The importance of sponsorship as marketing communications tool is constantly increasing. The most popular being sports sponsorship, in which companies invest most resources. With the increase of invested resources, a well-considered and strategic management of sponsorships is gaining importance. A segment of strategic treatment of sponsorships is also a thoughtful selection of sponsored parties, of which sponsorship selection criteria make a very important part. The field of sponsorship selection criteria has been studied before, however the authors list different selection criteria in their sponsorship selection criteria models, which means that they do not agree on the issue which of the selection criteria are the most suitable. Furthermore, no reasearch into the sponsorship selection criteria has been conducted in the Slovenian area so far, so in my own qualitative research I focused on the use of sponsorship selection criteria among the companies on the Slovenian market as well as on their satisfaction with the sponsorship and the treatment of sponsorship agreements during the current COVID-19 virus crisis. In the empirical part of the thesis which was based on five conducted in-depth interviews conducted with the representatives of some major companies on slovenian market, I found out that the analysed companies mostly use relevant rational sponsorship selection criteria. Besides, the survey showed that a thoughtful selection of sponsotship parties influences their sponsorship satisfaction and that due to the current COVID-19 crisis, the involved companies do not intend to change their treatment of sponsorships drastically.
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