When it comes to sports marketing, it is generally accepted that there is three sectors to this kind of marketing. Advertising is to promote a certain sports team. Advertising is to use the popularity of a sports team or athlete to promote a product. Advertising is used to increase the number of people who participate in the sport.

The first kind of adverting is promote all kinds of sports from Major League Baseball (MLB) to the Olympics to English football. Those are just several sports of many sports that use sports marketing firms. The idea of this ad or commercial is to remind the general public why they watch a particular team or watch a particular sport. This category covers the advertisement of any sports team or sports event such as the Olympics. The ad or commercial is going to point out the positives of following that sport. There may be a more direct link though between the products. For example, Missy Franklin may be a good candidate to advertise a swimming company's products.

The second of advertising is using sports players or sports teams to advertise a product to the public. Often times, the commercial or ad will feature a sports team that has recently made the news. For example, it's common to see Olympic players in ads or commercials after they have done well at the Olympics. The reason that these athletes are used is because people want to use the products that famous people use. Everyone is thinking about the athlete after a big win, so that's a great time to use the athlete in a commercial or ad.

The product that the team or athlete advertises may or may not be related to the sport. There may be a lose connection between the sport of the person in the advertisement and the product being advertised. An example is that famous athletes in the news are often on the Wheaties cereal box. It's good for people to Wheaties because it's fairly healthy but that's the only connection that cereal has to the athlete or team. Another example of when people use sports marketing companies is Michael Phelps just signed a contract to promote Head and Shoulders shampoo. It can be said that a swimmer, such as Phelps, would use that kind of shampoo after swimming.

The third and final kind of sports sponsorship is to advertise a certain sport to get more people playing the sport. This could be true in any sport as every sport needs to be advertised to the public. When sports marketing agencies do advertising to the general public, this keeps the team fresh in the public's minds. This isn't too common but sometimes it's necessary in order to get more people to play the sport. Another name for this kind of marketing is Grassroots Sports Marketing.