The Perceived Value of Sports Sponsorship in the Context of CSR: An Experiential Analysis of a Professional Club’s Partners[La valeur perçue du sponsoring sportif à l'épreuve de la RSE : une analyse expérientielle des partenaires d'un club professionnel]

This article examines the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the perceived value of sports sponsorship in a B2B context. While the literature tends to view CSR as a lever for creating value for stakeholders, its actual contribution to the partners' experience remains largely unexplored empirically, particularly in inter-organizational relationships. To address this gap, this research employs the experiential value framework proposed by Holbrook (1999), which allows value to be understood as a multidimensional, relative, and contextual construct. Empirically, it draws on a qualitative study conducted with partners of a French third-division basketball club. The corpus consists of 27 data points (semi-structured interviews and testimonials), analyzed using an abductive approach. The results highlight a hierarchical structure of sponsorship value. This structure is dominated by utilitarian and relational dimensions, linked in particular to network effectiveness, the generation of business opportunities, and the perception of a return on investment. A significant experiential component also emerges, centered on enjoyment, conviviality, and the quality of interactions, but appears closely linked to these economic objectives, which it facilitates. In contrast, the societal dimensions associated with CSR are rarely invoked and occupy a marginal place in partners' discourse, both in terms of visibility and influence on the decision to engage. These results highlight a disconnect between the centrality of CSR in institutional discourse and its actual role in sponsors' lived experience. The article thus proposes the concept of experiential decoupling, defined as the gap between the value promoted by organizations and that actually perceived by stakeholders. From a theoretical perspective, this research contributes to the literature by offering an experiential interpretation of the value of sponsorship in a B2B context—an area that remains underdeveloped—and by introducing a contingency-based approach to the value of CSR. It highlights the need to understand value not as an intrinsic property of the mechanisms themselves, but as a situated construct that depends on the logic of action and relational contexts.