Research by Professor of Finance, Banking and Insurance Chris McNeil was quoted in an article in The Atlantic about the value of sponsoring a college bowl game.
According to his findings, the impact is minimal.
A study published last year by Penn State’s John Fizel and Appalachian State’s Chris McNeil in the Journal of Sports Economics casts some doubt on companies’ faith in corporate sponsorships, at least when it comes to college football. It’s hard to isolate the payoffs of sponsoring a bowl game, but Fizel and McNeil, as many sports economists have done before them, looked at what happened to companies’ stock prices right after their sponsorships were announced, and compared those prices to how those stocks were expected to perform. (This isn’t a perfect method, but it at least captures what investors think about the value of a sponsorship.)
The Atlantic
The Atlantic