Abstract:
The Nigeria Sports Brand (NSB) is a construct that expresses Nigeria’s ultimate intentions
towards sports development, as reflected in the National Sports Policy (2009) and the Sports
Industry Policy (2020). However, the NSB still performs far below expectations in relation to
sports branding predictive indices (Marketing Mix Indices – MMI, Media Indices – MI,
Economic Indices – EI and Governmental Indices – GI). Previous studies focused largely on
sports development in Nigeria, with little consideration for these predictive indices. This study,
therefore, was designed to investigate MMI (production, price, promotion and place of sports),
MI (sports new media, sports print, sports radio and sports television), EI (Sports Gross
Domestic Product [SGDP], Sports Production and Consumption [SPC], Sports Manufacturing
and Trade [SMT] and real income) and GI (government proprietorship, government policy,
government issues and public-private partnership) as predictors of the NSB.
The study was anchored to the Ripple Effect and Maslow’s Human Motivation theories, while
the mixed methods design (QUAN+qual) was adopted. Four accessible geopolitical zones were
purposively selected, and four states were randomly selected in each zone. One hundred and
ninety-six sports policy makers and officials, 48 sports federation officers across the zones
were selected using stratified random sampling technique, while 528 athletes, 240 sports
enthusiasts and 48 sports media personnel were selected through convenience sampling. The
purposive sampling technique was adopted for the selection of 240 coaches. Key informant
interviews were conducted with zonal sports coordinators. The instruments used were
Production of Sports (r=0.71), Place of sports (0.71), Promotion of sports (r=0.72), Real
income (r=0.72), SPC (r=0.72), Price of sports (r=0.73), SGDP (r=0.73), Sports print (r=0.74),
SMT (r=0.74), Sports radio (r=0.75), Sports new media (r=0.76), Sports television (r=0.77),
Nigeria Sports Brand (r=0.77), Government policy (r=0.79), Government issues (r=0.80),
Government proprietorship (r=0.81) and Public-private partnership (r=0.81). The quantitative
data were analysed using Pearson product moment correlation and multiple regression at 0.05
level of significance, while the qualitative data were thematically analysed.
Participants were mostly male (64.4%), aged 28.65±5.39 years. Sports television (r=0.05), SPC
(r=0.05), government proprietorship (r=0.06), sports radio (r=0.08), sports new media
(r=0.09), sports print (r=0.13), Place of sports (r=0.15), government policy (r=0.26), SMT
(r=0.30) and public-private partnership (r=0.60) positively correlated with NSB. There was a
significant joint contribution of the predictors on NSB (F(4;1291)=57.27; Adj. R2=0.15),
accounting for 15.0% of its variance. Sports new media (ß=0.15), government issues (ß=-0.15),
sports print (ß=0.16), government policy (ß=-0.16), place of sports (ß=0.18), production and
consumption (ß=-0.22), sports television (ß=-0.25), manufacturing and trade (ß=0.45) and
public-private partnership (ß=-0.60) contributed significantly to NSB. Sports coordinators
indicated that, whereas policy content was consistent, NSB was mainly impeded by poor
implementation, insufficient funding, domineering role of government, poor sports pricing,
poor media, ineffective marketing, and insufficient and substandard sports production.
Place of sports, sports media, sports production and consumption, sports manufacturing and
trade, governmental proprietorship, quality government involvement and public-private
partnership positively influenced the Nigeria Sports Brand. If these are prioritised in policy
implementation, the NSB will compete effectively globally.