Seeking Strategic Alliances through Sponsorship: Sponsorship Network Portfolio of the National Football League Amy Chan Hyung Kim, Florida State University Sponsorship represents one of the most dynamic forms of in- KEY TERMS direct marketing strategy. For instance, globally, corporations binary network were projected to spend roughly $55.3 billion while North bottom-up approach business-to-business marketing American companies were projected to spend $20.6 billion centrality on sponsorship activities. In particular, sport-related sponsor- co-sponsee network ship is projected to be 70 percent of all sponsorship dollars- cosponsoring network roughly $14.35 billion in North America (IEG, 2014a). The cutpoint significance of sport-related sponsorship has attracted various social network analysis sponsorship management types of studies exploring the dynamics of sponsoring behav- sponsorship portfolio iors (Cornwell, 2008; Weeks & Cornwell, 2008). Sport spon- strategic alliance sorship studies have heavily focused on consumer-oriented strategic network management research evaluating the image and awareness of sponsorships top-down approach reflected by consumer's perceptions from the perspective of two-mode data valued network individual psychological reaction (e-g., Gladden & Wolfe, 2001). Hence, a majority of studies have made implications and suggestions for spon- soring corporations to develop their sponsorship strategies depending on different vari- ables that influence consumer perceptions and consumer behavioral intentions. This approach can be effective for customer-oriented sponsoring corporations that wish to expose themselves to sport consumers. However, what current sport sponsorship studies have overlooked is how sponsoring corporations and sponsored entities can maximize the sponsorship effectiveness from an industry-oriented aspect; in other words, for the purpose of business-to-business (B2B) promotion.24 Case Study One Sponsorship Network Portfolio of the National Football League 25 B2B COMPANIES AND STRATEGIC ALLIANCES Currently, many corporations are sponsoring sport leagues or events are B2B com- portfolio as an evaluationl for strategic industrial networking plans and implements panies. For instance, several B2B technology firms have been spending a great deal social network analysis to examine relational dynamics among sponsors and sponsored of money on sponsoring different types of sport events. In 2013, SAP AG, a German entities. To be specific, the present study investigated the sponsorship network of the multinational software corporation, invested $71.25 million in global sponsorship NFL teams during the 2013-1014 season as a means to better understand network-ori- deals with different types of sport-related enterprises, including the National Football ented strategic sponsorship management in a business network setting. League (NFL), TSG 1899 Hoffenheim (a German Bundesliga football club), Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tours, such as the Sony Open, and MetLife Stadium lo- SPONSORSHIP NETWORK PORTFOLIO OF THE NFL cated at East Rutherford in New Jersey. Hewlett-packard (HP) spent roughly $44.4 Some small firms such as local restaurants or local grocery stores may support the NFL million on various types of global sport-related sponsorships, including Tottenham in order to be exposed to a massive number of potential customers. These types of Hotspur Football Club (England), NASCAR, National Basketball Association (NBA), firms and entities may not need to seek potential strategic alliances. If a company sees Davis Cup (international tennis tournament), and the HP Byron Nelson Champion- strategic alliances as a requirement for expanding or enhancing their business plans, ship (PGA Tour event). The IBM Corporation is estimated to spend around $35.1 sponsorship investment for the purpose of B2B is preferred. In this case, a sponsorship million on sports-related events and leagues such as Wimbledon, United States Ten- network portfolio is a good indicative for sponsoring corporations and sponsored enti- nis Association's US Open, French Open, Australian Open, and US Golf Association. ties wishing to build plans for future strategic alliances within sponsorship networks. Cisco Systems, a networking company, has dedicated its sport-related sponsorship to Social network analysis (SNA) is an invaluable tool to generate sponsorship network events and leagues such as the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, NBA, and National Hockey portfolios. Emphasizing the significance of the connections and links among actors, League (NHL), spending about $35.26 million dollars (IEG 2014b). For these types SNA analyzes social relationships among actors by providing diagrams to disclose the of companies, it is essential to obtain a competitive advantage by developing business patterns of relations and utilizing mathematical/computational models to illustrate relationships with other companies in order to exchange different types of information, those structural patterns of links among actors (Freeman, 2011). Employing SNA, a knowledge, and resources (De Man, 2004). These types of business partnerships can sponsorship network portfolio consists of visualized sponsorship networks and math- be defined as strategic alliances. Strategic alliances refer to a "manifestation of interor- ematical social network measurements. Here, this case study focused on the first part: ganizational cooperative strategies, entail the pooling of skills and resources by the al- visualized sponsorship network. liance partners, in order to achieve one or more goals linked to the strategic objectives A sponsorship network is one type of two-mode network. The term mode is defined of the cooperating firms" (Varadarajan & Cunningham, 1995, p. 283). In this sense, it as a distinctive set of entities on which the structural and relational variables are mea- is vital for B2B firms to seek out strategic alliances and be embedded in advantageous sured (Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Because the sponsorship network comprises two positions within business networks. Because one company will have strategic business different sets of actors-sponsoring corporations and sponsored entities-two-mode relationships with multiple companies most of the time, the shape of strategic alliance network analysis is properly employed. In analyzing a two-mode network, if two actors is not dyadic, but a network. Although co-sponsoring the same sport event/entity can A and B are connected to the other mode a, those two actors A and B are considered serve as a distinctive opportunity for these B2B firms to expand their strategic alliance to either have, or have the possibility to develop, a new relationship (Borgatti, Everett, networks, this aspect of sponsorship strategies and evaluations has been overlooked. & Johnson, 2013). In a sponsorship network, if two corporations sponsor the same In fact, the NBA hosted its first B2B promotion event in June 2013 at the NBA Draft sponsee (e.g., event, organization, person), it is assumed that those two corporations at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Through this event, the NBA attempted either have a direct business relationship or, at least, have a chance to develop future to serve as a "bridge" for sponsors. By hosting such a social event for sponsors, the league relationships. could, as a sponsee, provide sponsoring firms an opportunity to socialize and build the strategic relationships with other participating entities. The LEG sponsorship report in- DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS troduced this industry-oriented initiative of the NBA highlighting the six aims for the Sponsorship network data can be collected via archival records. This study retrieved a best practices on hosting B2B events: "(1) host meetings separate from sponsor sum- list of official corporate partners for each NFL team via official NFL team websites in mits, (2) ask partners who they would like to meet, (3) facilitate relationships between order to generate a sponsorship network portfolio of NFL in the 2013-2014 season. A like-minded companies, (4) invite procurement executives, (5) commit the necessary total of 11 NFL teams listed their sponsoring partners via official websites. As a result, time and resources, and (6) keep things fresh" (IEG, 2014c). Yet these aims need to a total of 551 of corporate partners were identified by the teams officially. Table 1 de- be polished with more sophisticated strategies based on the sponsorship networks that scribes the data in detail. are empirically generated and tested. This case study introduces a sponsorship network As discussed earlier, the sponsorship network portfolio of the NFL includes a two- mode sponsorship network. The first mode represents a set of corporations that sup- port a certain team in the NFL (e.g., Pepsi, Cisco) whereas the second mode represents26 Case Study One Sponsorship Network Portfolio of the National Football League 27 TABLE 1-1. Data Description partners that sponsor the same NFL team) and a cosponsee network (relationship among Team Sponsoring Types #Sponsors Total NFL teams that are sponsored by a same corporation). The present case study spe- Buffalo Bills Partners 46 46 cifically focuses on the converted one-mode cosponsoring network because it provides Championship Partners the direct implications of the strategies for network positioning among sponsoring companies. For the conversion process, the minimum method was used instead of the Official Partners 14 Houston Texans 95 cross-product method (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005) due to the fact that the sponsorship Preferred Partners 11 network is a valued network, not a binary network. That is, if two corporations sponsor Partners 62 one NFL team at the same time, the value of ties is one, whereas if two corporations Denver Broncos Media Partners 6 6 sponsor the same three NFL teams simultaneously, the value of the tie between these Founding Partners 14 two sponsoring firms is three. Philadelphia Eagles 22 The cosponsoring network was visualized through UCINET 6 software (Borgatti, Corporate Partners 97 Youth Partnerships 61 Everett, & Freeman, 2002). Identifying central subgroups is essential for both the NFL teams and the sponsoring firms to establish the effective strategies. This study Corporate Partners 60 Washington Redskins 101 visualized multiple layers of the cosponsoring networks utilizing the magnitude of Community Partners 41 tie strength (values of ties) to disclose the influential subgroups. As an example, let's Hall of Fame Partners 8 assume that the Buffalo Bills may desire to recruit Pandora Media Inc., a company Chicago Bears Official Partners 12 33 providing a music streaming service, into their sponsoring network as a new mem- ber in order to attract other consumer electronics manufacturers and automobile com- Proud Partners 13 panies. This is because Pandora Media Inc. is currently allying with manufacturers Building Partners 7 Green Bay Packers 51 to put its technologies onto the microchips of products manufactured by both con- Partners 44 sumer electronics companies, such as Sony, Panasonic, Vizio, and LG, and automobile Media Partners 3 companies such as Toyota. Pandora Media Inc. has expanded these types of business Minnesota Vikings 14 MV Cheerleader Partners 11 partnerships continuously (Pandora, 2010). To be specific, the Bills would need to (1) Patron Saints Partners 14 identify a group of consumer electronics manufacturers and automobile companies that are currently involved in a sponsorship network to appeal to Pandora Media Inc. New Orleans Saints Exclusive and Official Partners 27 80 to be a sponsor by showing the list of potential business partners, and (2) seek what Proud Partners 39 kind of other consumer electronics manufacturers and automobile companies can be Go Green Partners 12 additional members to their sponsorship landscape and what other companies can be St. Louis Rams 23 Cheerleader Partners 11 attracted by these new additional members in the future. Seattle Seahawks Sprint Partners 5 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Source: Sponsorship data of the NFL was retrieved from the official website of each team June 8, 2014 Figure 1-1 depicts the two-mode sponsorship network of the NFL during the 2013-2014 (see Appendix A). season. Nodes of squares represent a total of 11 teams, while nodes of circles present a total of 551 sponsoring partners. In this network, most sponsoring firms were placed at the periphery of the network because these entities sponsored only one NFL team. On a certain team sponsored by a group of sponsors (e.g., Buffalo Bills, Houston Texans). the other hand, the visualized two-mode network also highlighted the existence of the Two-mode data can be analyzed in two different ways. The first method is a direct central group of sponsoring partners within the network. These entities were placed at approach, transforming the rectangular matrix of two-mode network into a square bi- the center due to the fact that they sponsored more than one NFL team. The present partite matrix. The second method is a conversion approach that converts a two-mode study examined the central group in more detail by analyzing a one-mode cosponsoring network into a one-mode network. The direct approach provides a holistic view of the network (see Figure 2). Still, it was strenuous to investigate the structural patterns of the relationships between sponsored NFL teams and sponsoring corporations, while the hub due to a great number of nodes. Hence, using a multiple-layering visualization tech- conversion approach provides particular insights of relationships among either NFL nique, only a handful of nodes were selected according to the tie strength. teams or sponsoring partners: a cosponsoring network (relationships among corporate In the cosponsoring network, if corporation A and B sponsor the same NFL team, they are connected with a tie. Further, if corporation A and B sponsor two NFL teams30 Case Study One Sponsorship Network Portfolio of the National Football League 31 simultaneously, the tie strength is two. To convey the multiple layering visualization process, the present study provides a series of one-mode cosponsoring networks. Fig- ure 1-3 shows the cosponsoring network with nodes that have at least a tie strength of three, while Figure 1-4 shows the cosponsoring network with nodes that have at least a tie strength of four. As Figure 1-4 shows, the influential companies within a cosponsoring network in- clude Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Verizon, MillerCoors, Gatorade, Ticketmaster, Dr. Pepper Snapple, Papa John's, Mcdonald's, United Airlines, FedEx, State Farm, NRG, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Nike, Geico, SCA, Lincoln Financial Group, Nova Care Re- habilitation, Sports Authority, Master Card, Comcast, ACME, and The J. Willard & Alice S. Marriott Foundation. The size of the nodes and their labels indicate the value of each node's number of ties. In other words, a larger node with a larger label sponsored a greater number of NFL teams than a smaller node with a smaller label. According to Figure 1-4, the most influential sponsor within this cosponsoring network was Comcast. Comcast was a cutpoint among sponsoring corporate partners. The concept of a cutpoint is vital for understanding strategic networks, particularly when investigating sponsorship subgroups from a top-down approach. A top-down approach examines the whole struc ture, and it also discloses substructures as parts to look for "holes" or "vulnerabilities" or "weak spots" in the overall network structure. In comparison, a bottom-up approach elaborates the structure of the whole network from couplings of smaller subgroups (Hanneman & Riddle, 2005). Without cutpoints, network structures become divided into groups (Borgatti et al., 2013). From an industry-oriented perspective, the sole de- pendency of companies on one cutpoint, such as Comcast, might become vulnerable in FIGURE 1-3. Visualized One-mode Cosponsoring Network of the NFL During the Season of 2013-2014 (tie strength = 3) the sponsoring network. The NFL teams, as sponsees, need to assess whether these firms at the vulnerable positions are targeting Comcast as a future business partner or not. If they are, while the NFL teams need to maintain or strengthen the relationship with Comcast, teams also need to find other alternative sponsors that can be future business partners. By doing so, those companies at vulnerable spots can develop new relation- ships with other companies depending on their business strategies for future sponsor- ship partners. While seeking the new potential business partners, it is vital for firms to compare their positions within the existing sponsorship network to their overall future strategic alliance so that the structural portfolio of the sponsorship network and the plan of strategic alliances of one corporation are congruent. The high level of congru- ency between a position within a sponsorship network and strategic alliance plan will allow these firms to maximize the effectiveness of sponsoring investments as strategic relationship developments with other potential partnering corporations for the purpose of industry-oriented B2B promotions. From a sponsoring entity's standpoint, due to the fact that adding more relation- ships with multiple NFL teams incurs significant costs, the decision to sponsor mul- tiple NFL teams may not always be efficient, particularly for customer-oriented firms, such as local restaurants or local banks. Indeed, the results of the visualized cosponsor- ing network showed that all of the local-oriented companies were sponsoring only one team efficiently. If a local company decides to expand their business, the company may32 Case Study One Sponsorship Network Portfolio of the National Football League 33 consider building the strategic alliance plan for its strategic network, starting with a conscientious review of its sponsorship network. crucial. It is invaluable for sponsees to comprehend the dynamics of the relationships Opposite to the customer-oriented standpoint, targeting a gigantic network is not among sponsoring partners so that they can stimulate the intentions of investments for the purpose of B2B promotion because while one firm needs certain firms on sponsorship programs. Sponsees should play a role as a "bridge" for the sponsor- in their strategic alliance for achieving the industrial purpose, the other firm needs to ing firms. When sponsees can manage and organize the opportunities for sponsors to be exposed to a greater number of fans for achieving their own purpose. To maximize interact with each other (e.g., regular summit for sponsoring partners, hiring experts the effectiveness of the socializing process among sponsoring corporations through co- to manage B2B sponsorship networks), sponsors will have more opportunities to build sponsorship networks, the mutual efforts of sponsoring firms and sponsored entities is business relationships with other sponsors. Therefore, it is crucial for sponsees to pro- mote the firms that can attract potential sponsors through them. More importantly, both parties may need to recruit and train experts for manag- ing their sponsorship decisions efficiently. This group of sponsorship expertise should coordinate with sponsors so that they can satisfy their positions within the sponsorship network and also have more options to build and manage their relationships strategi- cally with other sponsoring corporations. ACHE Anheuser-Busch Verizon. Coca Cola REFERENCES Borgatti, S. P., Everett, M. G., & Freeman, L. C. 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