Barriers of Long-Term Relationship between Iran Football Pro League Clubs and Sponsor Companies and Organizations

Identifying the current barriers on relationship path between Iranian Pro League clubs and the sponsor companies and organizations is nowadays of great importance. The aim of the present study was to identify and prioritize these barriers. The study is functional in its purpose and mixed exploratory (quantitative and qualitative) in its data collection method. The statistical population of the study included all marketing managers of public and private sponsor companies and organizations sponsoring Iranian Pro League clubs during 2011-2019, club managers, Iranian Football Federation, and experts of the field. Purposive sampling through snowball sampling was used as the sampling method for qualitative phase, and convenience sampling was used as the sampling method for quantitative phase in which pairwise comparison questionnaire taken from qualitative phase was distributed among fifteen participants from academic experts. Open and axial coding was used for analysis of data in qualitative phase and for identification of components of barriers, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used for prioritizing the components in quantitative phase. Based on the findings, 13 categories and 79 components regarding barriers of long-term communication between Iranian Pro League clubs and sponsor companies and organizations were identified, and economic, legal, and marketing indices and categories had the most rate of importance. Through identifying these barriers, football clubs and sponsor companies and organizations can act upon appropriate strategies to do their best in sponsorship, achieve their goals in sponsorship, and provide reciprocal benefit for both parties of the relationship.