Resumen de Athens' Olympic Games 2004 impact on sponsors' stock returns

Aristeidis Samitas, Dimitris Kenourgios, Peter Zounis

• The sponsorship of major sporting events involves an ongoing commitment by business partners (sponsors) who need to evaluate the returns of their investments. This article addresses this evaluation by employing event study analysis and bootstrapping in order to assess the market value of business sponsorship of the Olympic Games 2004. The events tested are the announcement of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games sponsorships and the opening ceremony. The empirical results indicate the marginal positive impact that sponsorship announcements cause in international and national sponsors' stock returns. Sponsorship announcements are more influential for small size firms' stock returns since they react more positive compared to larger ones.