The sum of all fears: Stakeholder responses to sponsorship alliance risk

• Investigates sponsorship managers’ responses to risk when forming B2B alliances.
• Risk responses exhibit promotion, prevention, and problem-solving orientations.
• Presents a re-definition of sponsorship risk that is grounded theoretically.
• Presents a sponsorship risk decision framework to guide stakeholder negotiations.

This study examines how event managers and corporate sponsors conceptualize and respond to risk when establishing new sponsorship alliances. Findings are based on 36 semi-structured interviews with sponsorship managers in Australia, as well as qualitative text analysis of 298 sponsorship policies worldwide. Three motivational responses towards sponsorship risk emerge. Chiefly, promotion-focused managers appear adventurous and outward-looking, whereas their prevention-focused colleagues seem more risk averse and inward-looking. Alternatively, managers who adopt a problem-solving focus seem to rely more on cognitive and affective behaviors when addressing risk. This research makes several contributions to the emergent dialogue on sponsorship risk. First, it advances a new, grounded definition of sponsorship risk. Second, it proposes a novel typology of stakeholder risk responses. Third, it presents a conceptual framework abstracted from the themes identified in the study to enhance sponsorship decision-making and promote new avenues for research on sponsorship risk.

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