Evolving beyond the CEO's favorite pastime to an important and expansive component of the integrated marketing mix, sponsorship now has its own bona fide trade organization, the International Sponsor Council.

Just associating your brand with a sport can actually do more harm than good, especially with an audience that's smart enough to sniff out the hangers-on. So I ask, is this "guilt by association?" Is it okay to simply bring your brand to the people and let them decide if it fits? Is this sports marketing? Let me hear your thoughts.

As CBS, the USTA, the PGA Tour, and others have found out, people don't like to be force fed now that they've seen the whole menu. As an industry, it's our job to make sure the menu is interesting and everything on it is delicious since the fans love to eat!

During these times of economic challenges, airlines are not flying as high, or as often, as they once did. But one area is seeing increased bookings -- sports sponsorships.

Since the ubiquity of social networks, opportunities are now surfacing for new companies and developers to leverage social media tools to break into the fantasy sports market.

Based on our work with a large number of U.S. and global sponsors, here are our top four trends to watch in sponsorships over the next five to ten years.

With today's newest tools for planning, optimizing, buying, and managing campaigns, sports marketers have an opportunity to hit a home run with every campaign.

This is the perfect time for sponsors and agencies to start forging improved business relationships. For their part, agencies and companies should adopt these six tips as standard operating procedure.

You may not see it, but gender blindness is everywhere you look in sports marketing. Case in point: The NFL just signed a multi-year deal with Procter & Gamble, making more than a dozen of the CPG company's brands an "official locker room product of the NFL."

As sports property holders and their agencies face louder and more incessant demands from sponsors/partners to demonstrate return on their marketing investment, it becomes all too easy to fall into the commoditization trap that has become so prevalent in ROI research today.