Sports have been a part of my life since I was little, not necessarily the playing of sports, but the watching and following of sports teams. My dad and older brother would create fantasy teams and watch games together so I would tag along but after awhile it really interested me too. I especially love college sports: baseball, basketball, and football are the ones that I specifically follow closely. While I am kind of embaressed, yet somewhat proud to admit, this is a huge reason I decided on the University of Texas for my college of choice. I have been attending Texas Longhorns’ sporting events since I was three and I cannot imagine cheering for anyone else. Now, by combining my major of marketing and my other passion of college sports, I figured this is the perfect profession for me: sports marketing.
Sports marketing, in general, can be a very broad topic so for my research paper I need to decide how to narrow it down to a more concise study. In the book, “Sports Marketing and the Psychology of Marketing Communication”, it states how the phrase “sports marketing” refers to three very different marketing objectives. One is marketing intended to sell sport as an entertainment. The second marketing objective is concerned with building sport participation, and the third has to do with using sport to sell non-sport products or services. Because each of these are different but are still a part of sports marketing, I need to research each of these objectives to better understand which part of sports marketing I have the most interest.
Last year, I was offered an amazing opportunity to work for the University of Texas’s Athletics Director, DeLoss Dodds as his student assistant. This opened up my eyes to even more potential in the sports marketing network. I also was an assistant for our Women’s Athletics Director and the head of marketing for the athletics department, Chris Plonsky. She works closely with everyone in the marketing world and has shown me all it takes to put together just one basketball game loaded with promotions and marketing for various companies while on national television. While sports marketing is very exciting and popular, college sports marketing must vary slightly from professional sports marketing. I hope to research this more and see what the true differences entail as I love watching and following college sports more, I may enjoy the marketing aspect of professional sports. I also want to learn more about the smaller sports, such as soccer and swimming that are not as publicly broadcasted and how they are marketed compared to the larger sports like football and basketball. Another interest of mine is to see how women’s college sports marketing compares to men’s college sports marketing. We have a great women’s basketball team but they do not get much recognition compared to the men’s basketball team. These are some of the issues in sports marketing that I would like to further research.
A setback for this topic is that it is hard to gain actual customer insights for sports marketing as there are no actual “customers”. With college sports marketing, the product is not a new ipod or laundry detergent, but a sports team. On the other hand, the target market with college sports marketing is easy to identify: students and alumni of the college, most men ages 16-60, and other sports fanatics. A connection to customer insights can be the experience of attending a basketball game or even watching the Fiesta Bowl football game on TV. These experiences are different for everyone based on if they are watching it with friends on TV at a bar, with family on the couch in the living room, or with a date at the actual event. My experiences of attending Texas Longhorn’s football games when I was ten are very different from how they are today as a student. When I’m with my family at a game, we usually arrive thirty minutes before the game, sit most of the time in the shade surrounded by middle-aged men and young families. However, when I am with my friends at football games, we arrive at the start of kick-off, stand the whole time in the sun while surrounded by drunk fraternity boys who yell curse words at the referees the whole time. These two experiences make up the ultimate college football game, but are completely different. While researching more about college sports marketing, I hope to learn how marketers can capture both of these experiences at sporting events.
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Brooke - So, I know we talked about this a little in class. All of those subtopics within sports marketing are really interesting and I do not want to tell you which one to choose. I think you'll have any easier time with the paper if you try to stay more narrowly focused on your topic rather than being too broad. Use your gut reaction to pick the one that sounds most interesting at this point. If you get a little down the road and decide to change, it probably won't be a big deal. Ah, the paradox of choice. Let me know when you want to talk more. I'm happy to give more guidance/direction, but I really want you to be able to choose the topic.
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