Bibliometric Mapping of the Global Research Landscape of Marketing and Sponsorship in Women’s Sports

Ötkan C. Ç., Erdeveciler Ö.

Uluslararası Güncel Eğitim Araştırmaları Dergisi, cilt.12, sa.1, ss.40-59, 2026 (Hakemli Dergi)

Özet

This study offers a systematic bibliometric mapping of marketing and sponsorship research in women's sport, a field that has expanded rapidly yet remained analytically uncharted. Data were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. Following PRISMA-guided screening, a final corpus of 97 articles published between 1993 and 2026 was analyzed. Descriptive statistics examined publication trends, journal distribution, and citation patterns, while keyword co-occurrence analysis was conducted using VOSviewer to identify thematic clusters. The temporal analysis reveals a pronounced acceleration after 2022, with nearly half of all publications appearing in the final four years of the study period. Structural catalysts including the NCAA's Name, Image, and Likeness policy and the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup help explain the timing of this shift. Publications are distributed across communication, sociology, and sport management journals, reflecting a historically gendered displacement toward critical social science outlets and the absence of a single disciplinary home. Citation patterns concentrate around a small number of foundational works, consistent with a consolidating rather than mature field. Five thematic clusters emerge from the co-occurrence analysis: post-feminist advertising critique, socio-institutional commercial governance, digital identity negotiation, gendered media consumption dynamics, and strategic personal branding. These findings establish a structural and interpretive baseline for a literature that has grown without synthesis. The thinness of the personal branding cluster and the unresolved tension between critical and applied research traditions identify where the field must invest to achieve genuine theoretical maturity.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis, women's sport, sport sponsorship, sport marketing, thematic mapping