New Challenges in Sponsorship Evaluation Actors, New Media, and the Context of Praxis

This paper seeks to address a number of changes taking place in sponsorship, which have implications for performance measurement. One such change is the extent to which major sponsors now view sponsorship more holistically and strategically as a platform to address the entire range of stakeholder groups enabled by sponsorship. A second challenge involves the increased usage of social media in sponsorship and its capacity to engage and connect with sponsorship audiences. Both of these changes represent important challenges for the evaluation of sponsorship effects. These challenges are considered against the backdrop of key principles regarding evaluation and the current state of industry practice with regard to sponsorship evaluation.