Despite its acknowledged contribution to local, national, and global economies, there is no consensus as to exactly what is meant by the term sports marketing. This conceptual paper attempts to address this deficiency via the development of a new framework that is based upon two key dimensions: type of product and level of sports integration. By categorizing goods and services as either sports products or nonsports products and by differentiating between traditional strategies and sponsorship-based strategies, four sports marketing domains are identified. They are the theme-based, product-based, alignment-based, and sports-based strategic domains. The underlying principles for developing the framework are delineated in this article, and many examples for each strategic domain are provided as a means of illustrating their conceptual differences and how they are implemented.
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