Day Two: Sports Marketing 101

What is Sport? Is NASCAR a sport? What about Poker? Spelling Bee's? Scrabble? Well according to ESPN, they are sports. All of these events can considered sports because a sport is really "a source of diversion or physical activity engaged with pleasure." That is pretty open ended, most sports are competitive, there are a winners and losers, sports keep score.

A Sport is entertainment. According to Reebok president, Robert Meers, "The market is now sports, music and fashion". More and more we can see how these entertainment means involve eachother. Each market affects eachother and the synergy of all of them bring about new means of entertainment for the consumers, the fans.

Successful sports organizations practice a marketing orientation: understanding the consumers and providing sports products that satisfy the consumers needs. For instance, the ABA Pitbulls in Florida had famous rap star Trick Daddy play a set at their minor league basketball game to attact fans. A side note: Trick Daddy also influences the fashion industry by his unique image in the hip hop community. Why do you think that the Superbowls Halftime show is so popular? Same theory.

The sports Industry is growing rapidly, and doesnt seem to be letting up. With more and more sports becoming popular and a bigger following of fans for the broad range of sports its no wonder the industry has grown to produce nearly 550 billion dollars annually. Since Sports are perpetual and each season players get stronger, faster, tougher, and more creative the games never cease to explode. ESPN's Bill Rasmussen states "The games are better, the athletes are better." It seems to be a never-ending cycle, the fans inspire the players, the players inspire the fans.

There are several categories of income drived by the sports industry: Sporting Goods, Media Coverage, Sponsorships, Gambling, Equiptment to name a good few. But what is Sports Marketing?

Sports marketing is marketing of sports. Easy enough? It's taking the 4 P's of the marketing mix and adapting them to sports. Products become a service, but the place, price and promotion all help increase demand of the consumer to engage in the sports community.

The consumers are spectators, participants and consumers. The products are events, goods, personal training and sports information. The producers are sports labor, sanctioning bodies, sponsors, retail, media, agents and equiptment manufactures.

After working in a marketing department for a major sports team I can better see how these fundaments of sports marketing come in to play. People could survive in marketing without knowlege about them, but knowing about them and keeping them on the fore-front gives one the upper hand over another who isn't aware of them. I am eager to learn more about sports marketing and the ways I can impact it in the future.