A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF SPORTS MARKETING RESEARCH IN COMMUNICATION

Purpose- Sports marketing is defined as "the activities of industrial marketers of goods and services who use sport as a promotional tool" (Argan & Katırcı, 2002, p. 23). Sports marketing plays a vital role in communication by utilizing the influence of sports to connect with global audiences (Ayhan et al., 2017; Fetchko et al., 2013). It enables brands to effectively engage fans, convey messages, and establish strong emotional bonds through the universal language of sports (Baena, 2018; Hunt et al., 1999). Over the past two decades, sports marketing has garnered significant attention from both communication researchers and practitioners (Filo et al., 2015), warranting a comprehensive review that explores the evolution and current state of sports marketing research in the communication discipline. This study aims to provide an up-to-date overview of the development and structure of sports marketing research in the communication. Methodology- In this reseaarch, we conducted a systematic literature review to achieve the study aim. We also used for a domain-focusedhybrid review, focusing on a field-discipline (sport marketing field & communication discipline) hybrid approach (Kraus et al., 2022), and employed bibliometric analysis as an analysis technique (Donthu et al., 2021). The dataset for this study consisted of 528 articles obtained from the Scopus database, encompassing journals within the communication field. Findings- The findings revealed that sports marketing research was published across 150 distinct communication journals from 1979 to 2023. Notably, Communication and Sport emerged as the most prolific journal, with 83 papers, and the USA stood as the leading country in terms of authorship, with 428 authors. Moreover, words such as "social media", "journalism", "content analysis", and “olympic games” are frequently used in the research Conclusion- This study is anticipated to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter by examining the scholarly progression of sports marketing research in the field of communication. Keywords: Sports research, sports marketing, sports communications, bibliometric review JEL Codes: M31, M30, M10