Assessing the Effects of Sports Marketing on Stock Returns: Evidence From the Nippon Professional Baseball Series

This paper employs an event study method to associate Japanese professional baseball championship competition with the effects of a parent company's stock prices from a sports marketing perspective. The empirical results show that there are significant positive abnormal stock returns for the parent companies when their own teams qualified for the final championship series, and the parent companies have higher and more significant cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) when their teams win the championship. It is noteworthy that the stocks of parent companies experience significantly positive ARs prior to the event day when their team wins the title earlier. Additionally, the retail industry has more significant positive abnormal stock returns when teams backed by this industry win the championship, as compared with non-retail industries. The related sports marketing expenses and teams' operations do affect firm values during the postseason period. The authors reasonably conclude that the retail industry is the most likely sector to adopt sports marketing strategies to enhance firm performances and profits, especially for those companies that own professional baseball teams.