Strategic sports marketing

The sport industry is experiencing good growth and sports marketing emerging a new concept in the emerging industry. Sports marketing are the specific application of marketing principles and processes to sport products & services and marketing of non-sports products via association with sports. The detailed study and practice of sports marketing is very complex and eye-catching due to unique nature of the sports industry.

Nowadays sports organizations define their businesses as entertainment providers. In addition to this, sports organizations must practice a marketing orientation in order to be successful in the competitive environment of sports. An organization with a marketing orientation focuses on understanding the customers and providing sports products that satisfy consumer's needs.

Sport marketing grows its importance because sports become more pervasive in the U.S. culture and is catching up globally. The growth of the sports industry could be measured in different ways. These are as under:

• Looking at the increasing numbers of sport spectators.
• The increase in the sports participation.
• The amplification of media coverage.
• Rise in the employment opportunities.
• Globalization of sports activities.

In order to understand the concepts of sports marketing, a simplified model of the consumer- supplier relationship can work out. Let's understand what it is?

The consumer-supplier relationship in the sports industry consists of 3 major elements:

• Consumer of sports.
• Sports products
• Producers and intermediaries

Here we go in details about these 3 major elements.

The consumer of sports is the category of the people who observe the sports events as a spectator, participate in the sports activities and even the sponsors who exchange money or product for the right to be associated with a sporting event. All these are classified as consumers i.e. the participants, spectators and sponsors use sports products.

A sports product may be defined as a good, service or any combination of the two which provides benefits to a sports consumer. The primary sports product consumed by sponsors and spectators is the sporting event. Categories of the sports are:

• Sporting goods - equipment, apparel, shoes, licensed merchandise, collectibles and memorabilia
• Personal training services for sports like fitness centers and sports camps.
• Sports information which includes news and magazines.

Producers include those organizations or individuals who help manufacture the sporting events such as owners, sanctioning bodies and sports equipment manufacturers.

Intermediaries are also very critical to the sports industry because they bring the sports to the end-user of the sports products. The three types of intermediaries are:

• Sponsors
• Media
• Agents

The important tool of the trade of sport marketing is a sports marketing mix which can be defined as the coordinated set of elements that sports organization use to meet their marketing mix objectives and satisfy consumers needs.

Elements of sport marketing mix:

• Sport product
• Distribution or place
• Pricing
• Promotion

Another central element of marketing is the exchange process in addition to the marketing mix which may be defined as a marketing transaction in which the buyer gives something of value to the seller in return for goods and services.

In order to manage the complexities of the sports industry and achieve organizational objective, sports marketers use the strategic sports marketing process which consists of planning, implementation and control of the sports activities.

The planning process may be defined as understanding of consumers needs, selecting a group of consumers with similar needs and positioning the sports product within the group of consumers. The last step of the planning phase is to develop a marketing mix that will appeal to the targeted group of consumers and carry out the desired positioning.

The next step is to implement the plans in an appropriate manner in order to ensure effective utilization of available resources.

Finally the plans are evaluated to determine whether organizational target and objectives met with the help of effective analyzing of the activities undertaken in order to implement the plans and controlling the marketing strategies.

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