What is Sports Marketing and the sports marketing framework?

When the term marketing is brought up, one might assume that marketing consists of sales gimmicks, promotions and advertising. However, marketing is more than that. Marketing aims to create and exchange with consumers. Consumers will exchange something of equal or greater value for a product or service. This notion of marketing can be applied to sports marketing. Hence, it can be said that when a consumer relinquishes something for a sports product or service, it is called sports marketing. However, sports marketing is unique. Sports marketing involves more than just merely marketing of sports product or services. Marketing through sports can also be labelled as sports marketing. In other words, Sports marketing can be viewed from 2 major perspectives. Firstly, the marketing of sport. Secondly, marketing through sport.

For example, the Formula 1 Grand Prix held annually in Singapore. The F1 race markets the sport of motor racing. The Formula one group manages the Formula One Grand Prix races. They help to transform the motor-racing sport into a multi-billion dollar business. This is an example of marketing of sport. On the other hand, the red-bull Formula 1 team provides us with an example of marketing through sport. The European beverage company owns has 2 cars in the Formula 1(F1) Grand Prix. The team in sponsored by the company and have the company’s logos all over the car. It can be seen as an example of marketing through sport. The company is promoting their beverage through the Formula 1 cars and the Formula 1 racing scene. Hence, in general, Sports marketing can be rather similar to other forms of marketing. They all have a same underlying philosophy, which is to satisfy consumers’ needs.

To understand deeper what is sports marketing, we can refer to the basic sports marketing framework. The framework consists 4 stages of sports marketing; identifying sports marketing opportunities, developing sports marketing strategy, plan the sports marketing mix and lastly, implement and control the sport marketing strategy. This framework ensures effective sports marketing.

When identifying sports marketing opportunities, there is a need to analyse the internal and external environment. To effectively do so, one should turn to the SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and threats) framework. When examining the internal environment, one should identify the strengths and weaknesses of the internal environment of the organisation. On top of that, one should also identify the opportunities and threats while analysing the external environment of where the organisation is placed in. Analysing the organisation’s mission, vision, objectives and stakeholders are also pertinent. Organisations should review these 4 points in order to make sure they are clear on what they intend to achieve and which path they should embark on. Lastly, examining the market and consumers is also a poignant step. By examining the market and consumer, company or organisations knows who are they competing with or who are their customers. This ensures their sport marketing strategy can be as effective as possible.

Moving on, when developing sports marketing strategy, one should also strive to develop a sport marketing position. When developing a sports marketing strategy, organisations should have a clear marketing objective and good performance measures (KPI).  Objectives should be achievable, realistic and in line with the organisational objectives. To establish an effective sport marketing position, the organisation should firstly segment the market. For example, demographics, socio-economic, lifestyle and so forth.  There are endless ways to segment the market. Segments could also be combined and targeted at the same time. Once the market is segmented, organisations will devise a positioning strategy for the segments before creating a marketing mix for these segments.

When coming up with the sports marketing mix, one should take note of the concept of the sport product and product strategies that can be used in marketing it. Sport products are not only limited to physical items like sporting goods and apparels. Sport products can also be intangible like sports coaching and participation. Sometimes, sports products can also be both tangible and intangible, like a sports event. There are numerous other strategies that help to establish a good sports marketing mix in order to effectively target the intended group of consumers. For example, product strategies, pricing strategies, promotional strategies, distributions strategies and services strategies.

Lastly, once the first 3 steps are achieved and carried out, organisations can finally implement the sports marketing strategy. To ensure the successful implementation of the sports marketing strategy, good leadership equipped with an effective team is needed. Leaders need to be responsible and committed towards the implementation while the team needs to be constantly working and communicating when carrying out the projects. Rewards and incentives should be placed by the organisation to further motivate the team and therefore, increasing the success of the strategy. Lastly, the organisation and team should be receptive towards feedback and constantly review and evaluating the outcomes of the strategy on a regular basis. Organisation and their team should make sure that the strategy is achieving its intended aims. To ensure it does so, organisations can use the performance measures, identifying poignant success factors, analyse the results and alter the strategy to make it more effective.

In Summary, the sports marketing framework is as shown in the table below. We will be using this framework to understand a company’s sports marketing strategy for the next blog post.

                      

References:

1.  Smith, A. (2008). Introduction to sport marketing. Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.