List at least four types of products that sport/event marketers must price

The North American sports market has a value surpassing 100 billion dollars in sports event marketing alone. If you’re thinking of utilizing sports marketing to grow your business, our sports marketing guide below will help you identify the challenges, trends, and strategies within the sports marketing space.

What is Sports Marketing?

Sports marketing is the use of sporting and sports-related events to promote a brand or a product. This form of marketing allows marketers to leverage the popularity and attention of sports to promote a brand or product. Sports and entertainment marketing also covers the marketing and promotion of live sporting events.

Super bowl ads, stadium ads, and athletes’ endorsements are some of the most common examples of marketing we see daily when watching sporting events. Marketing through sports also helps create a brand image for a healthy, successful lifestyle that many people want to live. This image adds credibility to your brand and makes you more appealing in the consumer’s eye.

Sports Event Marketing Challenges

Just because sports marketing is growing rapidly does not mean there aren’t advertising challenges in this area. There are many hurdles brands need to overcome to take advantage of trends in sports marketing:

1. Millennials are not watching traditional media.
2. Outmoded, inflexible contracts prevent innovation and growth.
3. Rightsholders and brands aren’t where fans go for the insider gossip.
4. Incentivizing people to attend sports events in person is difficult.
5. Sports stars aren’t actors and can’t always effectively market.

Trends in Sports Event Marketing

These sports and entertainment marketing tactics and strategies are designed to take advantage of many new trends that have become very popular due to social media. These trends include the following:

1. More women are becoming fans.
2. There is an increasing drive for gamification.
3. Sports marketing is shifting to new and different marketing platforms.
4. Sports fans are demanding more engaging and immersive experiences.
5. Sports marketing is shifting to be more lifestyle and entertainment orientated.
6. Sports marketing culture is becoming more inclusive.

Sports Marketing Strategies and Services

1. Create Engaging Content

One trick that sports marketers can use to attract more customers is creating engaging content with the help of celebrity sports figures. Sports fans share content with their friends, meaning that you can tap into the networks of people your target audience knows. More than half of fans follow their favorite teams on social media, so you can digitally engage your customers if they are sports fans.

2. Time Your Message Correctly

Most sports fans prefer to have engaging content right before the game starts, as 72% of fans are excited by pre-game content during and after the event. When marketing to fans before the game, your brand is part of the excitement leading up to it.

3. Develop a Target Audience

A target audience is the people you will be directly marketing to. Consider audience traits such as location, age, interests, and income. Thinking about your target market first lets you determine how to reach them and what consumers to target. It would be foolish to target race fans for a programming course when your research tells you that they care about auto parts.

4. Sports Contests

One example of a successful promotion is using contests. A contest can tap into fans’ excitement for the game as they are motivated to feel like winners, although they might not be athletic. Contests get people excited about what you have to offer your customers, making these great tools for customer outreach and motivating your customer base. Taco Bell spent $750,000 on a contest that generated 224 Million views in a single day.

5. Brand Partnerships

Brands often rely on partnerships to drive results. Sports teams and brands are looking to align with one another as businesses become more data-oriented. Brands are looking for new opportunities to invest in partnerships, so they are always looking for new avenues to make that happen. For example, many are shocked to hear that McDonald’s is the official restaurant sponsor of the NFL.

6. Sharing Content and Photos

Most modern-day sports fans enjoy sharing content. They enjoy sharing content so much that it enables them to connect with other like-minded sports enthusiasts with similar interests. Thus, for your content to be effective, it should be easily shareable and compelling enough to share. About 60% of 18-29-year-olds are interested in watching a hockey game through social media. If 83% of sports fans check social media while watching a game, is this not an excellent opportunity to time your social media content effectively?

7. Sponsorships

Sponsorships are highly effective ways of being able to generate brand awareness. These tactics are obvious; think of the times you’ve seen brand logos on race cars, soccer jerseys, and more. This type of sponsorship adds credibility to the brand and turns a smaller brand into a nationwide or even a worldwide player. Soccer has become a global game, and companies worldwide have a presence in soccer uniforms and sports stadiums. Citi Bank paid a massive price for the naming rights to the New York Mets’ home stadium. For Citi Bank, this type of exposure means that sportscasters will constantly be mentioning the name of their brand.

The sponsorship sector, which includes revenues generated by payments from companies to have their products associated with an event, a team, or a league, has also expanded in the past years. In 2016, an estimated 16.3 billion U.S. dollars of revenues were generated through this channel, with projections as high as 19.88 billion by 2023.

8. Using the Right Tools

Sports marketing requires using a combination of different tools to reach the consumer. For example, people watch sporting events on television, check scores on their mobile devices, attend live sporting events, listen to sports on the radio, and read about sports in the newspaper and online. This combination of different outlets means you have many different ways to target your market.

Remember that Google drives about 96% of the search traffic for mobile devices, and about 47% of sports fans use mobile devices to check Facebook during a game.

9. Consider a Sports Marketing Firm

Some people work with sports marketing firms for all their sports and entertainment marketing needs. People crave more authenticity; they want to be closer to the action and closer to their favorite athletes. That is the reason why many brands choose a sports marketing firm. For example, the Boston Red Sox has their marketing arm, Fenway Sports Management. Sports marketing companies can help bridge the gap between your brand and your desire to be more exposed to the world of sports. Firms and agencies in the sports business have the industry contacts you need and the know-how to ensure your success.

10. Don’t forget the eSports Market

You may have noticed ESPN’s frequent coverage of popular eSports leagues. Or perhaps you viewed a viral live stream on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. The total revenue for eSports in 2017 was $696 million, and it is estimated to reach the $1.5 billion mark by 2023.

• Celebrities, athletes, and brands are starting to get involved in partnerships with eSports teams, players, tournaments, and leagues.
• Overwatch League signed 12 teams for the first-ever global city-based eSports league featuring investments made by some of the most successful owners in the world of sports.
• Riot introduced a franchising model for teams powered by investments from NBA team owners and the endemic gaming space.
• Intel Extreme Masters held its tournament in Poland with 173,000 fans, making it the biggest live event in eSports history.
• Blizzard opened a dedicated eSports stadium called Blizzard Arena.
• The League of Legends World Championship reached 60 million unique viewers online.

11. Monetize Your Video-on-Demand Content

Video-on-demand content is a massive opportunity for businesses that want to use sports marketing to grow their business. Live video has become a standard for big platforms such as Facebook, Periscope, Instagram, Twitch, or Livestream.

This fast-growing market should reach 70 billion dollars worldwide by 2023. Moreover, live videos are way more powerful than scripted videos: viewers watch them almost three times more, with an average engagement rate of 12 times higher.

As the cost of producing more significant amounts of footage falls to near zero, there are more opportunities to take sports viewers where they want to be: on the training field, in the locker room, and when the game is won or lost.

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