Sports Marketing for Attaining Economic Growth in South-South Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria, as a nation, seems to have abysmally failed in her efforts, as spelt out in the economic blueprint tagged 'Vision 2020', to be among the top twenty economies in the world by the year 2020. Sports marketing has the potential of contributing meaningfully to the economic growth of the country. The extent to which sports marketing can stimulate Nigeria's economic growth has not been empirically established. This study was conducted to determine how sports marketing can be seen to be capable of boosting economic growth in South-South Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The researchers used the stratified random sampling technique to obtain a sample of two hundred and seventy-eight (278) from a target population of one thousand and fifteen (1,015) coaches, corporate organization workers, private organization workers, sports directors, and athletes. The instrument for the study is a twenty-one (21) item self-structured questionnaire scaled on a modified four (4) point Likert-type rating with reliability index (r) established at 0.78 using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient. The findings revealed that sports marketing efforts are perceived to stimulate economic growth in South-South Nigeria.