CSB at Sports Marketing Breakfast Seminar
How can brands create greater business, brand, and relationship value through sports marketing? This was the focus of a recent breakfast seminar hosted by Marknadsföreningen Sweden, bringing together researchers and industry leaders to discuss how sports partnerships can generate meaningful and measurable impact
From sponsorship to strategic impact
Erik Modig, researcher at the Stockholm School of Economics, opened the seminar by putting sports marketing into a broader strategic context. Looking ahead to 2027, he highlighted key trends while emphasizing the fundamental principles that determine whether a sponsorship creates real impact.
Ingemar Queckfeldt, Head of Brand & Sponsorship at AKEA, shared how the company uses sports partnerships to create both business and brand value, including through employer branding. He discussed how AKEA activates and measures its investments in sports.
Marcus Larsson, Chief Operating Officer at ISP Sport & Marketing, provided an overview of the Swedish sports marketing market, highlighting current developments and opportunities for brands and rights holders. With more than 15 years of experience in the commercial side of sport, he offered perspectives on how successful partnerships are built.
Daniel Björklund, Chief Commercial Officer at the Swedish Olympic Committee (SOK), shared experiences from working with partnerships around the Olympic Games. He explored how companies of different sizes approach sports partnerships and the types of impact they can create beyond traditional exposure.
Helena Taube Rehnmark, Senior Executive Advisor, Commercial & Sports Business, addressed how partnerships can secure a place within increasingly crowded marketing and media budgets. Drawing on experience from both media and rights-holder organizations, she highlighted the importance of integrating partnerships into the wider marketing mix and connecting them to measurable outcomes.
The Center for Sports and Business
Anna Laurell Nash, Executive Director of the Center for Sports and Business at the Stockholm School of Economics, introduced the Center and its role in connecting research, business, and sport.
Sport and business are increasingly interconnected, creating important questions around how value is created, measured, and distributed across the sports ecosystem. The Center for Sports and Business brings together academic research, and industry perspectives to explore these questions and address current challenges facing the sports and business communities.
During the seminar, Laurell Nash shared insights into the Center's current work and highlighted some of the key questions and projects relevant to the industry.
Creating value through partnerships
The seminar brought together perspectives from academia, brands, rights holders, media and the wider sports industry. A central theme was that sports marketing is increasingly about more than exposure.
Effective partnerships require clear strategic objectives, relevant activation, and robust measurement - connecting investments in sport to broader business, brand, and relationship outcomes.
