Determinants of Corporate Sponsorship Award Opportunities for Soccer Premier League Clubs in Kenya

Sponsorship of soccer clubs by corporate organizations is a common phenomenon worldwide. Sponsors have been giving assistance such as branded shirts, money, kits and stadia. Before awarding sponsorship, corporate organizations base their decisions on certain criteria. The sponsorship selection criteria have been documented in various studies, yet no such study had been done on the kenya soccer premier league. This therefore was the main focus of this study, whose objectives were four fold:1. To determine the influence of team-centered factors on corporate organizations decisions to sponsor Kenya Premier League clubs. 2. To appraise the influence of country-based characteristics on corporate organizations willingness to offer sponsorship to Kenya Premier League clubs. 3. To establish whether decisions made by corporate organizations to avail sports sponsorships to Kenya Premier League clubs were influenced by environmentally-centered factors.4. To determine whether team-centered, country-based and environmentally-centered characteristics differed significantly in the extent to which they influenced decisions made by corporate organizations to sponsor KPL clubs. Data was collected using self- administered questionnaires and interviews, from purposively selected corporate sponsors and clubs. Furthermore, the descriptive survey design was found suitable because it is concerned with finding out who, what, which and how of a phenomenon. Analysis of data entailed the use of descriptive statistics, with regression being used to test the hypotheses. Results revealed that team-based, country-based and environmentally-centered characteristics, had a positive and significant relationship with decisions made by corporate organizations to sponsor Kenya Premier League clubs. in addition, team-based characteristics had the strongest influence on willingness by corporate organizations to award sponsorship to Kenya Premier League clubs, followed by country-based factors, then environmentally-based factors.