Abstract
Over the past twenty years sponsorship has outperformed all other marketing communication tools in terms of growth. With their massive audiences, major sport events create great opportunity for global companies to showcase their brands and products. Due to rapidly rising costs for securing sponsorship rights, ambush marketing has emerged as a growing option for different kind of companies.
The aim of ambush marketing is to obtain more of the gains associated with an official event sponsorship but without incurring the same extent of its costs. "Ambushers" are becoming increasingly astute at developing ways to circumvent legal attempts to control non-sponsor marketing strategies.
Therefore, the aim of the paper is to introduce and categorize various ambush marketing methods and counter-ambushing strategies. As ambush marketing has shifted over time from broadcast sponsorship campaigns and venue surrounding advertising to more off-site venue marketing, it is also important to analyze how the organizers of major sport event prevent the event itself, the sponsorship rights and how they deal with ambush marketing issue. The case of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa has been studied.