Football Shirt Sponsorship & Firm Value. An Event Study.

This paper investigates the impact of football shirt sponsorship on the market value of the sponsoring firm, by conducting an event study. I find that the cumulative abnormal return of sponsorship agreement announcements is not significantly different from zero in the days surrounding the announcement. Rival wealth effects are significantly negative in the period summing up effect of media coverage of agreements, pointing towards a relative profit for sponsors through negative returns for rival firms, but in total this effect is not significantly different from zero. I conclude that football shirt sponsorship has no effect on the market value of the sponsoring firm