Essay Sample on Professional Sports: Major Lucrative Business with Multiple Opportunities

Introduction

Professional sports have emerged as some of the major lucrative business across the world. Fundamentally, these sports have provided sports marketers with opportunities to flourish. In most cases, the professional sports teams have united to produce a league product that is sold to other distinct groups such as the fans, media companies and corporations, while initially created to provide entertainment for spectators. As part of these strategies, the corporate organizations and major professional sports leagues can collaborate to come to embrace common marketing strategies for the benefits of one another. The Major League Baseball (MLB) and National Football League (NFL) are some of the professional sports leagues that have demonstrated these kinds of marketing, which has comprised of the marketing through sports and marketing of sports (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019).

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Fundamentally, the marketing of sports refers to the use of a marketing mix to communicate the significance of participation and spectatorship in the game. On the other hand, marketing through sports involves the use of sports by corporates to promote and advertise their products to a given demographic or target audience. It is undeniable that the use of these two marketing strategies has made both the NFL and MLB as some of the most lucrative and popular professional sports across the entire world. This paper will, therefore, provide a discussion regarding how both the MLB and NFL have succeeded in using these the two marketing strategies to gain global influence.

National Football League (NFL)

Marketing through Sports

As explained, marketing through sports refers to a marketing strategy through which organizations use major sports leagues to advertise their products to a specific target audience. For many years, the NFL has emerged as one of the most successful football leagues across the world. It is the major football league in the United States (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019). Based on this success, numerous organizations have used it as a platform to market themselves. One example of this is the collaboration between the NFL and Gillette. Notably, Gillette is one of the world's most noticeable brand of personal care products that mostly uses professional sportspeople for marketing their antiperspirants and razor.

In 2018, Gillette used four famous NFL players to help in the advertisement of its new Fusion ProGlide razor through a series of Television of commercials. These players included Clay Matthews, Victor Cruz, Doug Martin and Danny Amendola. In one of the commercials, the Gillette used the images of these footballers wearing their face masks while the voice utters, "Guys don't put all of this high-tech gear on their face only to go home and wreck it with just any razor" (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019).

Fascinatingly, the Gillette uses the popularity of the NFL footballers as well as the massive participation and spectatorship of the league as an attempt to market their products more effectively. While it is evident that the razors do not have any direct link or impact on the sport or the NFL as a professional league, the company draws the comparison between the players protecting their faces on the matchday to skin protection while shaving. This is undeniably an efficient technique of marketing their products to the consumers.

The advertisement of the Tag Heuer is another example of the non-sports products corporate that markets itself through spots. The products sold in this case has no association with sports. However, the marketers who devised the Tag Heuer ad delivered a message regarding why it was essential to purchase the products through Formula 1. A closer look reveals that the marketers used a compelling tag line, "what are you made of" to demonstrate and present this kind of alignment to the audience. Due to the massive success of the NFL in addition to its global spectatorship, Tag Heuer has become the official watch and timekeeper of the Major League Soccer as well as the U.S football teams (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019).

Marketing of Sports

Over the past years, the NFL alongside other sporting leagues in the United States has engaged in the initiatives to advertise the sports. Notably, the marketing campaign and statement dubbed, "Fan's love the game, not just their team" has been influential in selling the league across all the world's continent. Ideally, this is an initiative in an attempt to convert sports fans from different regions around the globe into NFL supporters. Preferably, the NFL has been able to do this through increasing its presence on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The social media presence has a significant impact on the number of viewers whose attention are drawn.

This marketing strategy operates on the basis that the fans are transplanted into becoming the NFL passionate American households. While this may appear as a reasonable statement, the marketing of sport is depicted as the all-encompassing function of this campaign. It helps to promote the matches of the American football standards, culture and philosophy on the international scale. The use of this campaign has further enabled the NFL to broaden sports into new markets across the world, including Africa and Asia, where the leagues are least known. As a result, the NFL has benefitted from an increased sports fan base, viewership and participation.

Major League Baseball (MLB)

Major League Baseball is another professional sports league that has to manage to gain global influence and spectatorship through its brand marketing. For a long time, MLB has managed to spread the idea and concept of baseball sports, which is less known to people across the world when compared to football (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019).

However, it is the most famous baseball league across the globe, and has continued to command a considerable attention even from those who do not typically watch sports. Today, MLB deserves to be mentioned within the contexts of brand marketing and could further be viewed as the most successful baseball brand throughout the U.S. In fact. The Baseball fans are aware that the game has developed to become increasingly international. The major league rosters integrate the players from more than 14 nations.

Additionally, more than one-fifth of the players are foreign-born. Through the use of the effective marketing strategies, Major League Baseball has expanded its influence to operate on world stage, especially in countries such as the Dominican Republic, South Africa and Japan. The use of both marketing through sports and marketing for sports strategies have contributed to this success (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019).

Marketing through Sports

The marketing through sports is one strategy through which MLB has succeeded in drawing a substantial global viewership and spectatorship. The partnership of MLB with Digital River Inc. has contributed to such development. One of the biggest goals of MLB baseball in addition to the North American Sports league revolves how to increase the prosperity within their sports. Ordinarily, the league starts to draw interests and generate brand awareness and fans through playing games in Europe, Asia and Africa, among other places (Abeza, O'Reilly, & Seguin, 2019). The partnership with Digital River Inc. enabled viewers from across the world to live stream the games through various social media platforms such as Facebook, and Twitter. The social media has, therefore emerged as a must-go-to source for fans who want to stay up to date.

Marketing of Sports

The implementation of the new strategies in the previous season can be observed as marketing of sports strategy (Buhler & Nufer, 2012). Ideally, this concept revolves around rewarding the fan who catches the ball hit for a six. After the performance of an open poll in public, a new ball signed by the player who hit the six emerged as the most liked choice for the fans. Undeniably, this concept has helped build further participation and spectatorship in the competition that is still in its formative stage. Additionally, the crowd interaction strategy developed by MLB has helped establish a sense of excitement to the market or industry of the sports of cricket with the huge intention of engaging more fans for the future.

Another concept, "Field of Dreams" has been beneficial for the development of MLB's global influence. Although this strategy is yet to be implemented in 2020, research has shown that this method will create an immersive experiences that subject fans into the actions, as well as creating a virtual environment. This is likely to cause a colossal invocation of intimacy that has often been declined whenever the sports become more and athletes have been anointed as unapproachable superheroes or demi-gods. Further, this concept assesses the room for creativity. Thus, it is crucial to note that the social media presence, power branding as well as the strong business partnerships are just a few of the MLB marketing techniques that have assisted them in creating a name to reach more than 20 Million viewers every match.

The use of the well-known players in MLB has enabled the league to garner a massive viewership and spectatorship across the world. Ideally, the associations have been able to highlight the star powers of players and this the reasons why the majority of the teams within the league have gone to the extent of promoting their best players. The Michael Nelson Trout of the Los Angeles angels was used by the MLB to advertise about the goodness of the American League because of his athletic abilities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, sports have provided sports marketers with the opportunities to develop. Notably, the professional sports teams have united to produce a league product sold to various demographics and target audience. The use of marketing through sports and marketing of sports strategies by both the NFL and MLB have enhanced their global view, perception and influence. Both the leagues have used various types of the campaign to broaden sports into new markets across the world, including Europe and Asia, among others. They have also benefitted through an increased sports fan base, viewership and participation. The transplantation of the fans into becoming the NFL passionate American households has remained a dream country.

References

Abeza, G., O'Reilly, N., & Seguin, B. (2019). Social media in relationship marketing: The perspective of professional sport managers in the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL. Communication & Sport, 7(1), 80-109.

Buhler, A., & Nufer, G. (2012). Relationship marketing in sports. Routledge