Objective: The purpose of this research is to determine the factors influencing the sports sponsorship decision-making process, evaluate the importance and prioritization of these factors, and ultimately provide an effective selection framework among different financial support options in the field of sports by sponsoring companies.
Method: This research is applied in terms of purpose and is a descriptive-survey research in terms of data collection method. In this regard, in order to understand this process more fully, first, by reviewing the background of the research, the indicators that are effective in choosing sports sponsorship by financial sponsors are extracted and then the most important ones are confirmed and selected based on the expert opinion of experts in this field. The questionnaires prepared in two stages were given to the statistical community of this research, consisting of marketing representatives of companies that have a history of financial sponsorship in the field of performance sports. After the criteria were validated by the respondents, the final criteria were weighted and ranked using the best-worst method, one of the modern multi-criteria decision-making techniques.
Results: The factors that are effective in this field are classified into ten groups: budget considerations, environmental factors, public relations, advertising opportunities, event management, target market, internal factors, relevance, type and status of sponsorship.
Conclusions: By collecting expert opinions and analyzing data, the final weight of the criteria was calculated based on the average opinions of the research experts. "Team performance" has been logically and understandably selected as the most important influential factor in the process of reviewing and selecting sports sponsorship programs by sponsoring companies. "Requested budget and company financial strength" is the second most important factor that sponsors consider in their decision-making. "Increasing sales" and "Opportunity to create new customers" are considered as priorities of sponsors as factors that ultimately cover financial goals.