate what was happening this 
summer, the World Cup. So, we saw this as a gate way to female consumers. Yes, 
something they can relate to...” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
The spectator base of the sport may be an important factor to the sponsor also from 
employer branding viewpoint. Rantalainen stated that 80% of the company’s employees 
are women and thus, they found it important to support particularly women’s sports. Their 
mission is to be the best workplace for financial management professionals and, therefore, 
the impact of sponsorship decisions on employer image is carefully taken into account 
before signing any sponsorship deals.  
 
“It feels natural for us not to sponsor only men’s sport and the most popular sports 
but to support especially women, as in this way our personnel can identify themselves 
better with the company and its values. It also influences the employer brand. In 
addition, we always aim to inform our staff whenever we sign new sponsorship deals, it 
is important that they know the news, too” [Rantalainen, interview 12.2.2020]. 
 
 As Hickman et al. (2005) propose, employees are more committed to their work if they 
approve their employer’s sponsorship decisions. Even if other sponsors, apart from 
Rantalainen, did not bring up this subject, it is believed that companies find it generally 
valuable to get general acceptance for the sponsorship deals by their personnel. Thus, 
both literature and empirical evidence suggest that the chosen sponsorship targets have 
influence on consumers’ image of the business but also the company’s existing and 
potential employee’s attitudes. 
Pohjola Insurance and the cooperative banks of OP Group are involved in many 
different fields of sport. They aim to be visible all-around Finland and this way, gain 
exposure and increase their sales. OP Group provides banking and insurance services 
which are necessary to consumers from all demographic and social backgrounds. This 
has influenced their decision to cooperate with various sports instead of focusing only on 
48 
 
a specific sport or gender. The Head of Sport of Pohjola Insurance stated that, generally, 
bigger national sponsors in Finland, such as OP Group, Finnair or Telia, seldom select 
just a women’s sport to support, since their customer target groups represent wide range 
of people. Thus, rather than sponsoring only women’s football, it is more in Pohjola 
Insurance’s interest to support variety of sports including different age groups, minorities 
and genders.  
 
5.2.3 Relatable values 
The third major theme addressed by each interviewee was the fit of values between the 
sponsorship partners. This criterion is also widely covered in the sponsorship literature. 
Based on the interviews, it was observed that the importance of a “good match”, or “fit,” 
between the sponsor and the target is not just an academic finding but sponsors are 
actively applying this criterion in their sponsorship strategy. As Rifon et al. (2004) 
explain, the specialty of sponsorship is the formation of the marketing message sent to 
public; the unique association established between the sponsor and the object is hoped to 
generate attention and attraction. By partnering with a target with similar brand values, 
the sponsor can increase the efficiency of the message, as the customer response is 
stronger when consumers perceive there is a consistent fit between the partners (Speed & 
Thompson 2000).   
The sponsors interviewed want their sponsored targets to reflect the sponsor’s core 
values and to obey good governance. It became clear that sustainability and equality are 
values often associated with women’s football. Many companies aim to reflect these 
positive attributes and hope to achieve this by supporting women’s sport prominently. As 
Cornwell et al (2001) and Morgan (2019) suggest, women’s professional sports may 
provide a marketing answer for companies aiming to satisfy both their commercial and 
value-based objectives. Obos has made a strategic decision to invest in the women’s game 
even before starting to support men’s football that has more spectators and followers. 
This suggests that women’s football as a sponsorship partner may offer different 
possibilities from men’s. When asked what the organization values in women’s football, 
the interviewee from Obos stressed that they want to promote gender equality in their 
marketing decisions and women’s football has been an excellent opportunity to reflect 
these values: 
 
“We are pro-equal in sponsoring, it’s our way of doing it. It was an active choice to 
start sponsoring (women’s football) as we want to stress the fact that sponsoring is so 
unequal today. We need to understand that only 20% in general goes to women and 
girls. We as a company are also building the (football) industry. - - We work with 
equality a lot. That’s one of our main topics when it comes to sustainability. We can 
49 
 
really use our commitment in football to visualise the importance of equality both in our 
business but also in sports, especially in football.” [Obos, interview 21.2.2020]. 
 
Obos has been particularly active in promoting equality and sustainability. For instance, 
one of their marketing campaigns, launched in spring 2019, gained wide attention in 
social media. They set up a booth in the middle of a Central Station in Stockholm and 
built a small version of a football field inside it. Then the by-passers were asked to enter 
the booth and try to score a penalty kick. What made the situation more difficult was the 
fact that each penalty taker was asked to wear headphones during their try. Instead of 
listening to cheering crowd or encouraging comments, Obos had recorded mean insults 
that girls and women had reported to have faced during their football careers. Comments 
such as “you are the worst”, “girls cannot play football” and “she really thinks that she is 
something” lowered the penalty takers’ self-esteem and afterwards they admitted that 
scoring was much more difficult. Obos wanted to make a statement that football belongs 
to both genders equally and insulting girls is unacceptable.  
Sponsor X has also taken values and equality issues seriously in their marketing 
activities. The PR representative from the company captured this well by stating simply 
that “women’s football is aligned with our values. Women’s football should be treated 
with equal terms”. These statements indicate that businesses sponsor certain entities not 
only to fulfil their commercial objectives but also to signal more profound messages to 
consumers. Consumers want to hear inspiring stories and relate to them. Then again, it is 
important to be truly committed to the sponsorship target chosen. The interviewee from 
sponsor X warned against empowering women by copying others’ marketing approaches, 
if it is not something that matches the company’s ideology. The interviewee summarised 
their thoughts on the matter frankly: 
 
“… it (sponsoring women’s football) is not any kind of CSR exercise for us. We really 
want to support women… If football as a game is that influential, why women’s football 
wouldn’t be?” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
The idea of value-fit between the sponsor and the target has also been on 
LocalTapiola’s and OP cooperative banks’ priority list, when selecting sponsorship 
targets. Even if both organisations have mainly displayed their goodwill by investing in 
various sports clubs, they still have certain requirements for their sponsored targets. Most 
importantly, the values of the sponsored targets need to be in accordance with those of 
LocalTapiola and OP Group. This implies that even if commercial objectives are not the 
primary driver behind supporting women’s football, the values of the sponsorship 
partners must coincide. Since LocalTapiola and OP Group are nationwide organizations 
and actively supporting sports and culture around Finland, also their sponsorship 
50 
 
activities gain large visibility. LocalTapiola interviewee’s comment reveals that a careful 
decision-making process takes place before entering into a sponsorship agreement: 
 
“We have long traditions from being a responsible business partner. This means that 
we expect good practices and good governance from our partners and that their values 
are close to ours. For example, in case of HJK (Helsingin Jalkapalloklubi) we 
acknowledged that their set of values is similar to ours. Positive news coverage over the 
sponsored team and matching values, those are the things that are import to us.” 
[LocalTapiola, interview 5.2.2020]. 
 
The Head of Sports from Pohjola Insurance listed the OP cooperative banks’ values that 
they expect their sponsored targets to reflect: 
 
“Since the cooperative banks are focusing on club-level sponsorship, they consider 
aspects such as locality, responsibility, enabling exercise and preventing exclusion 
when signing the sponsorship deals.” [Pohjola Insurance, interview 16.4.2020]. 
 
Each of the interviewed sponsors raised the value aspect in sponsorship. This confirms 
that irrespective of the size of the sponsor or the investments, it is crucial that the partners 
share the same goals. Some of the interviewees explained that it would be confusing to 
the audience, if the values and image of the sponsorship partners clash. In such case, the 
investment could even turn against the sponsor. Moreover, nowadays it is not enough that 
companies produce products and services, but they need to have relatable values and be 
seen to act according to them. Sponsorship as a marketing method provides excellent 
opportunities to signal these values to external stakeholders. Consumers form 
connotations between the sponsorship partners easily and thus, sponsors should pay 
particular attention in deciding which oraganisation or entity to invest in.   
The values attached to women’s football were often summarised to include equality, 
sustainability and inspiration. Women’s football is becoming progressively popular, the 
quality of the game is improving, and increasing number of young girls start it as their 
low-cost, easy-access hobby. It became clear that women’s football reflects relatable 
values that companies want their brands to be associated as well. Sponsor X particularly 
highlighted the gender aspect. It became evident that football as a sport is a channel for 
girls and women to express themselves and sponsors are doing their part to “support the 
acceptance”, as the Head of Women’s Football Sponsorship from Visa explained. It was 
observed that those sponsors who considered women’s football as their strategic partner 
and a major investment target, paid more attention of equality related matters. Besides, 
they talked about unfair treatment more passionately and shared their examples on the 
matter spontaneously. This indicates that the big sponsors really want to be part of the 
51 
 
trending movement of empowering women’s sports. Also the Finnish sponsors recognize 
the problem and hope that the support granted to women’s football would make a change 
for better. Yet, the difference between the sponsors is that bigger international 
investments are believed to have a real impact, whereas smaller investments are rather 
considered as “the right thing to do”.   
 
5.2.4 Player brands 
Interestingly, outside the commonly used framework of critical factors impacting the 
sponsorship target choices, many of the interviewees brought up the importance of player 
brands.  The researcher did not come across this factor attached to target selection models, 
when studying the sponsorship literature, even if it is evident that players as brands have 
a massive influence nowadays. Athletes have become products to be bought and sold on 
the celebrity marketplace and many of them have large follower bases. This is partly 
because consumers consider athletes’ lives to be “desirable” (Chandler et al. 2002, 47; 
Chadwick & Burton 2008). Female football players have enormous number of followers 
on social media as well; for example, at the time the current chapter is being written 
(28.3.2020) the Norwegian footballer Ada Hederberg has 317 000 followers on 
Instagram, the Brasilian player Marta has 2.5 million followers and Alex Morgan from 
the U.S. has even 9.3 million followers. Even if good sport performance on the football 
field may help in creating awareness of a football player’s potential as a brand, athletes 
need to build their equity off-field, too (Chadwick & Burton 2008). 
It is apparent that corporations are willing to work with the player brands to reach their 
marketing objectives. An interesting brand persona, wide demographic appeal and ability 
to influence fans (Pegoraro & Jinnah 2012) are attributes that make footballers attractive 
partners to sponsors. The interviewees of this present study were all chosen to be 
interviewed, due to their sponsorship relationship with a federation, league or a club but 
some of them are sponsoring also individual players. They explained that for the sponsor, 
player brands act as an effective channel to reach more audience and to give credibility 
to the messages targeted to consumers. The sponsor may feature in the athlete’s social 
media channels or provide them with clothing or other gear, in order to gain more 
visibility for the company brand. Sponsor X have long traditions from working with 
female football players and the interviewee from the company praised the ease of working 
with them as follows: 
 
“If you have the players people can follow and trust… Helping them to grow their 
equity is important. What women’s football already does much better than men’s 
football is that they are quite open, they are relatable, they are easy to cooperate with. 
52 
 
Men are different…There’s the agent, then the company behind the player… and 
everything! It’s a massive benefit that in women’s football, there’s not this massive 
complexity yet.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
Visa had similar thoughts on the brand value of female players nowadays. Visa has 
also signed many deals with elite players around Europe and helped them to raise their 
social profiles. The interviewee from Visa stressed that the players’ brand equity does not 
need to consist only of football and sports, each player is a unique individual with a unique 
story to be told. She explained that these stories are something that fans want to hear and 
relate to. It was understood that female athletes are increasingly building their own brands 
on social media and sponsors are supporting them in the process. Visa has formed a 
“Team Visa” consisting of the players whom they are sponsoring in Europe and they 
created two-minute documentaries of these athletes displaying their characters and 
background stories (Carp 2019). Even if Musto et al. (2017) observed an ongoing trend 
amongst commentators focusing on female athletes’ feminine roles as wives, mothers, or 
girlfriends, women are actively battling against this old-fashioned mindset by building 
their brand equity as strong and independent athletes. The head of sponsorship from Visa 
highlighted the attractiveness of women football players as follows:  
 
“I’m repeating myself, but we want to help to drive the game by creating these role 
models so that people know who these players are. They (the players) are really doing a 
great job and usually they do have really great stories, not only for playing football but 
they have also some other initiatives, like having own views, having a family, some are 
really popular singers etc. They have really interesting stories to share!” [Visa, 
interview 24.1.2020]. 
 
Furthermore, in the big sponsors’ view, the female brands were considered to be 
important especially to young fans. Instead of Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo, young 
girls want to admire female football stars. The shared view among the international 
sponsors was that the FIFA World Cup in France in 2019 was a turning point in women’s 
football. Besides generating new fans for women’s football around the globe, the 
competition created several new role models for the fans to look upon. Like Visa and 
Obos, sponsor X had noticed the importance of the World Cup: 
 
“We saw how a few of the players became those role models (during the FIFA World’s 
Cup in 2019) as there has been a lack of female role models in female sports in general. 
We see that some players are already role models that young consumers can relate 
themselves to.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
53 
 
With the help of the role models, sponsors hope to engage more young girls to the 
sport. These girls are expected to associate the sponsoring brand with their dearest idol 
and, consequently, form a positive attitude toward the sponsoring organisation. Obos, the 
sponsor of the elite league in Sweden, raised the aspect of mutual benefit between the 
players and the sponsor. The company representative shared some ideas for the future, 
how players and the sponsor could take advantage of each other. The players could feature 
in Obos’ housing sale campaigns, whereas Obos could create stories around the players 
and share these in their own social media channels. As experienced by the organisation’s 
sustainability and communications manager, women use social media more actively and 
are more creative there, compared to their male counterparts. The cooperation with the 
players was summed up as follows: 
 
“Something that has been clear to us is that younger girls must have women they can 
look up to and we work together with the players to visualise them as individuals.” 
[Obos, interview 21.1.2020]. 
 
Based on the interviews conducted for this thesis, it became evident that big traditional 
sponsors were much more interested in the player brand equity, compared to the Finnish 
sponsors. There might be several reasons for this. One aspect is the fact that the more 
money a sponsor invests in the sport and the more carefully the sponsorship decisions are 
made, the more vibrant sponsorship channels are often used. The traditional sponsors use 
their valuable player brands for marketing purposes, since they have been observed to be 
efficient channels to reach target audience. Secondly, there are not many Finnish female 
football players that the whole nation would recognize. Therefore, as the branding of 
players is not very advanced in Finland, it has not been seen as a profitable deal to sponsor 
individual players, who do not raise any emotions among consumers and whom the 
consumers do not relate to. Neither Rantalainen nor Pohjola Insurance mentioned the 
subject at all, whereas LocalTapiola admitted that they could have made a better use of 
the persona of the individual players from the teams that they have been sponsoring. An 
active engagement and cooperation could have possibly generated new followers to 
women’s football in Finland. The account manager from LocalTapiola came up with 
several ideas, how they could develop their cooperation in the future with HJK, one of 
the teams sponsored by them. For instance, LocalTapiola could bring up the team more 
actively in their internal news channels and invite the team to various customer events 
held by the company. The reason for not doing this is that some other sponsorship 
partners, such as a men’s ice-hockey team would attract more interest among different 
stakeholders. At the same time, the interviewee stated that it is the sponsor’s obligation 
to boost the image of the players and the sport as a whole.  
54 
 
All in all, the answers given suggest that if women’s football wants to become more 
attractive sponsorship target in Finland it should promote more strongly individual 
players. Unique persona, stories and skills attract interest among fans which boosts the 
whole sport’s image. As companies seem to be interested in utilising player brands to 
reach their marketing objectives, player brands can become valuable assets to the sport. 
The value of player brands was also an interesting finding from literature’s point of view, 
since player brands are not actively included into sponsorship selection models currently.  
 
5.2.5 Reputationally safe sponsorship target 
When making the sponsorship decision, companies weigh the advantages they get against 
the corresponding cost. The price tags in men’s sponsorship deals are often significantly 
higher compared to those of women. When investing in women’s football, sponsors 
generally get fewer benefits, due to lower spectator numbers for the game. Alternatively, 
in some cases, as the interviewees from Rantalainen and Pohjola Insurance informed, 
when sponsoring a certain club, the money is distributed between the men’s and women’s 
teams. The general agreement among the interviewed sponsors was, however, that 
women’s football is considered to be a more cost-effective investment target compared 
to men’s sports. This is in accordance with Greenhalgh and Greenwell’s (2013) findings, 
according to which especially cost effectiveness, more refined target market, flexibility 
and avoidance of sponsorship saturation attracts sponsors in niche sports, which women’s 
football can be regarded to belong to. Sponsor X captured their thoughts as follows: 
 
“Specifically, women’s football, is still a fantastic investment opportunity as the ROI 
will be much higher than in many other sports.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
Among many other positive attributes presented in this chapter, most of the interviewees 
considered women’s football mainly as a risk-free investment. Here is Obos’ initial 
answer to the question regarding challenges in women’s football: 
 
“I can’t say there’s no any risks in women’s football. Of course, there are always risks 
when you’re sponsoring, like corruption and drugs and so on. But that happens less in 
women’s football to be honest.” [Obos, interview 21.1.2020]. 
 
During the interview with sponsor X, the respondent talked about the seldom unequal 
treatment of women’s football and about the risk of being called out by media and 
customers, if the sponsor is not truly committed to the sport. Despite these possible 
challenges the interviewee asserted that women’s football can be regarded as a risk-free 
investment:  
55 
 
 
“There is no better thing to do than women’s football right now. There are no 
downsides in investing in women’s football, only benefits.” [Sponsor X, interview 
28.11.2019]. 
 
Also, the smaller sponsors were unable to identify any major risks associated 
specifically with sponsoring women’s football. The interviewee from Rantalainen 
considered the low exposure of the game to be the only challenge that they are expecting 
to face. The Head of Sports at Pohjola Insurance did not associate any specific risks with 
women’s football but said that, in general, they regard sports as a safe sponsorship target. 
Of course, they expect their sponsored entities not to engage in doping or show 
disreputable behaviour. Rather than sponsoring single athletes, Pohjola Insurance 
nowadays focuses more on supporting sports reflecting sense of community. The 
representative from LocalTapiola stated that they have not have any problems with their 
sponsorship entities:  
 
 “We have not had any problems with them (HJK) during our cooperation. A possible 
risk could be, however, that the club or a team breaks ethical values or acts against 
good governance. Of course, we also want that the club manages its financial 
operations sustainably and profitably. But as I said we have not experienced any of 
these issues.” [LocalTapiola, interview 5.2.2020]. 
 
Women’s football in Finland has taken an active decision to start developing the sport 
and commercialising it more strongly. Based on the interviews conducted it became clear 
that women’s football is associated with many positive elements. Growing interest toward 
the sport, channel to reach target customers, relatable values, player brands and image of 
a partner are all attributes valued by the sponsors. Women’s football is recommended to 
build their marketing operations and image on these assets to become even more attractive 
investment target. After researching the assets sponsors are ready to pay for when 
partnering with women’s football, it is necessary to find out how the sponsorship 
decisions are implemented to be able to interfere the sponsorship target selection process. 
This will be covered in the next chapter.  
 
5.3 Sponsorship target selection 
If women’s football desires to gain more partners, the sport must market itself as a 
resource that can be a basis for a competitive advantage for the sponsor to differentiate 
from its competitors (Amis et al. 1999). Therefore, it is crucial to understand how 
companies execute their sponsorship decision making and how they want to be 
56 
 
approached in terms of the sponsorship proposal. This chapter contributes to the study by 
discovering the challenges in the companies’ decision-making process and in the 
proposals suggested by women’s football to the sponsors. All in all, this chapter provides 
answers to the second sub-question “How do sponsors select their sponsorship targets?”. 
 
5.3.1 Sponsorship decision making process 
Sponsors evidently value the ability of an organisation to help achieve the company’s 
marketing objectives (Olkkonen & Tuominen 2008) but there are also other factors 
influencing the sponsorship decision-making. Sponsor’s relationships with rights holders 
and the decision maker’s idea about how a sponsorship may satisfy their own social and 
self-determined motivations influence the target selection. Moreover, the corporate 
culture and structure affect the decision-making process (Vance et al. 2016). Based on 
the interviews, it became clear that each sponsorship deal must be in accordance with the 
overall marketing strategy of the company. Having a clear sponsorship strategy was 
typical for both the international big sponsors and the Finnish sponsors. The difference 
was, however, that the international companies had separate teams dedicated to 
sponsorship related issues, whereas in the smaller companies, individual employees had 
bigger responsibilities in sponsorship search and relationship building. The bigger 
sponsors involved in the present research have invested larger sums in sponsorship and, 
therefore, the deals require more resources to be implemented and executed.  
It became evident that the stronger supporters of women’s football, sponsor X, Visa 
and Obos, had comprehensive sponsorship strategies which include guidelines that all 
sponsorship deals made must follow. The decisions are made usually at the top 
management level or in teams dedicated to sponsorship related matters. Each entered deal 
must be considered as a legitimate business case that promotes the company’s goals. 
However, within the companies interviewed, the global strategies leave a certain margin 
of flexibility to sign deals that are considered as beneficial in a specific geographical 
target market. Companies often face the challenge of finding the optimal balance between 
standardizing and adapting their marketing strategies to various geographical and cultural 
markets in order to be successful (Schmid & Kotulla 2011) and this applies also to 
sponsorship. This is how sponsor X has is implementing their sponsorship strategy:  
 
 “There’s some freedom but there’s a global strategy that is defined. I don’t think there 
is a massive difference in the various strategies but there’s certain flexibility to allow 
local freedom. But it’s pretty much central, there is no dramatic differences from 
country to country. As a company we have a focus on certain countries and certain, I 
would say, cities even.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
57 
 
Similarly to sponsor X, Obos has left a certain amount of decision-making power to the 
middle-management of the company, when selecting sponsorship entities to start a 
relationship with.  
 
“The sponsorship of Damalssvenskan (The top-level league in Sweden) is over 40 
Million SEK over 5years, it’s quite amount of money. That decision came from the top-
level. Of course, we also have other sponsorship programmes where the decisions are 
made by the management level of the company. [Obos, interview 21.1.2020]. 
 
The interviewee from Visa also explained that the decisions made have to be in 
accordance with the company’s overall marketing strategy. She highlighted the 
responsibility of the sponsorship team that takes care of each case, all the way from the 
evaluation phase until the relationship maintenance:  
 
“There’s the sponsorship team of course. The decisions are not completely mine as 
there is the team. The team is thriving for the sponsorship decisions. When looking for 
new sponsorships they are evaluating their and our needs, how the case can be 
connected to our strategy and this business, what could be the benefits for us… like 
okay, this is a real business case. These are always presented and driven by the 
sponsorship team. [Visa, interview 24.1.2020]. 
 
The Finnish companies interviewed had a different approach to sponsorship decision-
making. Even if the companies had an overall marketing strategy that also the sponsorship 
deals must follow, the structure of the companies and the size of the investments allowed 
more responsibility to be assigned to individual employees instead of large teams. This 
suggests that the decision maker’s or executer’s personal interests and beliefs about how 
a sponsorship may satisfy their own social motivations may influence the target selection 
more in smaller companies compared to bigger companies with more structured 
organisation. The interviewees from Pohjola Insurance and LocalTapiola explained that 
whenever signing sponsorship deals, the company takes also their existing strategical 
partners into account. Insurance providers often cooperate with specific medical service 
providers or, like in Pohjola Insurance’s case, Pohjola Hospitals are part of the OP group 
and thus, part of the same organisation. It would important for them that the team or club 
being sponsored has deals with also the insurance provider’s partners, so that the 
cooperation between all the stakeholders is as smooth as possible. In case of an injury, 
the whole treatment chain is more effective for the player, if the insurance provider and 
the hospital giving the treatment are partners of each other. Despite having these certain 
guidelines for sponsorship deals, the responsibility and decision-making power of a single 
58 
 
employee is high when implementing the regional company’s sponsorship strategy at 
LocalTapiola: 
 
“As a regional company we have our own partnership strategy. A new three-year 
strategy period just started here, and we have authorized one person to take care that 
the partnerships are in accordance with those criteria that we have initially set. This 
person’s responsibilities are also to actively communicate with these partners and look 
for new ways of cooperation.” [LocalTapiola, interview 5.2.2020]. 
 
The interviewee at Pohjola Insurance explained the various approaches to sponsorship 
within the OP Group, and that the sponsorship decision making differs between the 
entities (Pohjola Insurance, Pohjola Hospital, the central organisation and cooperative 
banks). Especially the cooperative banks around Finland have a lot of freedom when 
selecting the entities to be sponsored and the decision-making is decentralised. The Head 
of Sport of Pohjola Insurance noted, however, that all the entities coordinate and 
communicate with each other when considering sponsoring certain clubs. If someone has 
already cooperated with a certain target, they will openly share their experiences gained 
with each other. It can be expected that the individual banks have less personnel dedicated 
to sponsorship operations, whereas Pohjola Insurance, Pohjola Hospital and the central 
organisation consider the decisions with a bigger group of people.  
The marketing coordinator from Rantalainen explained that often their salespeople, 
who cooperate closely with their existing clients and search for new ones, come up with 
new sponsorship cases. She explained that, in addition to pure sponsorship, the company 
might expand their existing customer-relationships to include some sponsorship elements. 
For example, they have had various activities arranged together with the Finnish football 
club FC Honka. They created a video clip together boosting each other’s visibility and 
shared it in both parties’ social media channels. Moreover, they have arranged events 
where Rantalainen teaches how sport clubs’ finances should be managed. Based on the 
interview, it was difficult to identify pre-determined criteria by which clubs are treated as 
pure sponsorship cases and which ones are their customers that they cooperate with by 
creating various campaigns in order to achieve mutual benefit from each other. 
Nevertheless, the interview with Rantalainen showed how customer-relationships can be 
transformed into a sponsorship case: 
 
“Sales recognises the cases and marketing takes the responsibility of them then, that’s 
how it goes. Often it is our existing customer that we decide to start a companionship. 
In those cases, we sign a new deal with them. Or if get a new potential customer we can 
sign a sponsorship deal with them instead. Sometimes our sales employees discover 
59 
 
those opportunities and sometimes these entities suggest them by their selves. 
[Rantalainen, interview 12.2.2020]. 
 
Each interviewee indicated that the companies they represent have a comprehensive 
marketing strategy that includes guidelines for sponsorship operations. The firms selected 
to the current study are all large companies in their respective fields and, therefore, it is 
logical that each of them has established a proper strategy for their marketing activities. 
In big international companies, the larger size of sponsorship investments requires more 
structured planning and more people involved in the decision-making process. Smaller 
companies, instead, give more freedom to their employees working with marketing and 
sponsorship related issues. Due to lower level of bureaucracy and smaller size of teams, 
individuals may have an opportunity to satisfy their social and self-determined 
motivations. If a women’s football team, club or federation wishes to be sponsored by 
these kinds of companies, they can try to appeal to the decision-makers’ personal attitudes 
and beliefs and see whether the sport is something that the specific person feels passionate 
about. Moreover, the entity wishing to get sponsorship funding can invite the sponsors to 
watch the games to boost their interest in the sport. When approaching bigger sponsors, 
where the decisions are typically made centrally, the strategic fit between the company 
and the sponsored sport is even more crucial.  
 
5.3.2 The importance of mutually benefitting proposal  
According to the theoretical setting of the present research, sponsorship is about value-
cocreation; in sponsorship, the value does not stem from discrete transactions but from 
the unique business relationship between the partners (Farrelly & Quester 2005b). The 
entities most in need of sponsorship funding should especially adopt a relationship 
marketing approach, resulting in long-term partnerships. Yet, sponsorship managers have 
revealed their frustration on receiving unsolicited and generalized sponsorship proposals 
(Vance et al. 2016). Also, the Finnish sponsorship expert acted as one of the pilot 
interviewees, (interview, 21.10.2019), stressed the importance of well-prepared 
sponsorship requests when approaching potential supporters. Entities that have a well-
prepared and planned sponsorship proposal are more likely to get new partners.  
Starting from the financial management company, Rantalainen, their marketing 
coordinator recommended organisations seeking sponsoring to devote enough efforts in 
preparing the proposal, no matter the sport or the level of the team. There are numerous 
ways sponsorship can be executed and utilized. According to her, sponsorship has moved 
to a “next level” far beyond the logo-presence that it used to be. She suggested that before 
contacting the potential sponsor, the entity should carefully think what benefits they can 
offer to the sponsor. The approach should be tailored according to the potential sponsor; 
60 
 
what is the industry they are operating in, who are their customers and what kind of 
marketing they are willing to do? If the entity approaching new sponsors has nothing to 
offer, it becomes pure charity for the sponsor.  
 
“Mutual benefit and making progress together, those are the most important factors in 
terms of proposal. My tip would be to study the company and think what the concrete 
benefits are they get when partnering with you. Partnerships can include things such as 
inviting the sponsors to various events where they can tell about their services and 
products or other forms of networking opportunities.” [Rantalainen, interview 
12.2.2020]. 
 
When asking the account manager from LocalTapiola, if he had any suggestions how 
women’s football teams could get more sponsors, he stated that they, as a sponsor, should 
perhaps be more active and come up with more creative ways to utilize the sponsorships 
they already have. Instead of sharing any tips for sponsorship search, he indicated that 
both the clubs wishing to be sponsored and sponsors can be pro-active and suggest various 
ideas how to work together and co-create value. The examples from abroad (see chapter 
3.3.) show that sponsorship has become more innovative and there are countless 
possibilities to benefit from each other’s assets. For instance, sponsoring digital content 
series featured by a football team can be something that attracts positive attention among 
the fans. The interviewee explained that LocalTapiola receives many sponsorship 
proposals every year and, therefore, entities with comprehensive and innovative requests 
may stand out.  
The interviewee from Pohjola Insurance had similar thoughts to the other Finnish 
sponsors. He said that some of the cooperative banks in Finland cooperating with 
individual clubs have started to require more comprehensive proposals and the outcomes 
have been promising. This indicates that a more strategic approach of sponsorship 
selection is increasingly being adopted by local banks. This requires the clubs or groups 
wishing to get financial aid to invest more in preparing and motivating their sponsorship 
requests. In addition, the Head of Sports of Pohjola Insurance indicated that the younger 
age groups, who are active on social media, often have creative ideas to promote the 
partnership online. He recommended the sponsored entities to feel free to share these 
ideas with the sponsor, since the sponsor seldom has time or enough knowledge on how 
to reach certain customer target groups: 
 
“Providing workforce for the sponsor is always great, the sponsor can use the players 
in different events and marketing campaigns. In addition, some innovative ideas how to 
expose the partnership on social media are always welcomed, sponsors seldom know 
how to reach certain target groups.” [Pohjola Insurance, interview 16.4.2020]. 
61 
 
 
Women’s football teams find it easier to approach local companies when searching for 
new financial support. Bigger multinational companies, instead, sign their deals at a 
strategical level and are often result of long negotiations. When asked how women’s 
football entities could get more sponsors, the interviewee from Visa stated that it is not 
solely about women’s football’s responsibility to develop and commercialize the sport, 
but also other stakeholders should be collaborative and invest in the events and campaigns 
organized around the sport: 
 
“I mean, for me it’s always quite helpful when the sponsors are really collaborative 
with the bodies, I mean the properties, like UEFA in my case because whenever we are 
talking about new kind of sponsorship when we do not only invest money but we really 
want to change something it is really important to…all involved, other sponsors, 
partners, players, for the itself game and the lovers of the game to work in a 
collaborative level. End of the day, everyone has the same target. And whenever you are 
combining the effort you usually get much better results compared to everyone working 
towards their own direction. When talking about the investments, it’s not just money, 
it’s the effort, it’s the energy, it’s the people and other resources, when you combine all 
these you get totally different results! [Visa, interview 24.1.2020]. 
 
Sponsorship activities arranged with federations and leagues are strategic investments 
and, therefore, require many stakeholders’ involvement during the process. The success 
of the investment is not purely dependent on the image and attractiveness of women’s 
football alone but requires cooperation from the federations and media side as well. Single 
clubs looking for sponsors are encouraged to approach local companies instead of 
multinational ones that follow strictly their sponsorship strategy. Based on the conducted 
interviews, the sponsors were happy to receive all kinds of ideas from the target 
candidates on how to make full use of the cooperation. In many cases, the sponsored 
entities know who they are followed by and thus, they might have creative ideas how to 
market the relationship with the sponsor to these consumer groups.  
 
5.4 Risks and challenges related to sponsorship of women’s football 
All sponsorship investments have also their downsides. To provide an objective and 
comprehensive image of the attractiveness of women’s football as a sponsored target, it 
was considered necessary to discuss also the risks and challenges related to the 
partnership. From women’s football’s perspective, it is important to understand what the 
possible concerns are that sponsors are expecting. With this understanding, the leagues, 
teams or individual players wishing to find new sponsors can suggest better sponsorship 
62 
 
proposals and thereby increase their chances to enter into a sponsorship agreement. All 
in all, this chapter contributes on the third sub-question of the research “What are the 
obstacles to funding women’s football?”. 
 
5.4.1 Challenges related to inequality 
When addressing the challenges related to women’s football, one of the major themes 
brought up were the equality issues. Even if the sponsors are doing their part in the battle 
against unequal treatment, the deeply rooted attitudes and beliefs are setting obstacles in 
seeing quick progress. For example, if men’s sports events are always considered more 
valuable compared to women’s, the development and growth opportunities of women’s 
sports can be sluggish, which is naturally against the sponsors’ objectives. The 
interviewees acknowledged that only fraction of global sponsorship investments so far 
have gone into women’s sports (Women’s Sports Foundation 2015, Women in Sport 
2020), despite the fact that they are actively doing their share to change the situation. 
Many of the sponsors shared their own examples, how they had seen inequality in the 
football context during their careers. Sponsor X mentioned the lack of women’s football 
game broadcasts. The interviewee of the company stressed that not only the media is 
responsible for the low media coverage, but all stakeholders involved must do their part 
to make it easier for media to engage: 
 
“If everyone will do their part; the clubs, federations… Make it easy for media to 
engage. For example, league clubs in England do not always have coaches available 
for media interviews after the game. You have to make it work! You have to make it easy 
to journalists.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
The representative from Visa agreed with the unequal media attention and broadcasting 
efforts; she stated that football can be seen everywhere, and it is usually very accessible 
in terms of opportunities to watch it. If you go to a pub anywhere in Europe, a football 
match is most likely shown on the screens. The striking thing is that it is the men’s games 
that are shown, hardly ever women’s. Large international tournaments may make an 
exception. It is obvious that women’s football has less viewers globally compared to the 
men’s game. The issue is, however, if women’s football is barely shown anywhere, how 
can the sport attract new followers? Moreover, with limited broadcasting, neither will the 
sponsors reach more customers to watch their sponsorship targets.  
Women’s games are often broadcasted through some website but not many people find 
the weblinks, which automatically restricts the spectator base. As Messner (2013) argues, 
even if the interest levels in women’s sports have risen recently, the mass media’s ever-
lasting focus on major men’s sporting events and games diminish the commercial 
63 
 
potential that women’s sports could have. To increase coverage of women’s football, 
media is expected to play its role as a visibility enhancer. Finland is one the countries that 
has increased the airtime dedicated to women’s football lately. The national TV 
broadcaster Yle showed all 52 games played during the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 
2019 for free. In total, the channel dedicated 160 hours to show women’s football games 
during the summer and received wide positive feedback. The most watched game was the 
final played between the US and the Netherlands, which gathered at its best even 699 000 
Finns in front of their TV screens (Yle 2019). This shows that if enough resources are 
invested to promote the sport and cover the games regularly, women’s football has the 
potential to attract enormous attention. This, however, requires an active decision from 
the media.   
Unequal treatment of women within football context is prevalent also in other ways 
than discriminating media coverage. Obos mentioned that the prefix “women’s” is always 
mentioned, when talking about women’s football. There is football and then there is 
women’s football, as if they were two different games. The categorising language 
constrains the development of the game, which also the sponsors find disturbing. Having 
gained extensive experience in sponsorship and having followed women’s football, the 
sustainability and communications manager of Obos explained that the way we 
communicate about women’s football influences the way we treat the sport. Even if it is 
a “small thing” as she said, we should make an effort not to distinguish men’s and 
women’s football from each other. Finnish football has made significant progress in terms 
of gender equality lately, due to the fact that the name of the highest league level 
“Women’s League” was switched into “National League” in spring 2020. What made this 
noteworthy is the fact that only the elite football league in Norway does not use the prefix 
“women’s”, in a way or another, in the name of their women’s league (Yle 2020b). Even 
if changing the name of the league might not have any concrete influence on the sport’s 
treatment, the act gained wide media attention, also internationally. For example, the 
popular British newspaper The Guardian (2020) reported on the news by stating that the 
“Finnish FA drops 'women's' prefix for league in push for equality”.   
A topic referred to by the interviewee from Visa was the issue around unequal 
opportunities to play the game around the world. Even if the general understanding is that 
the game is becoming more popular around the world, there are some cultures that hamper 
it or even deprive it from women. As an international sponsor of women’s football, Visa 
have acknowledged that some cultural restrictions make their sponsorship work more 
complicated. It can be a risk that the company is contributing to the development of the 
game in countries where the perception of the game is different. Hence, it is important to 
take cultural differences into account, when cooperating with women’s football in various 
countries. Even if women’s and girls’ opportunity to play football is taken for granted in 
many countries, the situation may be different in some other parts of the world. The 
64 
 
interviewee from Visa belongs to the department “Visa Europe” and, therefore, she has 
gained experience mainly in the European sponsorship market:  
 
“I mean of course there are risks in women’s football, we have invested into something 
that requires a bit more effort from everyone. And in some markets, there are different 
perceptions of the game as well, like for example in Poland and in Turkey. In countries 
like these, there’s a really different perception of the game and the way they are talking 
about it... We need to address it. We do believe that at some point the situation will 
change and we already see some positive trends but it takes some time definitely.” 
[Visa, interview 24.1.2020]. 
In the light of the above, companies sponsoring federations and clubs in various 
countries need to take cultural differences into consideration and adapt their activities 
according to local perceptions and policies. The state of the game can vary a lot in 
different parts of the world; in the US, for instance, women’s football is more popular 
than men’s football and the players there are regarded as national heroes, whereas in some 
countries girls’ and women’s participation have been restricted. Instead of addressing the 
myriad perceptions of the game in an international context, the sponsors on a league and 
club level rather focus on the awareness of the game in the countries they are operating 
in.  
In conclusion, sponsor X warned against sponsoring women’s football, if the sponsor 
is not ready to face these challenges related to gender inequality: 
 
“Honestly, if you don’t mean it and you go into it (sponsoring women’s football) you 
will be called out badly. You have to be truly committed to it because if you’re just 
being opportunistic and you’re just like “Oh this is great let’s empower women because 
everyone is doing it” you will fail. It is not just about marketing. If you don’t mean it 
you will be called out by federations, by players, by media.”  
[Sponsor X, 28.11.2019]. 
The topic of inequality covers a great number of challenges for sponsors: media is not 
interested in women’s football as much as in men’s, the language used when speaking of 
women’s football can be regarded as degrading and girls’ participation in football is not 
self-evident all around the world. If the sponsor is not willing to tackle these problems 
when deciding to support women’s football, an easier choice is to cooperate with men’s 
sports. 
 
65 
 
5.4.2 Perceived quality of the game and facilities  
When asking the question regarding challenges in sponsoring women’s football, a 
common answer contained issues related to the perceived quality of the game. Even if the 
level of the game has taken big steps forward around the globe, it is regarded as lesser 
quality compared to men’s games. The number of passes per game, intensity of the game 
and technical skills demonstrated are generally perceived as inferior to those witnessed 
in men’s games. It is also in the sponsors’ interest that the quality improves, as this 
naturally would attract new spectators for the sport. Good news is, though, that the 
situation is gradually changing for the better. The coaches of female teams have educated 
themselves through qualified programmes, and the increased budgets of national 
associations and sponsors have enabled women to train more professionally (UEFA 
2016). The number of passes per game is a common measurement, when studying the 
quality of a football game. Football is a dynamical game in which players interact with 
each other via one ball while opponents are trying to interfere their performance 
(Narizuka et al. 2013). Thus, the more successful passes the players are able to make to 
each other during a game, the higher the level is often perceived. It was researched that 
within four years, the number of passes per game increased from 750 to approximately 
830 in the FIFA Women’s World Cup (see Figure 3). According to this scale, the games 
in Men’s World Cup tournament are considered as the highest quality, as the average 
number of passes per game is around 925 (The Economist 2019).  
 
 
Figure 7 Football passes per game in major international tournaments and leagues 
(adapted from the Economist 2019) 
 
The interviewed sponsors shared their thoughts on the quality of the game actively. 
The ones who brought up the subject agreed that visible progress has been made in 
66 
 
women’s football.  Mainly the interviewees from international federation and league-
level sponsoring companies had actively followed the quality of football games and the 
discussion around the topic during the recent years. One of the followers is the PR 
professional from sponsor X. It became apparent that s(he) follows actively the 
development of the women’s football and knows what fans and people generally think 
about the sport today:  
 
“To improve the product, the level of the game has to improve. It is good to see how it is 
changing. What kind of annoys me a lot, maybe because I’m so involved in this, but I 
tend to listen a lot of podcasts about football. They always talk that no one likes 
women’s football and how people should like it more. We should move on from that 
kind of thinking. It should be about the great players and what happens on the pitch and 
not about the frustration and that “we deserve better” ... They should improve the 
product and stop whining. We have seen that the people are there and the interest is 
there! The progress that has been made in some leagues is great! We should value that 
and continue making the progress.” [Sponsor X, interview 28.11.2019]. 
 
Not only the quality of the games but also the training facilities were mentioned as a 
challenge for sponsors. Facilities such as stadiums, training equipment and access to 
training grounds are often of lesser quality compared to men’s football. If all these factors 
were at a professional level, it could be expected that the quality of the game would 
improve. It was a common view among the sponsors that these factors limit the 
commercial potential that the women’s football has. Both sponsor X and Visa covered 
the topic, first sponsor X by telling their experience from England: 
 
“Like even in England, in Women’s Super league you have to travel the whole day (to 
get to the games) and it is not even the main stadium that the games are played. It’s 
often hard to get there and the press doesn’t get there on time either. This has to be 
improved. I think the product should be valued more as well.” [Sponsor X, interview 
28.11.2019]. 
 
Visa had similar experiences by stating following: 
 
“There are no same conditions for the female players as they have for the males. Like 
the stadiums where they train, the opportunities how it all happens, they are so 
different. This was something that we really wanted to change.” [Visa, interview 
24.1.2020]. 
 
67 
 
It could be interpreted that the interviewees who did not follow women’s football in 
their free time did not express their opinions on the quality of the game nor the facilities. 
These interviewees focused rather on the level of visibility of the games instead of 
analysing the possible reasons behind the extent of the interest. It is crucial to remember, 
though, that also the smaller sponsors are enabling teams to invest more in the quality of 
the training and facilities, which in turn, is expected to show as an improved quality of 
the game. The improved quality of the game has often led to increased spectator numbers, 
which is obviously in the sponsors’ interest. Therefore, it is important that sponsors of 
different size make sure that their financial support is invested to boost the quality of 
training and facilities. Football clubs and teams, in turn, could convey a message to the 
sponsors that the improved training facilities can improve the game and thereby lead to 
increased number of spectators and players which is one of the sponsor’s main goals.  
 
5.4.3 Spectator numbers 
Improved quality and facilities of the game often leads into increased number of 
spectators. Only one of the sponsors interviewed did not mention the small spectator 
numbers as a challenge for them. This indicates that sponsors of different sizes typically 
think that the current follower base is small but has potential to grow. The gap between 
the men’s and women’s game is still wide. The global viewing figures for the most-
watched game of the 2019 Women’s World Cup was 59 million, whereas the TV audience 
for the final of the men’s 2018 World Cup was 1.12 billion worldwide. When looking at 
the forerunner of football, England, the average attendance numbers are following; at 
Women’s Super League games, there are on average 1.010 spectators, whereas the 
average number of attendees in a regular men’s Premier League game is 38.168 (The 
Spectator 2019). In addition to the quality of the game, there are also other factors 
affecting the number of spectators. Sponsors cannot know beforehand, how the sponsored 
entity will perform during the season (Amis et al. 1999). The risk of unpleasant 
performance and consequent low number of spectators is naturally related to all sports 
and both genders. In addition, unpleasant behavior or reputation of the sponsored target 
is expected to decrease the number of spectators and fans. Due to modernization of 
technology and shift in journalism culture the news of failures and scandals within sport 
industry have increased tremendously in recent years (Connor & Mazanov 2010).  
Starting from the Finnish sponsors, Rantalainen stated to have only one deterring issue 
when sponsoring women’s football, which was the smaller number of followers and 
poorer visibility compared to men. Even if they have been satisfied with their sponsorship 
relationships with women’s football teams, they regard that the spectator base could be 
higher. However, they have already long traditions working with women’s sports which 
indicates that these investments have also brought benefits: 
68 
 
 
“The exposure of women’s football is obviously not as high as it is on the men’s side. 
Football is becoming more popular among women, though, and our decision has been 
to be in it.” [Rantalainen, interview 12.2.2020] 
 
While sponsoring sports teams, Rantalainen is also looking for new customers as one of 
their financial management service packages is tailored especially for sports teams. 
Therefore, even if the spectator numbers are rather small on women’s side, it is important 
to cooperate with teams of both genders to increase brand awareness. The marketing 
coordinator of Rantalainen explained that it is important to be actively present in the 
environment where the customers are. 
 Moving on to companies having invested more heavily into women’s football, the 
concerns of the spectator levels are the same, but these sponsors have taken concrete 
actions to improve the situation. For instance, Obos has made efforts in Sweden to attract 
more spectators to women’s games. They have been cooperating with the Swedish EFD 
(Elitfotboll Dam) in order to improve the concept around season matches. EFD is the 
governing organization for the two highest leagues in women's football in Sweden, Obos 
Damallsvenskan and Elitettan. Instead of only offering the game itself, the clubs and 
sponsors can invest in commercialising the whole event. For instance, labelling the event 
as a “family game” or as a testimonial to a significant person within the club can attract 
interest even among those who do not usually go to football games. Consumers are 
nowadays looking for rich experiences in exchange for their money and this applies also 
to sports events. Smilansky (2009, 5) defines experiential marketing as a “process of 
identifying and satisfying customer needs and aspirations profitably, engaging them 
through two-way communications that bring brand personalities to life and add value to 
the target audience”. This approach is something that sponsors of football could apply in 
their marketing activities. Even if Obos is not a broadcaster and, therefore, cannot 
influence the viewership and spectator numbers directly, the interviewee from the 
company provided their solutions on how to boost the interest in women’s football 
matches: 
 
“We can’t be present in all games obviously but we can choose a few games over the 
season where we can do some extra things, like making sure that we spread message 
broader than we normally do and see every game as an event rather just as a football 
match. Even though Swedish EFD are quite good in making sure you get the 
(broadcasting) rights in different TV channels and they spread the message the best way 
they can, but we as well have to make sure that people go to the games. We as a sponsor 
can help them to get there, and the better cooperation we have the faster we can make 
this sport more attractive.” [Obos, interview 21.2.2020]. 
69 
 
Visa had similar thoughts to Obos on the viewership numbers. The interviewee of the 
company admitted that women’s football still has low exposure and low interest and they 
are working hard to make a change to it. Even if the “women’s empower movement” is 
currently taking place in many parts of the world, the game cannot become more attractive 
just by itself. It requires cooperation between the various stakeholders. Even if the low 
spectator number is a main problem that Visa and some other sponsors are currently 
tackling, in a long-term perspective, they believe the game has a bright future ahead:  
 
“When we were signing the deal, we were of course thinking about the problems the 
game is expected to have. One of the problems with the game is that it has quite a low 
interest and not very big viewership and to be honest, if you are really a fan it is quite 
difficult to understand where you can watch the matches right now, these are all 
connected to the rights. So, this could be somehow addressed together with FA and 
clubs to change the game exposure and distribution… But when we were deciding this 
(sponsorship of women’s football) it was really more about the long-term 
perspective...” [Visa, interview 24.1.2020]. 
 
Even if smaller sponsors have not taken it on themselves to boost the spectator 
numbers of women’s football, they acknowledge that the image of the game is slowly 
improving. A positive aspect is, however, that the bigger sponsors with bigger marketing 
budgets consider it as their responsibility to increase the awareness of women’s football. 
The usage of these leveraging techniques is expected to lift the value of their investment. 
When these forerunner companies cooperating with women’s football keep working 
towards higher viewership numbers, people are believed to increasingly associate these 
firms with women’s football. In the future then, when women’s football is bigger and 
more popular, the sponsors having actively promoted the sport will hopefully be 
remembered. As the domestic sponsors do not consider it particularly important to boost 
the spectator numbers, there is a danger that women’s football in Finland is left behind in 
the international growth phase, without active decisions to increase the number of 
spectators and players.  
Especially in the case of Finnish sponsors, women’s football as a sponsorship target 
did not generate any major advantages compared to men’s football or other sports. The 
sport was considered as a decent channel to reach target audience and promote goodwill 
but nothing extraordinary. On the other hand, it was difficult for the Finnish sponsors to 
come up with any downsides when investing into the sport, despite the rather small 
spectator numbers. Thus, it can be deduced that women’s football does not raise particular 
excitement among these sponsors, while being a rather safe target to cooperate with. With 
this result, it would be important for Finnish clubs and teams wishing to be sponsored by 
local companies to communicate about the positive aspects related to women’s football 
70 
 
more effectively to boost their attractiveness. The sport has a positive and reliable image 
and, thus, good premises to start building its brand. Then again, differentiating oneself 
from the numerous other sports, with a convincing sales argument, is a challenging task.  
 
 
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6 DISCUSSION 
This chapter focuses on concluding and evaluating the results of this study. The 
theoretical setting of the research, literature review and both pilot and theme interviews 
are all integrated together in order to answer to the research questions of the present thesis. 
First, the information gathered from the pilot interviewees are elaborated to understand 
the current status of women’s football and the sponsorship culture in Finland. This sets 
the foundation that the research findings will be applied to.  
 
6.1 Finnish sponsorship environment  
The chosen theoretical background of the thesis was built upon approaches of value 
creation model and relationship marketing theory. Previous researchers, such as Lund 
(2010) and Farrelly & Quester (2005b) stress the importance of business relationships 
when commercial value is being created in sponsorship context. In sponsorship, the value 
does not stem from discrete transactions but from the unique business relationship 
between the partners. Furthermore, the sponsorship partners are recommended to learn 
from each other create value more effectively by sharing their knowledge and assets. 
These ideas were also present in both pilot interviews conducted with sponsorship 
professionals and theme interviews conducted with different sized sponsors. A post-
doctoral researcher from Turku School of Economics, having studied leadership and 
value co-creation within sports context, stated that clubs in Finland have not been 
especially innovative businesswise: 
 
“I would say that clubs could be much more innovative when it comes to sponsorship. 
For instance, team sports in Finland have not been well-developed businesswise. If 
someone claims that ice-hockey in Finland is well commercialised, I do disagree. 
Neither have they come up with innovative ideas how to earn money despite the games 
itself. But the more I follow social media the more I bump into good cooperation and 
campaigns.” [Post-doctoral researcher, interview 16.10.2019]. 
 
Likewise, the interviewed sponsorship expert, who has studied, lectured and published 
books on the subject, stated that the sponsorship culture in Finland is still in its early stage 
of development. There exist only rare success cases, where companies have utilised 
athletes or teams in their marketing. Moreover, not many companies have comprehensive 
sponsorship strategies that they design, follow and measure systematically. He explained 
that another major issue limiting the attractiveness of sport clubs as sponsorship targets 
is their lack of money. If clubs and athletes in Finland had more financial resources to 
invest in things such as game atmosphere, social media or customer research, they would 
72 
 
be more appealing partners for sponsors. Due to the small size of the Finnish economy, 
the sports clubs have rather small fan groups, which obviously affects sponsors’ interest 
in investing in such targets. A third big challenge for sports clubs and teams, in general, 
is the current busy lifestyle of consumers and the countless alternative opportunities to 
spend free time. There are movies to watch, shopping centres to visit and videogames to 
play. The sports consumption habits have changed and consequently, fewer people 
choose to go watch sports games live nowadays. According to the interviewees, football 
and other sport matches used to be the places where locals gather every week to see 
friends and family “back in the old days”. 
On the other hand, the sponsorship expert had noticed that many companies lack 
expertise on how sponsorship works in practice. If company managers have no interest 
towards this marketing method, it is extremely difficult to try to convince them to start 
investing in sports. This problem could be addressed by offering more education on 
sponsorship both at university and business level. These efforts could translate into 
increasing number of sponsorship deals in the future. Even if sponsorship is not a new 
marketing instrument, not many companies have understood the various modern ways it 
can be utilised. 
When it comes to women’s sports in Finland, sponsorship success stories are even less 
common than in men’s sports. The sponsorship expert stated that women’s football has a 
lot of potential to grow and become more commercial. This, however, requires more 
partners that would systematically work together with the clubs:  
 
“Women’s football is so underutilised in Finland. I could almost start selling the 
product (women’s football) to partners by myself, you can market it effectively with 
such low costs.” [Arto Kuuluvainen, interview 21.10.2019]. 
 
Heidi Pihlaja, the development manager of the Finnish Football Association, has 
gained extensive experience on women’s football marketing through her job. She covered 
several issues that she is currently facing, when working for the improvement of the 
sport’s image and attractiveness in the country. The biggest issue is that both at FFA and 
in individual clubs, there is often no systematic plan for sponsorship search. She explained 
that often teams playing in the top league level in Finland have not employed any 
salespeople, whose task would be signing sponsorship deals for the team and co-creating 
more value with the existing partners. Sometimes the club’s men’s team share part of 
their income with the women’s team or, in some women’s teams, the players’ family 
members take up the duty of seeking sponsorships. Among many other responsibilities, 
Heidi herself has tried to look for new partners for the Subway National League. Based 
on her experience, cold-calling random companies to offer partnership with the league 
has not proven very effective. She emphasises the need for a systematic plan, clear 
73 
 
messaging and effective strategy for sponsorship search. This thesis aims to contribute to 
alleviating the current difficulties by clarifying what are the attributes that women’s 
football should build their image on to and by finding out what companies essentially 
value in the sport.  
 
6.2 Attractiveness of women’s football 
Meenaghan’s (1991b) research revealed that when selecting the target to be sponsored 
companies often analyse first the target’s ability to fulfil the company’s strategical 
objectives. Each interviewee, regardless of the level of investment in the sport, stated that 
women’s football as a sponsored target has potential to reflect the company’s value base. 
Based on the interviews, it was observed that the importance of the matching values, or 
symbolic “fit,” between the sponsor and the object ranked high on the sponsor’s priority 
list. As the unique association established between the sponsor and the target is hoped to 
generate positive attention among consumers (Rifon et al. 2004), it was considered 
important to find a credible match between the images that the sponsorship partners 
display. The interviewed sponsors told to associate women’s football with characteristics 
including sustainability, equality and inspiration. These are close to the values Subway 
National league has named for them self: equality, success and courage. This indicates 
that the league’s own identity is close to the values that companies think the sport to 
represent. The term “success” was not strongly associated with women’s football yet, but 
the league is eager to profile itself as an elite level league with talented teams. It is crucial 
for the league and the clubs to approach companies that signal similar values in their 
external communication and suggest, how the partnership with women’s football could 
support the company’s commercial objectives. When approaching potential sponsors, 
they can benefit from the notion that, nowadays, it is no longer enough that companies 
focus on producing products and services, but they need to have values that their 
customers can relate to and act according to their published values. Promoting equality 
and sustainability is high on many companies’ agenda, and hence, clubs and FFA should 
have plenty of companies to approach.  
The second theme that sponsors often appraise is the match between the target’s 
follower base and the sponsor’s target audience. Big multinational companies aim to gain 
worldwide exposure and therefore, partnering with a football federation or a league fits 
better with their aspirations. Instead, companies operating only in the Finnish market are 
keen to reach Finnish customers through local clubs or teams. Many of the interviewees 
stated that through women’s football, they are able to reach consumers from valuable 
demographic, social and economic backgrounds. Women’s teams and the league 
representatives need to acknowledge, though, that women’s football is not necessarily 
followed by the same people that follow men’s football. The interviewee from Visa 
74 
 
explained that it has been acknowledged that families, younger children and women are 
the core consumers of women’s game, whereas men’s football is traditionally consumed 
by males gathering together with their friends. Some interviewees stated that they 
primarily aim to reach their key consumer markets, whereas Rantalainen interestingly 
brought up also the aspect of employer image. Majority of the company’s employees are 
women and by choosing to support women’s football, they hope their personnel can 
identify themselves better with the company and its values. This is also what Hickman, 
Lawrence & Ward (2005) propose when saying that subordinates are more committed to 
their work if they approve their employer’s sponsorship decisions. Based on the 
interviews, not only traditional women’s brands, such as cosmetics or fashion brands, are 
likely to support women’s football, but also firms having families and younger children 
as their target consumers can channel their marketing operations through women’s 
football. The Finnish sponsors interviewed represent the biggest organisations of their 
operational fields and their aim is to gain nationwide exposure in multiple consumer 
segments. Currently, women’s football alone does not serve this aim and, therefore, these 
companies continue their long traditions of sponsoring many different targets in the 
sectors of sports and culture.  
Thirdly, the size of the sport’s follower base is typically estimated before entering into 
a sponsorship agreement (Meenaghan (1991b). The more fans the sport has and the more 
it is covered in the media, the better are the chances for the sponsor’s exposure. Both 
literature and the interviewees brought up the issue of low spectator numbers, as women’s 
football is still lagging behind the interest levels of the men’s game. Investments are, 
however, defined as an expenditure made now to make gains in future, therefore, by 
supporting women’s football now and helping them to gain more attention, the sponsors 
can benefit from their investment later. The interviewed bigger sponsors had worked hard 
to lift the visibility of the game and helped the sport to organize various prominent 
campaigns. This is recommendable also to the smaller sponsors, even if they consider 
sponsorship more as a method to do good rather than a strategical investment. The game 
has received growing interest globally and Finland has all the capabilities to attract even 
more attention to the sport as well. A proof of this is the recent study conducted by a 
Finnish market research company Taloustutkimus (2020) which found out that, according 
to Finns, football amongst all sports will see the highest growth rate in the near future. As 
it became evident from the interviews that media has to take more responsibility on 
dedicating resources to both women’s and men’s football evenly, one option could be that 
the state would take a stronger role in the debate. In Finland, the work has been started to 
update a regulation that governs the cost-free national TV channel broadcasts funded by 
the state. The aim is to allocate more broadcasts to women’s football and women’s sports 
in general and, in this way, these events could gain more spectators and fans (Helsingin 
Sanomat 2020). The currently prevailing regulation in Finland were set almost 15 years 
75 
 
ago and, therefore, it is considered appropriate to update it to better reflect today’s value 
base.  
The final criterion listed by the literature was the costs related to the sponsorship deal 
itself and the leveraging activities. Without revealing their sponsorship budgets, the 
general consensus among the interviewed companies was that women’s football can be 
sponsored with notably lesser costs compared to men’s football. This is also what 
Greenhalgh and Greenwell’s (2013) state; especially cost effectiveness, more refined 
target market, flexibility and avoidance of sponsorship saturation attracts sponsors in 
niche sports in which women’s football can be regarded to belong to. One of the 
interviewees explained that the return on investment rate is higher in women’s football 
than in many other sports, according to their experience. The second important finding 
was that majority of the companies interviewed, both international and domestic, 
informed about their practice to leverage their existing sponsorship relationships in order 
to improve the overall marketing impact of the sponsorship investment. The interviewees 
seemed to agree with the numerous advantages of leverage that previous researchers have 
brought up (e.g. Keller 1996, Tripodi 2001, Grohs et al. 2004). Even if promoting the 
relationship requires extra funds, the connection between the sponsored target and the 
sponsor becomes more evident. As companies seem to understand the value of leveraging, 
also women’s football teams and individual players can play a more active role in 
promoting the relationship and not solely leave it to the sponsors.  
The new theme occurred during the interviews was the importance of player brands. 
The interviewees explained how consumers, especially younger ones, need female 
footballers they can call as their role models and idols. The football world requires new 
female “Messis and Ronaldos” that all football-lovers would recognize. The FIFA 
Women’s World Cup tournament in France in 2019 gathered millions of people to the 
stadiums and in front of TV sets, after which millions of people know now about Megan 
Rapinoe from the US or Wendie Renard from France. It became evident that companies 
investing in sponsorship have been keen to work with the valuable player brands to reach 
their marketing objectives. Interesting brand persona, wide demographic appeal and 
ability to influence fans are attributes that are especially valued by companies (Pegoraro 
& Jinnah 2012). Similarly, the Finnish football environment calls for new female player 
brands. It is recommended that the FFA, clubs, and players themselves would start 
building player brands systematically. This could attract more sponsors to women’s 
football, since player brands act as an effective channel to reach more audience and to 
give credibility and authenticity to the messages targeted to consumers. The interviewees 
from abroad informed that some players are already really active on social media and 
companies are willing to utilize the networks they have managed to build with their 
followers. These athletes are not only promoting their roles as football players but sharing 
their personal stories, philosophies and other hidden talents. All in all, sports involve 
76 
 
strong emotions and stories that people eager to see and hear. Therefore, focusing on 
player brands could serve as a legitimate business opportunity to sponsors of different 
sizes also in Finland. 
 The origins of the present thesis lays on FFA’s need to find out, how women’s football 
could become even more attractive target for sponsors. Based on the research conducted 
it can be concluded that ability to reflect equality and sustainability related values, 
channel to reach a versatile target market, growing interest levels and cost effectiveness 
were all positive qualities listed by the sponsors interviewed. Moreover, player brands 
were mentioned as something the sport should start investing more heavily into. All in 
all, women’s football has a reputation of a safe investment target which gives good 
premises to the sport in future sponsorship search. Before being able to offer these 
benefits to companies, the sponsor-seeking clubs and the federation must understand why 
companies in the first place, opt for sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy. This 
will be addressed in the next chapter.  
 
6.3 Motives behind sponsorship decisions   
Sponsorship as a marketing method has been around for decades. Sport sponsorship 
enables companies to reach their target audiences with a creative and appealing way as 
investing in sports is widely seen as a highly appreciated way to do marketing (McDonald 
1991). Furthermore, sponsorship has been seen to lift employee motivation (Hickman, 
Lawrence & Ward 2005) and provide opportunities in building new business networks 
(Olkkonen 2001). The major difference between the companies interviewed for the 
present study was that the international interviewees had sponsorship integrated in their 
marketing strategy, which is part of their overall company strategy, whereas the Finnish 
companies interviewed – despite having being active in sponsoring many different sports 
and cultural targets – indicated sponsorship to be mainly benevolence for them.  
Even if the international sponsors have giant sponsorship spending budgets, they 
eventually benefit from the investments through increased sales, higher customers 
numbers and improved company image. The strategy of coming up with creative 
marketing campaigns – instead of only focusing on pure logo visibility – in sporting 
events is in line with the modern sponsorship approach (Olkkonen et al. 2000). When 
operating globally, the firms often require their partners to have worldwide exposure, too. 
Therefore, partnering up with federations and leagues has been a more effective way for 
global operators to accomplish their marketing objectives. One of the global women’s 
football sponsors interviewed for the present study, noted that partnering with the sport 
requires a lot of work due to many existing challenges - all the way from low-quality 
training facilities to unequal treatment. This means that the decision to sponsor the sport 
77 
 
should not be taken just because someone else is doing it; instead, it must be a goal for 
the sponsoring company, as well, to improve the attractiveness of the game.  
As it became evident during the conducted interviews, the Finnish companies’ views 
and experiences reflected strongly the opinions of the pilot interviewees on the current 
Finnish sponsorship culture. The limited spectator numbers, lack of innovative ideas and 
ineffective proposals affect the attractiveness of various sport clubs and teams around the 
country. Accordingly, the Finnish interviewees indicated their sponsorship activities to 
stem more from goodwill, rather than being considered a viable marketing instrument. 
However, they also listed positive sides of sponsorship. Firstly, all the Finnish companies 
had long traditions in working with sponsorship and, thereby, have gained positive 
exposure for their corporate brands thanks to their continuing investments. Moreover, 
sponsorship was seen also as a way to build a better employer image. In addition, the 
Finnish firms indicated that keeping the local area active and lively serves also their 
interests. As the current Covid-19 virus causes huge financial losses to sports clubs 
around the country, the sponsorship income has become even more important. The 
representative of Pohjola Insurance was interviewed during the ongoing pandemic and he 
stated that the company keeps sponsoring their current partners. This example shows that, 
for Finnish companies, sponsorship is not solely about fulfilling commercial objectives 
but giving back to the local community and guaranteeing the existing sporting activities 
in the future, too. In addition to gain understanding of the numerous ways why companies 
opt for sponsorship, it was seen necessary to study how sponsorship decision-making is 
conducted within these organisations. This was the purpose behind the second sub-
question of the present research. 
 
6.4 Factors behind successful sponsorship decisions 
Sponsorship decisions are often a result of a careful decision-making process, especially 
when the deals are a financially significant and signed for multiple years. Especially in 
the 1990s, many scholars did research on the screening criteria that companies should use 
when evaluating their sponsorship decisions (e.g. Cornwell 1995; Crompton 1993; Irwin 
& Assimakopoulos, 1992; Thwaites & Carruthers 1998). For entities wishing to get 
sponsorship funding, it is crucial to understand how the sponsorship decisions are 
evaluated and implemented within companies in order to create appealing sponsorship 
proposals. 
Based on the sponsor interviews, it became clear that all the companies had 
comprehensive marketing strategies, including guidelines for sponsorship target 
selection. In big international companies, the larger size of sponsorship investments 
requires more structured planning and more people are involved in the decision-making 
process. Smaller companies, instead, give more freedom to their employees working with 
78 
 
marketing and sponsorship related issues. Due to lower level of bureaucracy and smaller 
size of teams, individual decision-makers may have an opportunity to satisfy their social 
and self-determined motivations. This suggests that if a women’s football team, club or 
federation wishes to be sponsored by these kinds of companies, they can try to appeal to 
the decision-makers’ personal attitudes and beliefs. Women’s football teams are also 
encouraged to invite both existing and potential sponsors to watch the games to boost 
their interest in the sport. A successful football event may be an eye-opening experience 
to someone who usually does not watch sports. 
 Moreover, the successful cooperation between all various stakeholders involved, such 
as the sponsors, media, fans, cities and federations, was quoted as a crucial factor for 
successful sponsorship. This issue was emphasised by the Head of UEFA Women’s 
Football from Visa who has gained vast experience on various big sponsorship cases. 
Also, the interviewees representing domestic insurance companies highlighted the fact 
that they often have hospitals as their strategical partners, which are linked to the decision-
making, whenever signing sponsorship deals with sport entities. These answers indicate, 
that sponsors ponder whether the targets seeking to be sponsored fit in their existing 
networks. Women’s football is encouraged to take this fact into account before 
approaching potential sponsors.  
Finally, the importance of mutually benefitting sponsorship proposals was highlighted 
by both international and domestic sponsors interviewed. Sponsorship managers have 
revealed their frustration on receiving unsolicited and generalized sponsorship proposals 
(Vance et al. 2016). Similarly, one the findings of sponsorship expert Arto Kuuluvainen 
on the Finnish sponsorship culture was, that too often entities seeking for sponsorship 
partners approach companies without well-thought plans. Representatives from both 
international and Finnish companies indicated that they do not want to be approached 
with empty requests. Therefore, women’s football teams or the leagues seeking for 
sponsorship are advised to think carefully how they match together with the sponsor in 
terms of values that they represent, what are the advantages that can be reached together 
and how reaching the objectives will be measured. Two of the Finnish sponsors 
interviewed explained to receive high numbers of proposals and, therefore, women’s 
football is recommended to try stand out from other sports by highlighting its strengths. 
Also, innovativeness and creativeness were highly welcome by the sponsors which 
indicates that companies are calling for the modern approach of sponsorship, including 
value creation in a form of business relationship, instead of requiring pure logo exposure 
for their brand. Part of creating an appealing proposal is to try to understand what possible 
concerns the sponsors have. Therefore, the risks and challenges within sponsorship of 
women’s sports were also addressed with the interviews. 
 
79 
 
6.5 Overcoming present challanges 
Along with a gradual change in attitudes, it has been acknowledged that also women can 
be competent and talented athletes and, consequently, women’s sports today attract 
increasing interest around the world. As Kane and Maxwell (2011) state, the athletic 
competence of female athletes is the main reason why women’s sports are followed. In 
football context, especially the recent FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament in France 
in 2019 proved that the game is at a professional level, the sport can attract high spectator 
numbers, and some players are becoming national heroes. However, there are still 
numerous challenges that the players, clubs, leagues and federations face today. This can 
affect the attractiveness of the sport in the eyes of sponsors. It is crucial that the actors in 
women’s football know, what challenges are often associated with the sport and how 
these could be overcome. This was the purpose behind the third sub-question of the 
present thesis “What are the challenges in sponsoring women’s sports?”.  
The primary issue mentioned by the interviewees, as well as literature on women’s 
football, was the various challenges related to gender inequality. The interviewed 
sponsors acknowledged the situation revealed by the statistics, according to which only a 
fraction of global sponsorship investments have gone into women’s sports so far 
(Women’s Sports Foundation 2015, Women in Sport 2020), and the international 
sponsors informed that they are actively doing their part to change the situation. 
Moreover, some interviewees called for higher responsibility that media should assume 
in dedicating more coverage and broadcasts to women’s sports.  Some stressed that not 
only the media is responsible for it alone, also other stakeholders involved must do their 
share to make it easier for media to engage. Furthermore, discriminating language against 
women’s football was mentioned by the international sponsors interviewed. The Finnish 
football federation has been a forerunner in advancing equal treatment in the used 
language, as it dropped the “women’s” prefix of the name of the highest women’s league 
level this year, which resulted in wide international attention. The interviewed companies 
with sponsorship activities in various countries raised the limited opportunities for girls 
and women to play football. All the various issues related to unequal treatment may 
decrease the attractiveness to cooperate with such sport.  
A second obstacle mentioned was the inferior quality of the game and the related 
facilities. Especially those who followed the sport actively, however, highlighted the fact 
that the game quality has taken big steps forward lately. Still the intensity of the game 
and skills demonstrated by women footballers are regarded as being of lesser quality 
compared to men’s games. Obviously, it is in the sponsors’ interest that the quality 
improves, as this would be expected to attract new spectators for the sport. Also the 
quality of the training facilities was mentioned by the bigger sponsors interviewed as a 
challenge for development. Facilities such as stadiums and training equipment are often 
80 
 
mediocre compared to men’s football. If all these factors were at a professional level, this 
could be expected to lift the quality of the game. There was a shared understanding 
amongst the interviewees that these quality factors limit the commercial potential that the 
sport has. The interview results imply that FFA and clubs themselves should direct their 
funds to investing in the quality of facilities, when possible, as it affects the attractiveness 
and growth opportunities of the game.  
Yet the most common interview answer regarding challenges of women’s football was 
the small spectator numbers compared to the men’s games. For instance, at a Women’s 
Super League game in England, there is an average of 1.010 spectators, whereas the 
average number of attendees in a regular men’s Premier League game is 38.168 (The 
Spectator 2019). Even if this was acknowledged by both international sponsors and the 
domestic companies interviewed, the big international sponsors informed having taken 
more concrete actions to improve the viewer figures of the sport. It was understood that 
consumers are nowadays looking for full customer experiences in exchange for their 
money and this applies also to sports events (Smilansky 2009). By offering consumers a 
richer experience, instead of just letting people to sit and watch the game itself, has proven 
to attract more spectators. This is also something that the teams in Finland are highly 
recommended to do together with their sponsors. Offering food of various kinds at the 
game events, organising fun activities for children or inviting celebrities to games are 
examples of ideas how the games can be better commercialised.  
Sport sponsorship involves always a certain amount of risk regarding the performance 
and behaviour of the sponsored entity. Sponsors cannot know beforehand how the 
sponsored team or athlete will perform during the season and whether there will be any 
unpleasant reputational issues or even scandals (Amis et al. 1999). However, the general 
view amongst the interviewees of the current research was that women’s football can be 
regarded as a safe sponsor target to partner with. The image of the sport is good, it is 
associated with commonly shared values and the sport’s future looks promising. Some of 
the interviewees even stated that there are no downsides at all when sponsoring women’s 
football. This shows that there are no critical barriers for companies to start sponsoring 
women’s football. Therefore, the sport needs to recognize its strengths and build its 
unique brand image on these assets.  
 
81 
 
7 CONCLUSION 
The present study aimed to find answers to what makes women’s football attractive for 
sponsors. The main research question was refined and elaborated with three sub-
questions. The current chapter summarizes the purpose of whole research and expresses 
its theoretical and managerial implications. Also, study limitations and suggestions for 
the future research are briefly discussed. 
 
7.1 Managerial implications 
This master’s thesis aims to deepen the understanding in women´s football sponsorship 
and thereby support the desire of the Finnish Football Association to attract more 
companies to sponsor women’s football. The second objective was to understand better 
why sponsorship is used as a method to achieve marketing objectives in various 
companies. Thirdly, this thesis set out to find out how companies actually make their 
sponsorship decisions to provide women’s football with a better understanding how to 
structure their sponsorship proposals. The fourth objective was to identify what obstacles 
companies see in women’s football sponsorship, in order to better prepare teams and the 
governing association to face these challenges. Since the whole study stemmed from a 
practical standpoint, the managerial implications are evident. To the knowledge of the 
researcher, this thesis is the first piece of research studying the commercial opportunities 
of Finnish women’s football.  
The main managerial implication found by this research is that women’s football can 
be regarded as a real business opportunity for companies, both internationally and 
domestically. The fact that the FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament in France in 2019 
broke the 1 billion viewers mark for the first time since the competition began in 1991 
shows that the sport has real demand all around the world. Therefore, the momentum is 
there to invite more sponsors to join the growing market also in Finland. Women’s 
football teams and the governing association of football are advised to build their brand 
on the positive attributes associated with the sport, as these strengths are highly valued 
among companies who opt for sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy. Football 
teams’ business model today is about offering a product, the games, to the consumer and 
get paid for it. Alongside, there are sponsors that partly fund these teams’ daily operations. 
However, today’s consumers have countless opportunities to spend their limited free 
time, and therefore, women’s football needs to be able to offer full experiences to their 
spectators. Examples from abroad show that women’s football is a legitimate commercial 
opportunity for companies to co-create unique value, and Finnish football, despite the 
smaller economy, has all the capabilities and potential to take a step forward in the game.  
82 
 
Based on the conducted interviews, it was found out that women’s football is 
associated with many positive attributes. Meenaghan’s (1991b) widely cited model for 
sponsorship selection provided the frame to structure these strengths (Figure 8). The 
growing interest, ability to reflect affirmative values, channel to reach consumers and 
cost-effectiveness were discovered to be most important assets of women’s football. A 
novel element outside the frame emerged from the study, as player brands were found to 
be a profound factor for sponsors in their sponsorship target selection. Even if it has been 
studied that interesting brand persona, wide demographic appeal and ability to influence 
fans are attributes that companies value in athletes (Pegoraro & Jinnah 2012), the present 
thesis claims that player brands act as an effective channel to reach new audiences, as 
well as give credibility and add authenticity to the messages targeted to consumers. Thus, 
player brands can be suggested to be included to the sponsorship selection model. As 
these are aspects that attracted the companies interviewed, it can be assumed that also 
other firms would want to co-create value with a sport with such potential. 
 
  
Figure 8 Attributes making women’s football attractive for sponsors (adapted from 
Meenaghan 1991b) 
In addition to clarifying what makes women’s football an attractive target for 
sponsorship investments, the differences between international sponsors and domestic 
sponsors were studied. The differences were sought to better understand why Finnish 
sponsorship culture is seen as under-developed compared to many other European 
countries. The current research suggests that bigger international enterprises saw 
women’s football as a partner matching their marketing strategy, rather than a target for 
demonstrating benevolent actions. Systematically measuring the benefits gained from 
sponsorship deals showed that women’s football is considered a real business case. These 
global sponsors also worked continuously to improve the interest and image of women’s 
football by organising various marketing campaigns around the sport. On the other hand, 
the Finnish companies interviewed saw sponsoring women’s football more as a means to 
The target’s ability to fulfil strategical
objectives
Value reflection
The match between the target’s
follower base and the sponsor’s
target audience
Channel to reach target market
The level of the follower base + 
media attention
Growing interest
Costs related to deal and leveraging
the partnership
Cost effectiveness
Women's football
Player brands 
83 
 
pay back to the society and help the sport thrive in the local communities. The Finnish 
sponsors seek for visibility for their brand and thereby new customers, but they do not 
have high expectations on financial benefits to be gained from the cooperation. The main 
message of the interviewed domestic sponsors to women’s football was to plan carefully 
the sponsorship requests and suggest creative ways to promote the sponsorship 
relationship to spectators. The football teams are encouraged to leverage their knowledge 
on their spectators and the ways how to connect with them. In conclusion, the FFA and 
women’s football teams are encouraged to take all the findings of the present research 
into account when planning mutually benefitting sponsorship proposals for companies in 
the future.  
 
7.2 Theoretical contribution 
Amongst many theories associated with sponsorship, value creation model and 
relationship marketing theory were chosen to be most relevant for this study. Both 
theories stress the relational process when generating sponsorship value, which is the 
generally shared understanding among previous researchers (e.g. Meenaghan 1991b; 
Farelly, Quester & Burton 2006; Lund 2010) and also the presumption of the current 
thesis. Throughout the pilot and sponsoring company interviews, the principles of both 
value creation and relational marketing were found to prevail in sponsorship of women’s 
football of today. Futhermore, the findings confirm previous researchers’ statements that 
traditional view of logo exposure is making room for the modern sponsorship approach 
highlighting cooperation and mutual benefit between the parties (Olkkonen et al. 2000; 
Chadwick 2002, 65-66). 
There are five main research streams identified within sponsorship research (Cornwell 
& Maignan 1998).  The topics identified are nature of sponsorship, managerial aspects of 
sponsorship, measurement of sponsorship effects, strategic use of sponsorship and legal 
and ethical considerations of sponsorship. This thesis contributes to the managerial 
perspective within women’s football context. The present thesis comprises a comparative 
approach, since the purpose was to study how international companies having invested 
millions of euros in the sport have benefitted from the sponsorship and compare these 
experiences with Finnish sponsors’ approaches. This setting was selected due to the 
willingness to learn from successful cases from abroad and apply this knowledge to 
develop the attractiveness and commerciality of the sport in Finland. Even if sponsorship 
is a popular marketing instrument among the academics, too, the Finnish sponsorship 
culture has not received similar scholarly attention as the leading sponsorship research 
countries, such as the US, France or Germany. Especially Finnish women’s football, from 
a business perceptive, lacks academic research attention completely. This thesis aims to 
serve as a starting point in this area of academic research.  
84 
 
Besides offering advice on how to improve attractiveness of women’s football in 
Finland, this thesis contributes to the sponsorship literature by its suggestion to include 
the factor of player brands to sponsorship selection frameworks. Even if athletes as 
commercial brands have been studied previously (e.g. Chandler et al. 2002; Chadwick & 
Burton 2008; Pegoraro & Jinnah 2012), they are not actively included in sponsorship 
target evaluation models. Since influencer marketing, as a form of social media marketing 
instrument, has received growing interest, player brands are expected to become an 
increasingly important channel for companies to reach their desired audience. According 
to a recent report (Ahmad 2018), 94% of marketers who have used influencer marketing 
campaigns found them effective. Therefore, it is justified to continue researching athletes 
as brand persona, while adding them into sponsorship selection models and theories in 
the future research. When adding the novel element of player brands to Meenaghan’s 
(1991b) list of sponsorship selection criteria, the present study confirmed the workability 
and relevance of Meenaghan’s criteria set still in today’s sponsorship context, almost 
three decades later.  
 
7.3 Limitations and future research suggestions 
In order to get a comprehensive picture of the current sponsorship culture and motivations 
in Finland, three pilot interviews were conducted. For this purpose, two Finnish 
professionals having either studied value co-creation in sports context or having gained 
first-hand experience in sponsorship were chosen. In addition, the development manager 
of the Finnish Football Association working with women’s football and for its 
commercialization was interviewed to better understand the main challenges that the sport 
is currently facing in its sponsorship search. To gain understanding in sports sponsorship 
from a business perceptive, six sponsors in total were included to be studied. Three of 
them were big international companies that had heavily invested in women’s football in 
various countries, whereas the other three represented large Finnish companies that had 
profiled as active sponsors of various sports. The limited number of sponsor interviewees 
sets the first limitation to the present research. Having only three interviewees from each 
of the groups limits the applicability of the findings. The rather small number of 
interviewees was due to the difficulty to reach international enterprises having sponsored 
women’s football, as well as the time restrictions. In addition, the outbreak of the Covid-
19 crisis caused operational problems in many companies forcing them to decline 
interviews for a master’s thesis purposes.  
In addition, potential new sponsors and women’s football teams as sponsorship targets 
were left out of the scope of the research as study objects. It was reasoned that sponsors 
having already gained experience from working with women’s football had the best 
knowledge on the perceived pros and cons. Futhermore, the current sponsors were 
85 
 
expected to give credible advice on how the sport should be improved to attract more 
partners in the future. On the other hand, interviewing companies not working with 
women’s football might have provided interesting answers on why the sport currently is 
not appealing enough from the business perspective. Including representatives of 
women’s football teams to the study, on the other hand, could have brought in new kind 
of dialogue through comparison of responses given by sponsors and teams being 
sponsored. This is something that future researches can consider using as a research 
setting.  
Furthermore, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has certainly influenced the way how 
companies see sponsorship today. At the same time, women’s football teams, amongst 
many other sports, are struggling with severe financial difficulties. Since games with 
spectators are currently banned by governments, clubs have totally lost their source of 
entrance fee income. Hence, the financial aid given by sponsors is even more crucial than 
before. Since most of the interviews were conducted before the outbreak of the virus, it 
was decided not to focus on the outcomes of the pandemic on sponsorship. Yet, the impact 
of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting financial crisis on sponsoring can provide 
an interesting setting for future research.  
All in all, this thesis serves as a starting point for sponsorship research within the 
Finnish sport context. Future research should verify and elaborate on the findings of the 
current thesis and study how its recommendations can be implemented effectively. For 
instance, it could be explored how building appealing player brands to attract more 
attention to the sport can be done concretely in the Finnish environment. Moreover, the 
topic should be addressed also from the quantitative research point of view to study, for 
example, by studying which attributes in women’s football are most valued by sponsors 
or what factors prevent companies from cooperating with women’s football. There are 
numerous perspectives that can be selected to contribute to the women’s sports research, 
sponsorship of Finnish women’s football just being a small niche close to the researcher’s 
heart. Therefore, to enrich and deepen the current understanding on the themes covered 
in this thesis, future research on the ways to develop women’s sports is highly 
encouraged.  
 
86 
 
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APPENDICES 
Appendix 1 Interview questions for sponsors 
 
Q1. What women’s sports is X currently sponsoring? 
 
Q2. What are the special features of women’s football that X values as a sponsor?  
• What are the benefits X has gained/ hopes to gain from the sponsorship?  
• Are these benefits measured anyhow? 
 
Q3. What kind of a share does women’s football represent in the overall sponsorship 
portfolio?  
 
Q4. How did X consider the following criteria when signing the sponsorship deals:  
• the target’s ability to reflect X’s vision and strategical objectives 
• audience base of women’s football and its fit with X’s target market 
• the level of audience/media interest 
• costs related to the sponsorship 
• Were there other criteria X based their decision on?  
 
Q5. What are the risks and challenges associated with sponsorship of women’s 
football? 
• Has X prepared their self somehow to face them? 
 
Q6. How is the sponsorship of women’s football aligned with the overall marketing 
strategy of X?  
 
Q.7 What kind of role sponsorship has in X’s overall marketing strategy? 
• Is X leveraging the sponsorship anyhow?  
 
Q8. Who makes the sponsorship decisions in X? Are they made centrally or locally? 
 
Q9. Did the sponsored entity make a proposal for you or did X approach them first? 
• How does a sponsorship relationship usually start? 
 
Q10. What do you suggest women’s football clubs should do in order to gain more 
sponsors? 
 
103 
 
Q11. Is there something else you would like to highlight regarding sponsorship of 
women’s football?