Digital Sport Marketing

Concepts, Cases and Conversations

Alan Seymour, Paul Blakey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351789929
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

Digital sport marketing is a new, dynamic and rapidly evolving area that is having a profound impact on contemporary sport business. This is the only textbook to introduce core principles and best practice in digital sports marketing, focusing on key issues, emerging topics and practical techniques.

The book surveys the new international digital landscape in sport business and explains how to apply digital marketing across key areas from fan engagement and public relations to strategic communication and branding. Every chapter includes discussion of key concepts, an in-depth case study, and an in-depth conversation with a leading industry practitioner that demonstrates how digital marketing works in the real world.

Full of useful features, this is an essential textbook for any sport marketing, sport management, sport business or sport development course.

1The development of sport marketing practice

Chapter objectives

After studying the concepts, cases, and conversations in this chapter, the reader should be able to:

• Comprehend the changing nature of sport marketing.
• Discuss the timelines and landmarks in the development of sport marketing.
• Explain the transition towards new thinking in sport marketing.

Introduction

New platforms, an immersive and engaging fan experience, a lifestyle and entertainment orientation, an inclusive culture (Bashford, 2017): the direction of travel for sport(s) marketing in the new digital landscape. This is a 24/7, content-led global business where consumption of sport continues to gather pace rapidly. Sport has emerged as an identifiable business practice with digital at its heart. Sport is ubiquitous as digital media resonates with new audiences in new ways. Global sport through the digital lens of mobile technology attracts a younger audience of sports fans who seek authenticity through the live stream (Kirkham, 2017). Creative content acts as the conduit for brands to reach their intended audience, enhancing the customer relationship through access to their heroes. An evolving narrative extends that reach through the desire to share content and appeal to the casual fan. By extension, the creative industries of music, film, and art are natural mediums for sport through technology to feed the human need for entertainment. The evolving inclusive nature of sport, tackling issues of sexuality, gender, and disability, shares a movement of participation suggesting sport is for playing, not just for watching. Nevertheless, sport is business, and business requires sport marketing.

The sports industry, especially in North America, has embraced marketing concepts, theories and paradigms and moulded them into sport marketing practice. This is continuing in the 21st century as sport marketing application recognises the paradigm shift towards, and within, the new digital space. As academic interest in digital sport marketing gains traction, conversations with digital leaders alongside case study examples provide significant scope to highlight engagement activity between stakeholders and new audiences. Sport will always occupy ‘hearts and minds’, the emotional connection between fan and team. Brands who seek to enter this space must consider the value they can offer within the sportscape. Genuine partnership development to provide the ‘win-win-win’ (Skildum-Reid & Grey, 2014) for fan, brand and sports entity is central to future relationship opportunities.

The sport marketing community (academics, students, and practitioners) can together examine the case, build the evidence, and construct the arguments to deliver practical and applied understanding of the digital domain. The digital landscape moves at pace: think digital electronics of the 1950s–1970s such as the first computer at 167 square metres in size compared to the smartphone technology of today. In fact, the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) developed at MIT for the first lunar missions had less memory and operating power than a modern-day toaster! (Puiu, 2017). Both software and hardware hold the key to the digital future of sports. Emerging empirical paradigms focus on:

1. 1 The move to content creation.
2. 2 The importance of fan engagement.
3. 3 New communication strategies.

Moreover, as the global sports industry transitions to the new dynamics of the digital landscape, data and analytics become a focal point for sport marketing practice. This indicates the growing importance of the techniques and processes used to enhance the commercial potential of sports through the analysis of behavioural data and patterns (Technopedia, 2018) and their subsequent use to target the sports audience. The principles of business analytics – one key pillar of sports analytics – provides foundational data, interpretation, understanding, and, therefore, the platform for digital sport marketing practice. This is a significant development in the digital setting of sport marketing and a key track for investigation here.

CONCEPTS

Sport marketing defined

Amongst the numerous definitions of marketing, sport marketing is defined by Shank and Lyberger (2015, p. 5) as “the specific application of marketing principles and processes to sport products and to the marketing of non-sports products through association with sport”. Critically, the customer/consumer is the focus for any sport entity or brand with the aim to “entice people to try products or services and then keep them as long-term [satisfied] customers” (Smith & Stewart, 2015, p. 16). The new digital lens merely positions the use of digital channels to reach consumers, predominantly via digital media. Nevertheless, “the all-encompassing and unstoppable expansion of cyberspace is changing every single dimension of consumers’ lifestyle” (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016, p. 177). Just as marketing has developed from the principles of the ‘4 P’s’ to the ‘7 P’s’ and on to the 4 C’s, sport marketing too has harnessed these adaptations. New concepts and models for sport marketing have emerged and are considered for practical application in the digital age: relationship marketing, customer relationship management (CRM), co-creation and salesforce automation, alongside digital marketing, all to be explored through a customer-centric marketing paradigm (Jackson & Ahuja, 2016). Digital presents the opportunity to realise and deliver these concepts in ‘live’ scenarios through new frameworks and arguments that present a new mantra for the study of sport marketing.

Sport marketing continues to emerge as an academic subject energised by the new impetus to investigate and understand digital practice in the global world of sport and business. Mark McCormack, who founded International Management Group (IMG) in 1960, is credited with creating a whole new industry in sport marketing when he signed golfing legend Arnold Palmer to his agency. Endorsement, licensing, sponsorship, partnership agreements, broadcast rights deals, etc., took flight and have helped to consolidate the importance of the sport business industry worldwide. Such seminal moments have dictated that “the discipline of sports marketing has grown in stature despite there being no consistent agreement as to what the discipline encompasses” (Fullerton, 2010, p. 14). The role of influencers, celebrity, and meaningful personalities as endorsers of sport and non-sport products and services emerged with a handshake between two parties on a golf course. These components have become pre-requisites to help enforce connections in the new digital environment. Sport has crossed boundaries to be classified along with leisure and recreation, tourism and entertainment. Pickering (2002, p. 5) suggested that “sport is the only entertainment where, no matter how many times you go back, you never know the ending”. In a dramatic situation, sport marketing can help to surprise, change, and impact on all audiences. The philosophy of satisfying the customer is a necessity in all aspects of the live sports experience and the wider lived space of sports fans. The desire and mood for the themed message is a central pillar for all things digital and a key point of interest for academics, students, and practitioners.

A short history of sport marketing

The chronological timeline (see Figure 1.1) in the history of sport marketing is often subjective, but there have been many seminal moments that provided relevant stepping stones and selective incidents to illustrate the key points of reference.

Sport has witnessed a phenomenal global growth since the Ancient Olympics in 776 BC. Through the birth of radio and TV as important mediums for the promotion of sports to the commercialisation of sports via the value of broadcast rights and now the influence of digital and social media, sport is personal entertainment and a highly prized asset available to commercial operators. Sports and brands are intrinsically linked through history. Illustrations of sports stars to be collected via their insertion in cigarette cards is an early indication of this link, with Babe Ruth becoming the first sports personality on TV as baseball became the first televised sporting event in the US. This resulted in Ruth becoming the first real professional athlete and an example of the emergent force of sport marketing seeking to boost sales and brand loyalty.

Figure 1.1 Sport marketing chronological timeline.

Source: Adapted from Shank and Lyberger (2015).

Similarly, the legendary golfer Gene Sarazen is considered a founding father in sport marketing, and a relevant starting point to appraise the connection of sport performer to sport business. On 1 March 1923, Sarazen signed an endorsement deal with Wilson Sporting Goods that became the longest running endorsement deal in the history of sports. The original deal was for $6000 per year, plus an equal amount for travel expenses. Renewal took place every two years until his death in 1999.

Jump forward to 1984, and there is no more defining event of the commercialisation of sports than the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. This dateline is often seen as the birth of true monetisation in a new era for global sport marketing; a key moment too for sports sponsorship. Sports and business were now intrinsically linked as the Olympic Games had made a financial profit for the first time.

Weikel (1998) corroborates these significant datelines in the history of sport, as sport marketing developed connections with new audiences likely to appeal to brands and sponsors. A key underlying principle is at play related to strong brand association and sponsorship activations in each of these sporting moments.

• Jesse Owens received free shoes for the 1936 Berlin Olympics from Adidas, which was one of the first known examples of an amateur athlete used for public relations or advertising messages.
• The 1970s included several important evolutionary events in sport marketing. Sponsorship of athletes emerged as a trend. Joe Namath became a sex symbol and used that image to sell pantyhose (of all things). By the end of the decade the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defensive tackle “Mean” Joe Greene starred in one of the most acclaimed advertisements ever for Coke (Coca-Cola).
• The shoe wars began as Adidas, Puma, Nike, and others fought to snatch athletes for endorsements – the Air Jordan was born!
• Television money became the driving force behind almost every US college and pro league – NBA, NFL, etc.
  (Shank & Lyberger, 2015)

The commercialisation and subsequent growth of global sport business, via the publicity and promotional value surrounding all sporting events, teams, leagues, and athletes, has contributed to the need to focus on:

• Monetisation of sporting assets, including a significant focus upon endorsement.
• Associations with sporting events as both marketing and entertainment triggers for business activity.
• The business opportunities to gain competitive advantage, in and through, sports via sponsorship/partnership.
• The boom in media rights.

The market forces responsible for the continuing development of sport marketing are centred predominantly on technology and new social media platforms. An outstandingly effective example of this has been the Sport Eng...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The development of sport marketing practice
• 2 Sport marketing in the digital age
• 3 Social media in digital sport marketing
• 4 Reputation management and sports PR
• 5 Sports practice and fan engagement in an online environment
• 6 Fan activation and involvement with sport business
• 7 Getting closer to emerging sports audiences
• 8 Sports in a cultural and knowledge management context
• 9 The importance of sports communication strategies
• 10 Sport business in a globalised marketplace
• 11 Towards new thinking for sport marketers and practitioners
• 12 The future of sport
• Index