Growing popularity of sports coupled with the pace of globalization made sports sponsorship one of the most admired means of enhancing marketing competitiveness in Taiwan, despite that there remain much ambiguity to the subject. In endeavor to fill the gap of knowledge to the subject, this research served to explore the motivation of sports sponsorship of sportswear brands in Taiwan, their decision structure, and also their intention for continuous sponsorship. Bearing in mind the exploratory nature of this research, in-depth interview with unstructured questionnaire was assumed for the collection of data. Judgment sampling found Nike, Reebok and Adidas the most appropriate samples for the purpose of this research. Results revealed that the enhancement of corporate image and corporate reputation were the prime motivations for sports sponsorship. While the mission and the goal for corporate development directed the intention for sponsorship. For the selection of appropriate candidates to sponsorship; the potential and prospect of athletics were the major criteria for the types of sponsorship. Regarding the allocation of funding, basketball games received the largest share of budget, followed by jogging and tennis games. Both monetary and tangibles were offered as means of sponsorship. Although sole sponsorship was not strictly sought for, all sportswear brands in Taiwan demonstrated their strong favor towards long-term sponsorship. Regarding the recommendations for future research, it seems worthwhile to devise an instrument that is capable of assessing the performance of sports sponsorship by sportswear brands; should systematic comparison and evaluation to their performance is required. Furthermore, empirical research can be extended to testify the exploratory findings of this research and to comparing the performance of sportswear brands in different corporations size.
