Sport Marketing Strategies

Marketing is everywhere. Every time you turn around, you can see some kind of marketing whether it is a commercial, newspaper ads, billboards, and many other ways to promote different products and services.

At the Texas versus Iowa State basketball game I found many different forms of marketing. State farm advertised on the backboard. Advertising here made their name very visible to anyone watching the game. Every time either team shoots the ball you see the State Farm logo. With each team shooting more than 60 times during the game, there is a potential for the audience to see this State Farm ad over 120 times per game. The location of this ad was brilliant because of its visibility. A different style was used by Southwest Airlines to promote their service. They created a game played by a selected audience, where they had to shoot basketballs and make three different shots into a suit case. If the audience member made all three shots in the allotted time, they won two tickets to anywhere Southwest Airlines flies. This form of advertising was fun for all fans to watch and cheer on the challenger. It is also fun for the selected participant because of the potential prize at the end of the game. Having this promotional during a timeout was also a great tactic because at that point in the game you still had 6,000 people still in their seats. Having this game at half-time would have been less effective because many people go to use the restroom or get concessions at this time. Another great form of marketing was the Chevron toy car challenge. I have seen and participated in this game at numerous sporting events. This game is played at half-time or during some kind of intermission, the game consist of three Chevron toy cars and as an audience member you have to pick which car will win the race. Chevron does a good job in their marketing because they get the whole audience to participate. Audience participation is great because as a corporation you know you are reaching out to the audience and have made a great selling point. All these forms mentioned above are great examples of advertising through sport by using college basketball as an avenue to reach fans about certain products.

                In my experience at the college basketball game I saw hundreds of ways different ways marketing is used, but one stood out more than any of the others. The Harlem Globetrotters did the best job throughout the game to promote their product. They had numerous advertisements on the jumbotron, as well as a dunk contest played by three selected audience members. The product being sold, Globetrotters basketball, was easily recognized because it was presented in bold lettering with a red, white and blue scheme (the Globetrotters traditional colors). The product was very well marketed; it was clever to present the product in a place where thousands of basketball fans already were. Who better to advertise to than to the fans of the sport?  Place also known as distribution deals with this same kind of marketing strategy. The ad was presented in the same place where it is actually taking place. If fans could come to the Frank Erwin Center once, why wouldn’t they come again and see some more basketball? The Place is also important due to the fact that everyone in attendance was a basketball fan. I believe they got more for their money advertising for their event because of the heavy concentration of fans. A type of pricing strategy that they used was to not present the price of the tickets at all. This is probably because it was a little more expensive than what people wanted to pay. Another way the Globetrotters got around presenting a price was to do a slam dunk contest and the winner received a free package of four Globetrotter tickets. Not only does this have to do with the pricing strategy, but it could very well be considered a promotional strategy.

Even with all the marketing during the game, it did not take away from the game quality. I can see how some people might see this advertising as overwhelming or a distraction from the game. I felt as though it added to the whole experience of the game. During the breaks in the action, these different advertising strategies helped to keep me entertained. Without this game, there would have been many fans, including myself, that would have been bored. Product and company promotion during timeouts and halftime keeps the audience entertained throughout the entire game. From a revenue standpoint I don’t see marketing during a game hurting or helping.  Ads and promotional games are not what increases ticket sales individually. Marketing of the two teams is what creates more revenue. Indirectly the different marketing strategies may bring in some revenue due to the fact that it keeps the audience entertained at all times.