New Study by Turner College's Bordere and Mixon Examines Apparel Sponsorships in Collegiate Athletics

A new study by the Turner College's Jasmine Bordere and Frank Mixon and Syracuse University's Shane Sanders examines a dimension of collegiate athletics that is understudied but at the same time economically important – the determinants of apparel and equipment sponsorships among Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) university athletics departments. By integrating insights from sport management, marketing, and public choice theory, the analysis both confirms and complements our extant understanding of NCAA athletics sponsorships based primarily on market size and athletic success. The new study further finds the effect of corporate board alumni connections to be both significant and sizable with respect to apparel sponsorship outcomes. Using multinomial probit models, the findings provide consistent and robust evidence across several specifications that managerial affiliations between universities and apparel firms play an often decisive role in sponsorship affiliation. The magnitude of this effect typically exceeds the influence of traditionally specified market fundamentals.

According to the study, larger local markets, proxied by university enrollment, are associated with a higher probability of Nike sponsorship, reflecting Nike’s strategic focus on dense, youth-oriented consumer bases with strong apparel demand. While overall athletic success, measured by Learfield Directors’ Cup points, is positively related to Nike sponsorship, its effect is generally modest and sometimes only marginally significant. According to Sanders, "This [result] suggests that while on-field success enhances sponsor appeal, it is not, by itself, a leading factor in securing a relationship with the industry’s leading firm." The most striking and consistent result from the research, however, concerns corporate board connections. "We might expect these newly-added variables, with respect to the extant literature, to provide no more than an incremental improvement in explaining sponsorship outcomes, as per the law of diminishing returns. However, these variables generate the most significant and substantial effects," Sanders added. As explained in the study, the presence of a university alumnus on Nike’s Board of Directors substantially increases the probability that the institution is sponsored by Nike – by roughly 40 to 45 percentage points in the baseline specifications, and by even more when Nike and the Jordan Brand are treated as a unified sponsorship umbrella. Conversely, alumni representation on Under Armour’s board sharply reduces the likelihood of Nike sponsorship, while significantly and substantially increasing the probability of Under Armour sponsorship. These magnitudes are economically large and persist across alternative specifications specified to address multicollinearity concerns. Such findings provide strong empirical support for an “influence proximity” effect, whereby governance-level ties facilitate or reinforce sponsorship relationships.