Despite companies spending billions of dollars on sport sponsorship every year, little is known about how sponsoring companies make sponsorship decisions. Sponsors are expected to enter into sponsorship agreements strategically, so as to achieve corporate objectives. However, managers who make sponsorship decisions could also be motivated by their own personal interests. As soon as managers’ personal objectives manifest themselves to influence their sponsorship decision-making, we speak of a hidden agenda. In our empirical study, we investigated corporate objectives and managers’ personal objectives, and their respective influence on sport sponsorship decisions. We conducted a three-round qualitative Delphi study with 18 participants employed at sponsor organisations, sport clubs, and sport marketing agencies. The results of our study contribute to our understanding of corporate objectives in the sport sponsorship literature. We reveal 12 different personal objectives of managers underlying sponsorship decision-making. In addition, we develop the steps and stages of the sponsorship decision-making process from a sponsor perspective. We reveal the existence of a hidden agenda in sponsorship decisions. Due to divergences in objectives, a hidden agenda leads to agency effects between the shareholders/owners of the sponsoring company (principal) and the managers (agent). The emerging agency effects can have either negative or positive effects for the sponsor. We derive a model showing the decision-making in sport sponsorship, considering managers’ hidden agendas. Managerial implications are discussed.

尽管公司每年在体育赞助上花费数十亿美元，但对于赞助公司如何做出赞助决定知之甚少。赞助商应从战略上达成赞助协议，以实现公司目标。但是，做出赞助决策的经理也可能会出于自己的个人利益而受到激励。一旦管理者的个人目标表明自己可以影响他们的赞助决策，我们就会谈到一个隐藏的议程。在我们的实证研究中，我们调查了公司目标和管理者的个人目标，以及它们各自对体育赞助决策的影响。我们进行了三轮定性德尔菲研究，有18位参与者在赞助商组织，体育俱乐部和体育营销机构受雇。我们的研究结果有助于我们理解体育赞助文献中的公司目标。我们揭示了赞助决策背后的管理者12个不同的个人目标。此外，我们从赞助商的角度制定赞助决策过程的步骤和阶段。我们揭示出赞助决策中存在隐藏的议程。由于目标的差异，一个隐藏的议程会导致发起公司的股东/所有者（主要）与经理（代理）之间的代理效应。新兴的代理效应可能对发起人产生负面或正面影响。我们导出了一个模型，该模型显示了体育赞助的决策，并考虑了经理的隐藏议程。讨论了管理意义。