The Challenge of Sport Marketing

Abstract

Sport marketing is a very new sector within the sport industry. For many years sport marketing defined only the use of sporting events and sport personalities to promote the products and services of other consumer industries, and many people still understand it this way. But this definition is lacking in reference to the most important aspect of sport marketing, which is the marketing of the sport products and services themselves. Although this aspect of sport marketing did become more widely recognized, it was not a cause for much concern in the management of most sport organizations. Traditionally, the general opinion was that winning means everything when it comes to sport marketing. But in recent years the managers of sport organizations have come to realize the importance of a carefully planned marketing program, and they have become aware of the immense challen9es that stand in the way of .sport marketing success. This report begins by examining the unique characteristics of the sport industry, and the effects that they have on the efforts of the sport marketer. The next section describes my involvement with the marketing program at Yost Ice Arena, the facility used by the University of Michigan hockey team. Details are provided regarding the many difficulties experienced by the sport marketer while working under the framework of an intercollegiate athletic department. The accounts in these two sections function as a summary of the challenge faced by the sport marketer. They present evidence that this challenge will remain strong until the sport marketer gains a complete understanding of the characteristics of sport and of the bureaucracy present within an athletic department. The success experienced by the sport marketer is dependent upon an ability to deal with the implications which these difficulties have for marketing.