Int. J. Sport Management and Marketing, Vol. 19, Nos. 3/4, 2019 233 Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Marketing investments in sport venue naming rights and the market value of the firm David M. Goldberg*, Jason K. Deane, Terry R. Rakes and Loren Paul Rees Department of Business Information Technology, R.B. Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Pamplin Hall Suite 1007, 880 West Campus Drive, CAMPUS 0235, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA Email: goldberg@vt.edu Email: jdeane1@vt.edu Email: trakes@vt.edu Email: lrees@vt.edu *Corresponding author Abstract: Sport venue naming rights agreements represent monumental long- term marketing investments to increase brand awareness and improve a firm’s image. These agreements require enormous expenditures, highlighting the importance of understanding their impact on the firm’s market value. Questions of the wisdom of such investments today, which types of sport venues are most appropriate, and whether full corporate names or truncated ones are equally successful are of more than academic interest. Prior research has presented only a limited window into the efficacy of these deals. Results from the well-known event study methodology show improved stock market returns based on 122 announcements of naming rights deals, although it is found that market reactions have soured since 2001, when several firms investing in naming rights experienced insolvency. Investments in naming major league baseball or multi-sport venues have been particularly wise. Somewhat surprisingly, we observe that longer sport venue names are preferred to other name lengths. Keywords: event study; sponsorship; sports; investments; advertising. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Goldberg, D.M., Deane, J.K., Rakes, T.R. and Rees, L.P. (2019) ‘Marketing investments in sport venue naming rights and the market value of the firm’, Int. J. Sport Management and Marketing, Vol. 19, Nos. 3/4, pp.233–252. Biographical notes: David M. Goldberg is a PhD student in the Department of Business Information Technology at the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. He received his BS in Business Information Technology and his BA in Geography at Virginia Tech. He has previously worked in the commercial real estate industry, where he developed spatial tools to augment market analyses. His current research interests include text and data mining, business intelligence and analytics, geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analytics, and disaster planning and logistics.