Sport has been and continues to be a fun way for the masses and a long tradition since the ancient Greek and
Roman times. People have always used sport to escape from their everyday problems. Emotions are the ones that lead
sports fans to continue to support their favorite athletes and teams. Over the centuries, sports events have evolved into
billions of dollar industries through large investments from corporations who want to associate the brand with a team
or athlete. Most people, when they hear branding or branding, think about logos, but branding is much more than that.
A brand has DNA, personality, identity, and so on. Brand is the essence of the product, and the logo is a small part of
this complex set of elements. This paper aims at presenting some theoretical elements on the link between branding and
sport, describing the branding process, the strength of the personal brand, trying to explain the reasons for choosing
an athlete as an influencer for a particular brand. The paper is structured on several sections. The first section
presents the concept of branding, the importance of branding in sports and the reasons why athletes are chosen to
represent some of the world's largest brands. The following section presents the study carried out in this paper, the
methods used and the results obtained. The last part of the article outlines the conclusions, limitations and suggestions
for future work
