Chapter 3 Marketing Principles Applied to Sport Management

1. Chapter 3 Marketing Principles Applied to Sport Management

2. What Is Sport Marketing? • Create demand • Obtain the best possible understanding of what consumers want • Includes the marketing of • products, such as equipment, apparel, and footwear; • services, such as skill lessons or club memberships; and • entities, such as leagues, teams, or individuals

3. Evolution of Sports Broadcasting • From pure, factual reporting aimed at sports fans to sport entertainment aimed at masses • Roone Arledge: ABC Monday Night Football; combined entertainment and sport • Success of sports in prime time • ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN News, ESPN Zone, ESPN.com © Comstock Images/Getty Images

4. Sport Sponsorship • Sponsorship: • The acquisition of rights to affiliate or directly associate with a product or event for purpose of deriving benefits related to that affiliation • Albert G. Spalding: • Use of the word official • Mark McCormack: • Built IMG through golfer Arnold Palmer • Nike & Air Jordan; • Packaging of the Nike brand, product, advertising, and athlete into one personality

5. Product Extension and Promotion • Bill Veeck: • Team must provide reasons other than the game itself for people to attend & support franchise • Creating the greatest joy for the greatest number of people • Pleasurable attending experience • Create conversation

6. Research in Sport Marketing • Matt Levine: • Credited with formalizing customer research in sport industry; audience audit, intercepts, focus groups • Pass-by interviews: • On-site interviews in heavy traffic areas like malls; • San Jose Sharks logo and colors changed as a result of pass-by interviews

7. The Marketing Mix • Controllable variables that company puts together to satisfy a target group • 4 Ps: • Product (actual event/experience), • Price (depends on value or perceived value), • Place (preselling and exceptional locations), • Promotion (advertising, personal selling, publicity and sales promotion)

8. Segmentation • Identifying subgroups of overall marketplace based on age, income level, ethnicity, geography, and/or lifestyle • Ethnic marketing: • Growth of Hispanic population, ESPN Deportes • Generational marketing: • Generation Y and action sports

9. Fan Identification • The personal commitment & emotional involvement customers have with sport organization • Enhanced long-term loyalty within sports fans • Sponsorship opportunities due to ability to tap into strong emotional connection between a fan and his/her sport team © Photos.com

10. Relationship Marketing • Aids in fostering identification with sports teams • Begins with customer and encourages integration of the customer into the company • Builds relationships through communication, satisfaction, and service • Examples: • Loyal fan gift rewards, special access to players, and special access to information

11. Service Quality • Ability to provide consistent high-quality service is becoming a source of competitive advantage for firms • Aftermarketing: • Customer retention activities for customer after purchase • Many choices available to customers • Best plan for retention is to ensure that fans become “raving fans”

12. Key Skills • Oral & written communication • Computer capabilities • Data analysis • Personnel management • Sales • Education • Understanding of the sports product © Photos.com

13. Current Issues: Cost of Attendance • Drastic increase in cost of attending MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL game • Increasing evidence that sport fans are not willing or able to pay such prices • do not see the value of attending a game • Significant challenge for sport marketers is to develop relationship marketing strategies • Key challenge for anyone in team sport marketing will be increasing revenues for sport teams

14. Current Issues: Database Marketing • Creating a database that includes consumer names, addresses, and other demographic information • Managing database by developing & delivering integrated marketing programs • including promotions and sales offers to targeted consumer segments • Database marketing is often an integral factor in a company’s decision to sponsor an event

15. Current Issues: Cluttered Marketplace • Numerous & varied entertainment options are available to a consumer with leisure time • Added technological options for the next generation of sports fans • Marketplace cluttered for sponsors: • Rise in number of athletes & events, increase in number of advertising opportunities available • Future: • Heightened focus on marketing mainstream sports to youth; increased challenge for sports entity to demonstrate how sponsor will benefit from a sponsorship

16. Current Issues: Image • Development & cultivation of a positive image is becoming increasingly important in sport marketing • Cluttered marketplace: Imperative that corporations identify sports, events, or athletes that have unique images • Corporate and athlete ethical scandals • Result: • Corporations more discerning in ways that they spend their sponsorship & endorsement dollars; may now spend more on nonprofit organizations and causes