Sport Marketing Essay Example

Marketing is the process of making the potential market aware of the existence of products or services of a company (Williams & Chinn, 2010). Marketing helps remind clients of the existence of a firm in an industry. Sports marketing involves promoting products through athletes. It involves sponsoring events held by sportsmen and teams. Team members may wear uniforms that are branded with different organizations' products and services which act as a form of indirect marketing to the people attending sports events or those watching from their televisions. Ratten & Ratten (2011) state that the main goal of sports marketing is to ensure that audiences are aware of the existence of a product. Marketers understand that sports attract individuals from different age groups and include both male and female fans. The popularity of sports makes it a preference for marketers since large groups of people watch a specific sports event at one point. This justifies the use of this approach to market different types of products and services. In addition, the fact that both professional and school events can adopt sports marketing make it a preference for most organizations as long as they agree with the coaches and trainers of athletes.

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Schwarz & Hunter (2012) state that sports marketing work by the sale of advertising space in the stadium where teams through their manager or coach agree with different organizations on the venue and price so that they can display their products for the audiences. Advertising takes the format of print ads or billboards which are placed strategically in the field. Some of the adverts placed on the field comprised of digital and live images that keep on changing and have bright colors that attract the attention of viewers (Williams & Chinn, 2010). A limitation of this approach is that different marketers may place their adverts in one sports event which bombards viewers with a lot of information at one time. This may make it hard for an advert to stand out.

Another approach adopted by marketers in sports marketing include working with specific athletes (Schwarz & Hunter, 2012). The athletes are famous depending on the talent they possess, which means that they have a large fan base. Organizations sign contracts with successful and famous athletes who help push sales for their products by endorsing the commodities (Ratten & Ratten, 2011). This means that fans that identify with a famous athlete are willing and able to try out the product which the individual represents. An organization rides on the popularity of an athlete. For instance, Joe Green, one of the most admired footballers in the world endorsed Coke by featuring in an advert for the company. The interaction between Green and a young boy in the advert introduced and popularized the 'Have a Coke and a smile' slogan. Therefore, Coke fans were made to believe that if they drank the beverage, they would smile by default.

Conclusion

In conclusion, sports marketing is a successful strategy that organizations have adopted so that they can push sales for their products. This is because sports attract fans from different parts of the world, enabling organizations to market their products to the global audience. Firms that adopt sports marketing work in partnership with multinational companies that invest heavily. Such firms enjoy free publicity when they partner with successful athletes who influence their fans to purchase products from their companies.

References

Ratten, V., & Ratten, H. (2011). International sports marketing: practical and future research implications. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 26(8), 614-620.

Schwarz, E. C., & Hunter, J. D. (2012). Advanced theory and practice in sports marketing. Routledge.

Williams, J., & Chinn, S. J. (2010). Meeting relationship-marketing goals through social media: A conceptual model for sport marketers. International Journal of Sport Communication, 3(4), 422-437.