<p>This article examines how organizations respond to reputational scandals in sponsorship relationships within the fields of art and sport. While sponsorship has been widely explored as a means of building legitimacy, less attention has been given to how legitimacy is actively renegotiated when reputational crises occur. Drawing on stakeholder theory and institutional logics, we investigate how organizations justify either continuing or severing controversial sponsorship ties through strategies grounded in compliance or conformity. Using a comparative case study design and secondary data, we analyse four high-profile scandals involving either discredited sponsors or tainted recipients. The findings reveal that responses are shaped by field-specific reputational dynamics rather than by a simple binary logic. In symbolically rich domains such as the arts, organizations tend to invoke conformity-based arguments aligned with moral and cultural expectations; in performance-driven or lower-visibility sports, compliance-based justifications linked to legality and contractual obligations dominate. Hybrid responses also emerge, influenced by elite stakeholder pressure, media attention, and internal governance considerations. By linking symbolic capital, field structures, and stakeholder salience to sponsorship decision-making, this study contributes to research on corporate reputation, organizational legitimacy, and sponsorship ethics, offering insights for managers facing reputational threats in complex institutional environments.</p>