Sports marketing
Sports marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that focuses on promoting sporting events and related products to attract fans and generate revenue. This field is distinct from traditional marketing due to the unpredictable nature of sports events, which plays a crucial role in engaging fan interest. Sports marketers concentrate on three primary product types: the events themselves, associated goods, and services. They employ strategies to promote games or matches, encourage attendance, and facilitate in-game advertising to connect with audiences.
The origins of sports marketing trace back to the early 1800s in the United States, where promotional efforts aimed to attract large audiences for events like boxing and billiards. Over the years, the relationship between corporations and sports organizations has strengthened, with branding and athlete endorsements becoming vital components. Marketers must recognize diverse audience segments, tailoring their approaches to both participants and spectators, while also engaging advertisers and sponsors.
The rise of digital media, especially social platforms, has transformed sports marketing, allowing teams and brands to reach fans more effectively. There is also a growing emphasis on inclusivity, with strategies aimed at connecting with various ethnic and minority groups. Ultimately, sports marketing seeks to build lasting relationships between fans, teams, and brands, leveraging the emotional connections forged through sports.
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Sports marketing
Though it shares similarities with traditional marketing, sports marketing is unique simply because of the nature of sports, in which the outcome of each event is essentially unpredictable. This characteristic is central to fan interest and demands diligence and creativity on the part of sports marketers. Sports marketing generally focuses on three types of product: the event itself, goods, and services. Sporting events possess two inherent marketing opportunities: one involves the promotion of the game or match to entice fans to attend, and the other consists of in-game advertising of a team or related product or, for a corporation, a product not necessarily directly related to either the sport or the team.
Overview
Though the field of sports marketing, and the term itself, is a relatively new phenomenon, the roots of sports marketing in the United States reach to the early 1800s, when the idea of promoting sports to attract a large audience, and thus create a profitable industry, became a mainstay of American culture. For example, in the 1820s, boxing promoter William Fuller often marketed his matches as part of larger family-centered events that included staged plays and fireworks. In the mid-nineteenth century, billiards promoter Michael Phelan was perhaps the first to link a game to a product, creating a national billiards tournament to promote the sale of his company’s billiard tables and using advertising to target a specific demographic of men who either played billiards or owned establishments, such as bars, in which the game was played.
Throughout the twentieth century, as product technology improved and advertising became ubiquitous through media such as radio and television, corporations and sports organizations began working together to brand teams and athletes. Because sports engender certain emotional responses from fans, products associated with a team or an athlete are easily marketable. However, sports marketers must recognize the disparate groups of people to which they are selling. Primary markets include the participants in and spectators of an event. The former is probably interested in products that increase their chance for on-field success, while the latter is most likely interested in goods that align them with their favorite teams.
Secondary markets include advertisers, corporate sponsors, and athlete endorsements. Advertisers employ stadiums, television, radio, and the Internet to align a product with a certain team, player, or coach. Corporate sponsors pay a sports franchise, league, or tournament to display their logos or symbols. Some companies choose to hire an athlete to endorse their products (such as Nike with LeBron James), thus establishing a connection in the minds of fans between an inanimate product and an athlete with great public appeal.
The Internet has signaled a new era in sports marketing, as teams and companies have started to use social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter to promote their products. Also, embedded advertisements on sports-related websites and blogs can target fans of specific sports and teams. Furthermore, sports marketing has recognized the enormous potential of tailoring advertisements to specific ethnic and minority groups (such as women and gays and lesbians). Sports marketing seeks to establish relationships between fans and either teams or corporations through campaigns that utilize the unique connection fans have with their chosen teams.
Bibliography
Desbordes, Michel, and André Richelieu. Global Sport Marketing: Contemporary Issues and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.
Fetchko, Michael J., Donald P. Roy, and Kenneth E. Clow. Sports Marketing. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.
Fullerton, Sam. Sports Marketing. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Print.
Newman, Timothy. Social Media in Sport Marketing. Scottsdale: Holcomb, 2013. Print.
Pitts, Brenda G., and David K. Stotlar. Fundamentals of Sport Marketing. Morgantown: Fitness Information Technology, 2013. Print.