The Impact of the Results of Tennis Matches on the Dynamics of Stock Prices of Sponsor Companies

These days companies compete with each other and try to attract the maximum number of customers in various ways. For this purpose, they use a variety of marketing strategies, and one of these strategies is corporate sponsorship. Corporate sponsorship in sports is especially growing in popularity. To investigate the effectiveness of corporate sponsorship, the relationship between the results of tennis matches and the dynamics of the share prices of sponsor companies was studied. The sample includes the outcomes of matches of the Australian Open men's championship for the period from 2014 to 2019. As a result of applying event study, the negative reaction of the stock market to the defeat was revealed, while the victories did not lead to a positive abnormal return of shares. The results also showed that defeats in important matches caused a stronger negative reaction of the market. In addition, according to the analysis of the sample by industry, the share prices of financial sector companies are most affected by the outcomes of tennis matches. If we consider sponsors on a territorial basis, the victories and defeats of tennis players have a stronger impact on the dynamics of share prices of North American/European than Asian companies.