Articles came from different journals in a variety of sciences ranging from psychology and communication to marketing and business. However a majority of journals publishing on the subject of sponsorship and it related science fields were marketing oriented. Some examples of consulted journals are Business Horizons, European Journal of Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Sport Management,Psychology & Marketing, Sport Marketing Quarterly, and Strategic Management Journal. For a complete overview the references can be seen. More literature were conducted for this study which without doubt also influences my view on sponsorship, however not being referred to in this thesis.

First a brief history of the originate of sponsorship is given. Mainly hand books and earlier review papers are used for the early sponsorship review. Also the history of sponsorship research is reviewed, also based for big parts on earlier review papers. The sponsorship research history in this thesis focusses on earlier research when the this research field was rather new. From the point sponsorship became a more common science on its own and different strategic usages of sponsorship became an field of research and became commonly integrated into the marketing mix of firms, the review continues in the next chapter of "strategic sponsorship".

Different views on and developments of sponsorship are highlighted and described in chronology of time, however overlap in time occurs. The traditional model is described as being sponsorship linked-marketing. However sponsorship-linked marketing is often a strategic utilization of sponsorship as well, it is believer that further development of the phenomenon is found to be the strategic use.

As this thesis is written internal at Incubate, knowledge about the organisation was easyaccessible. Many formal and informal conversations took place. However, the first thing I did when entering the organisation was reading the policy and business plans of Incubate. Shortly after a first formal interview with external managing director of Incubate Joost Heijthuijsen took place about Incubate its view on the sponsorship relationship. How started the sponsorship relationship, where does it stand now, and how should the future of the relationship look like.

A first interview with strategic manager at Freshheads Wout Withagen, also responsible for sponsorship,focusedon their view on the sponsorship relation.A framework was given to structure the conversation. The framework was based on earlier research by Farrelly & Quester (2005a) who investigated if sponsorship can be managed as a co-marketing alliance. The basic components were strategiccompatibility, goal convergence, commitment, trust and economic and non-economic satisfaction. More about this further in this research.The majority of the conversation was one-way, where Wout Withagen was speaking. Also here, theoriginof the sponsorship relation, the current status and the future view was discussed. Later a follow up interview with Wout Withagen took place on some specific internal management and strategic utilization of sponsorship.

Based on these interviews a description of the unique sponsorship relation between Incubate and Freshheads is made. The sponsorship is viewed as co-marketing alliance. Does itfulfil the attributed which make the relation a co-marketing alliance. The findings of this research will be compared with the finding of Farrelly & Quester (2005a) who did a big investigation towards the potential of operating a sponsorship as a co-marketing alliance.