A typology of cause-related marketing approaches in European professional basketball

•This article categorises professional sport teams into four types, based on their cause-related marketing (CRM) strategies adopted.•European professional basketball teams want their CSR ideas to provide marketing outcomes as well.•Treating management and marketing of CSR as integrated rather than distinct phenomena, delivers the biggest win-win for the team and society.As professional sports organisations are increasingly engaging in Cause-Related Marketing (CRM), there is a growing interest in understanding to what extent Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can deliver win–win outcomes for both the organisation and society at large. In this article, the authors provide a typology of CRM approaches adopted by professional sports teams and demonstrate if and how they approach social responsibility from a marketing perspective. The authors use a qualitative method to explore CRM engagement of professional basketball teams in Europe. The findings show that CRM is more than an act of philanthropy to the majority of the sports organisations. The sport organisations envision a win–win situation either through increased revenue or improved stakeholder relationships, or a combination of both. The authors merge the CSR and CRM concept and contribute to the CRM literature by investigating it from a broad managerial and stakeholder perspective rather than from a unilateral consumer perspective. The model will assist sports managers in CRM decision-making, more specifically, in handling the paradox between commercialising CRM and safeguarding integrity.