‘Game, Set, Match’: An exploration of congruence in Australian disability sport sponsorship

•Congruence was relevant to all sponsorship management stages, except measurement.•An emphasis was placed by sponsors on mission and value congruence.•Sport for Athletes With Disability (AWD) have its own attributes that can be leveraged by commercial partners.

The effectiveness of sponsorship communications, and thereby the success of corporate sponsorship management, is considerably influenced by the multi-faceted, theoretical concept of congruence. In this paper, sponsors’ management approaches to disability sport relationships are presented, as well as an examination of the role congruence plays in the sponsorship process. The aim of the study was to investigate whether, and where, congruence was a consideration when examining the end-to-end sponsorship management of disability sport properties in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were used to assess congruence within each stage of the sport sponsorship management framework – strategy, objectives, selection, implementation and measurement. The various forms of congruence were found to align with past work of sponsorship in regards to congruence prominence within the management framework. A key distinguishing factor of disability sport sponsorship relationships was the emphasis placed by sponsors on mission and value congruence.