The Global Sport Economy

Contemporary Issues

Michel Desbordes, Pascal Aymar, Christopher Hautbois

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429619731
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Service Industry
• Index: Business

This book examines the global sports ecosystem through three of its central pillars: Sport marketing, sports equipment manufacture and sales, and sport governance and organization. By focusing on these three themes, the book presents a nuanced and multi-faceted view of how the global sports economy works and what its main strategic challenges and opportunities are.

Offering a balance between theory and practice, and adopting an international perspective with case studies and examples from the Americas, Europe and Asia, the book addresses key issues such as corporate social responsibility, the impact of culture on international sport business, innovation and entrepreneurship, and consumer behaviour.

The Global Sport Economy is fascinating reading for students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in sport business and management, sport marketing, the sporting goods industry and distribution and sport governance.

Part I

Sports marketing

Foreword: presentation of the three chapters of Part I

Sports marketing is one of the most fertile areas of sports management research. As highlighted in the general introduction to our book, it is the most visible part, thanks to the media, though not necessarily the most important in terms of economic activity and employment. The three chapters of this first section highlight the major trends in the field, including the most recent research and developments in the business world.

Chapter 1, written by Michel Desbordes, paints a picture of a thriving industry that has now reached maturity. Although we consider that sports marketing only really emerged in Europe at the end of the 1990s, it has a longer history in North America. With its strong links to the “real” world of sports business, research in this field has developed over time, with academics working hand-in-hand with their professional counterparts. Indeed, major sporting events serve as a laboratory and fertile testing ground. Sports management professions have gradually emerged, but the speed with which certain tools have developed has forced organizations to adapt almost continuously. Stadium manager, sports TV rights buyer, sports statistics analyst, community manager, sponsorship officer, sports lawyer, federation development officer, etc. are all jobs that did not exist 15 years ago. That trend will continue; indeed, it has become something of a cliché to say that “80% of the jobs that we’ll see 10 years from now don’t exist yet”. The younger generation needs to adapt to a constantly changing, international, global, multidisciplinary environment, and education must, therefore, also adapt, with new subjects, new professions, new organizations, new challenges, sometimes even new sports … the challenges are considerable. The analysis of these major trends forms the backbone of this first chapter, focusing on the future.

Chapter 2, by Boris Helleu, looks at how the consumer experience is changing for spectators at sporting events. The simple “transactional” approach of buying a ticket is no longer enough, it is now all about having a literally “extraordinary” experience. The use of digital technology and engagement techniques has played a big role in the way spectators perceive their time in the stadium or arena. Helleu gives his chapter an international angle by using the example of the major American professional sport leagues (NFL: American football, NHL: ice hockey, NBA: basketball, MLB: baseball, MLS: football). His comments include references to the theories of “emotion curve” and “customer path”, “fan experience” and “fan relationship management”, given the importance of optimizing the consumer experience before, during and after sports events. American franchises obtain the best results by providing customer services to their fans. But this is a global and globalized marketing practice, and Helleu shows that even if the Americans were the pioneers in this domain, the French LFP (Professional Football League) is also very attentive to these notions of entertainment and customer satisfaction in its stadiums. The stadium is a key variable since it is the delivery point for the sports-event service. Finally, he concludes with the “money can’t buy” operations that have set sponsors looking to make the biggest possible impact buzzing over the last few years.

But sports marketing has evolved in recent years under the influence of fans, consumers, spectators and users of social media who want the sector, which creates a lot of money, to be more in phase with society’s values and lead by example. The techniques used have often been grouped under the heading of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in English-speaking countries and are the subject of Chapter 3, written by Aurélien François, Emmanuel Bayle and Olivier Mutter.

After outlining the fundamentals of CSR, the authors turn to its emergence in the sports sector over the last 10 years or so. From a functional perspective, they outline the potential for development by sports-event organizers while emphasizing, from a critical perspective, its limits. By sports events, they imply “events organized, on a national scale, by professional sports leagues and clubs whose meetings can have some influence at this level and, on a global scale, via international sports institutions (IOC, UEFA, FIFA)”. The proposed dual integrative and critical analysis shows strategic opportunities for the integration of CSR in key functions of sporting events, but also the long fight ahead to counter the criticism the concept usually attracts.

Chapter 1

Sports marketing, from humble beginnings to maturity

Michel Desbordes

Introduction

This chapter is divided into three parts.

The first takes a trip back in time to the birth of sports marketing in the United States and its gradual expansion to Europe.

The second concerns the Europeans’ somewhat tentative approach to the emerging field of sports management. This hesitation can be explained by a very different institutional landscape, which was not dominated by commercial professional sport as in North America. It was, therefore, necessary to integrate non-commercial elements to take into account government thinking, ethics, the associative world and see how marketing tools from the business sector could be adapted to this less homogeneous context.

Finally, the last part provides a much more open and international perspective, showing how globalization affects the marketing strategies of sports organizations such as federations, private companies, leagues, event organizers, sponsors and even cities and countries. We will illustrate this using the examples of China and Qatar.

1 The birth of sports marketing in North America and its development in Europe

1.1 America leads the way from the 1950s onwards

• Professional sport developed earlier in the United States than in Europe. The main reason for this lies in the country’s overall level of economic development, as it has been proven that the richer a country is, the more important sport becomes, both as entertainment and as an activity. Sport could thus be seen as a category 3, 4 or 5 in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or a “superior good” in economist-speak. It is not a basic necessity, nor an essential service for most people. There is, therefore, a strong correlation between sports consumption and standard of living (GDP per capita), as shown by sociological studies.
• By the 1950s, professional sports championships were already well established in the United States: Historically, baseball had always been middle America’s favourite sport, but three other major sports were starting to emerge (basketball, American football and ice hockey). Later on, American football would undeniably take the No. 1 spot from a business point of view, while basketball would become the most successful internationally. MLS (Major League Soccer – the American name for “classic” football), created in 1993, became the fifth major league in 1996. Since 2007, it has included 20 teams from the United States and Canada (Browlee and Lorgnier, 2015).
• From the 1950s and 1960s, the sports business sector needed to come up with some theoretical solutions to a number of problems and provide answers to the questions the clubs were asking themselves (Rottenberg, 1956; Neale, 1964).
• As the financial stakes rose, it was only logical that the clubs should ask more and more questions. Television rights were steadily increasing, while ticket sales, for example, were falling. Our first reaction might be to conclude that television is the enemy of the box office and that broadcasting a sporting event somehow discourages spectators from travelling to the game, preferring to watch in comfort at home. We now know that this is not the case, and that, on the contrary, being broadcast on television is a sign of a club’s quality and popularity.¹
• At the same time, the New York Yankees’ u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction: the current situation and outlook for sports markets
• Part I Sports marketing
• Part II The sporting goods industry and distribution
• Part III Sport governance
• Index