Sports Marketing in Malaysia

Sports marketing is relatively new in Malaysia. Although the concept has been practiced by many European countries as well as America for more than 60 years, the Malaysian sports arena has yet to achieve the sheer scale of publicity and recognition achieved through well-planned sports marketing strategies.

When it comes to sports sponsorship, very few Malaysian athletes get to have the chance to endorse product brand names on a national scale. Only high-profile athletes that have competed and won in international tournaments like Dato’ Lee Chong Wei in badminton and Dato’ Nicol Ann David in squash usually have enough star quality to land such endorsement deals. Even so, they are mostly sponsored by non-sports brand names. Why is that so?

This is perhaps because even though they are internationally acclaimed athletes, the sports they represent are not necessarily popular all over the world. Badminton may be one of the most popular sports in Malaysia but it may not be the case in America or in Europe. The same goes for squash. Perhaps if these internationally acclaimed athletes were known for excelling in soccer or pro tennis they probably would have been able to get endorsements from more well-known sports brands.

So how can Malaysia get more athletes to endorse more popular brand names? Perhaps by training more athletes in internationally popular sports such as soccer, tennis or golf? Whatever sports Malaysia trains their athletes in, they must make sure that these athletes perform consistently in their field because no popular brand is going to sponsor athletes that keep losing. Sadly, this arrangement also goes both ways – athletes who begin to underperform, get older or are involved in embarrassing scandals tend to lose star quality and may lose their precious contracts. Understandably, this is just the nature of the business.