Fans’ responses to the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) pilot jersey sponsorship program: An experimental approach

During the 2017–18 season, the National Basketball Association (NBA) began a three-year pilot program to allow corporate sponsors’ logo patches on game jerseys. Considering this, there is little evidence on how international and domestic NBA fans would respond to this new initiative. Accordingly, we conducted an online experiment to investigate the effects of market-, team-, manufacturer-, and individual-related factors on fans’ perceptions toward various potential NBA jersey sponsors. We developed 180 fictitious press releases that informed participants about their favorite team coming to terms on a sponsorship deal with a specific corporation. This resulted in the creation of 360 graphic renderings of sponsored NBA team jerseys as research stimuli. We utilized a crowdsourcing platform to collect the data (N = 621). Overall, our findings provide useful and actionable insights for managers to understand what may impact fans’ reactions to the NBA’s new pilot sponsorship program.