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This paper aims to extend the literature on wicked problems in consumer research by exploring athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport and the potential role that social marketing can play in addressing this problem.

This paper conceptualises the wicked problem of athlete and consumer vulnerability in sport, proposing a multi-theoretical approach to social marketing, incorporating insights from stakeholder theory, systems theory and cocreation to tackle this complex problem.

Sport provides a rich context for exploring a social marketing approach to a wicked problem, as it operates in a complex ecosystem with multiple stakeholders with differing, and sometimes conflicting, objectives. It is proposed that consumers, particularly those that are highly identified fans, are key stakeholders that have both facilitated the problematic nature of the sport system and been rendered vulnerable as a result. Further, a form of consumer vulnerability also extends to athletes as the evolution of the sport system has led them to engage in harmful consumption behaviours. Social marketing, with its strategic and multi-faceted focus on facilitating social good, is an apt approach to tackle behavioural change at multiple levels within the sport system.

Sport managers, public health practitioners and policymakers are given insight into the key drivers of a growing wicked problem as well as the potential for social marketing to mitigate harm.

This paper is the first to identify and explicate a wicked problem in sport. More generally it extends insight into wicked problems in consumer research by examining a case whereby the consumer is both complicit in, and made vulnerable by, the creation of a wicked problem. This paper is the first to explore the use of social marketing in managing wicked problems in sport.

This chapter takes an interdisciplinary approach combining expertise in sports management and in philosophy to examine the premises underpinning the contested claim that professional athletes have a special obligation to be role models both within and beyond the sporting arena. Arguments for and against the claim are briefly addressed, as a prelude to identifying and elucidating a set of factors relevant to a consideration of this alleged special obligation. The chapter considers understandings of sport, play and athleticism from an ethical perspective and examines their relationship to professionalism to determine the extent to which ethical imperatives can logically be upheld or undermined within the professional context. The chapter concludes that professional athletes cannot be expected to be able to respond to the demand that they act as role models within and beyond the sporting arena unless the tensions implicit within that demand are articulated. The chapter calls for recognition of the complexity of ethical decision-making in the context of professional sport and recommends that the training of professional athletes should prepare them to deal with this complexity. Recognition of the complexity of decision-making with the professional sporting context suggests the need for further research into optimal training strategies for young professional athletes and into the genesis and reasonableness of the demand that such athletes act as role models both within and beyond the sporting arena.

Using a case study of an international sport event, the purpose of this paper is to examine the inter-organisational relationship between a sport event property and its corporate sponsors.

Interviews were conducted with personnel from the national sport organisation responsible for the delivery of this major event, and from four of its corporate sponsorship partners.

The findings indicated that both formal and informal governance were critical to the relationships underpinning these sponsorship alliances. From a dyadic perspective, it was found that the satisfaction of sponsorship partners had two key elements: tangible commercial benefits from the sponsor-sponsee alliance, and the less tangible but nonetheless valuable relationship support within the partnership. In short, partner satisfaction and alliance stability stemmed from relational constructs and the balance of formal governance mechanisms.

This paper explores the variables that generate value and maintain alliance stability for improved sponsorship governance. These findings, while focused on a single case study, have implications for research in the field of sponsorship and to the area of business-to-business relationships more broadly.