What’s Sports Marketing?

Definition and meaning of Sports Marketing

Sport marketing is the use of marketing principles for or within sports related environments. It is a subdivision of marketing which focuses both on the promotion of sport events and teams as well as the promotion of other products and services through sporting events and sport teams.

Sport Marketing is a service in which the element promoted can be a physical product or a brand name. The goal is to provide the client with strategies to promote the sport or to promote something other than sports through sports.

One element that sports marketing takes advantage of is that athletes tend to be brand loyal and fans tend to be loyal to their favourite athletes and teams. This can be recognized through the contracts players and athletes sign with sports companies in which they get paid to wear or use their products in each game or sporting event. By doing so, the players and athletes and also their fans develop loyalty to the products for a longer time.

There are three dimensions to sports marketing and these are:

1. Marketing of Sports

This involves designing or developing a “live” themed activity, occasion, and display or exhibit sporting event to promote a product , a team, cause or organization. It is a marketing strategy

This kind of marketing strategically aims at marketing the pure sports goods to the target market. This involves the advertising of sports events and sports teams or association such as the champions’ league, the Olympics, the world cup, National Football League, through different media channel. In this type of marketing, the promotion is related to sports.

2. Marketing through Sports

This concept has been in use since the 80s but has gained more popularity in the last two decades due to the growth and expansion that the different types of sports have enjoyed

This kind of marketing and promotion can be carried out through (i) the sport or (ii) through the sports club. When the marketing is done through the sport, it is under the responsibility of the different sporting associations and when it is done through the sports club, the responsibility falls on the different sports clubs.

Marketing through sports involves the marketing of non-sports products or the promotion of various products through sports-related channels like sporting events, sporting teams and individual athletes, for example, Master Card sponsorship and advertisements in the champions’ league and the world cup is a well-known advertisement.

In marketing through sports, the promotion is not about the sports; to promote their products or services, companies and associations use different channels such as sponsorships of teams, or athletes, television or radio advertisement during the different broadcast sports events and celebrations and or advertisements on sporting venues.

3. Grassroots Sport Marketing

Grassroots Sports Marketing is a part of the field of marketing known as Social Marketing. It involves the promotion of sports to the public in order to increase participation. It is normally done with a much smaller budget than marketing sports teams and events or marketing of products through sports, as it does not bring any direct financial benefit. Although this type of marketing normally drives people to clubs where they will pay to play sport; however, it still needs to be subsidized in order to be run.

Street Marketing is an offshoot of grassroots marketing. It involves promoting of sports through billboards on the street and also through urban elements like street lights, sidewalks etc to gain publicity during major worldwide sporting events such as football World Cup, Olympic Games etc.

Sports Products versus Non-sports products

In establishing a strategic environment for any dimension of sports marketing, it is necessary to make clear distinctions between sports and non-sports products.

A. Sports Products

There are three main categories of sports products and these are:

i. Spectator Sports

The main marketing objective in this category is to increase the ticket sales or general y, to increase the ratings of the broadcasting of sports events.

ii. Participation Sports

Unlike spectator sports, participation sports lack the feeling of competition and involve the individuals in the sports experiences, hence the term, “participation sports”.

iii. Sporting goods, Apparel, Athletic Shoes and Sports-Related Products

Sporting goods are tangible products created for specific sports activity.

Apparel is a type of sports-related clothing. It may be either to facilitate participation, support or for fashion reasons.

Athletic shoes form a distinguished category due to its various designs, and being in everyone’s wardrobes.

Sports-Related Products may be referred to as souvenirs or any type of good that may be purchased during the participation in a sports activity for example beer.

B. Non-sports Product

Marketers of non-sports products benefit from the sports environment using different levels of sponsorship strategies and these are:

i. Traditional Sponsorship

Here, the aim is to be able to use the logos and the trademarks of the sports property and to settle a relationship in the customers’ minds of the target market of that sports property.

ii. Venue Naming Rights

Though this may be similar to traditional sponsorship, venue naming rights represent a special form of sponsorship because it is claimed that the sponsors receive a remarkably high value from naming values.

iii. Endorsement

This can be described as personal sponsorship for example; Adidas is the personal sponsor of Lionel Messi while Nike is the personal sponsor of Cristiano Ronaldo

iv. Licensing

In this type of sponsorship, the licensor gets only the rights to use sport property’s logos and trademarks during it’s on marketing efforts. Official supplier is one of supplier is one of the most common categories of licensing. A popular example in recent times is that of Turkish Airlines being the official supplier of FC Barcelona.

Benefits of Sport Marketing

1. Sport marketing drives memberships, sales and recognition.
2. These are the major factors that are of immense benefit to the companies the athletes, the associations, the leagues and the sports event manager.
3. When properly planned, effective marketing helps to understand the customer and the marketplace.
4. Informed marketing decisions help increase the company’s, club’s or association’s performance.
5. Due to the status and importance in people’s lives, sport is considered a profitable and sustainable marketing source.