Sports events play a crucial role in students’ experience in college. Effective marketing planning increases the popularity of sports activities and develops the level of professionalism of players. Unfortunately, there is a downward trend in the attendance of college sports games such as football in the past few years (Abeza et al., 2018). The strategies that prove useful in improving the situation are introducing specific fees, being active in social media, and getting as many sponsors as possible.
One effective method to ensure high attendance at sports arenas is to establish an obligatory sports fee. Arizona State University practiced mandatory fees for students and provided free tickets to college games afterward. This tactic increased spectators in athletic events (Abeza et al., 2018). Furthermore, from my personal experience at the college I worked at, each ticket should have an assigned number to a seat to provide better service and ensure its security. Additionally, it was efficient to give free discounts on concession stores and merchandise sales to the game visitors.
Today teenagers spend a lot of their free time on social media, and proper management of the sports page is critical in marketing. It is convenient to post the schedules of plays, players’ information, and any game updates on social media to keep the audience on track. It is even more important to make the events page engaging so people can connect to games (Claybaugh, 2020). Many sports activities do not have informative social accounts. Thus, marketing managers need to place a particular focus on this aspect.
Finally, an excellent way to get many people to watch sports games is to get sponsorship first and not vice versa. Getting support from sponsors can help sports clubs create high-quality merchandise. Also, the sponsor’s products’ advertisement catches people’s attention, and they think highly of the event (Nuseir, 2020). Therefore, it is essential to find sponsors firsthand to get the attention of people.
To sum up, sports events marketing is a vital sphere that needs a lot of changes. Studies propose several effective methods to increase ticket and merchandise sales. These include imposing sports fees at the beginning of the semester, providing interactive content in social media accounts, and advertising sponsors’ goods in games to get public attention.
References
Abeza, G., O’Reilly, N., Kashuck, K., Law, J., & Speck, A. (2018). College sport and declining stadium attendance: designing adaptive strategies. Case Studies in Sport Management, 7(1), 4–10.
Claybaugh, Erin. (2020). The Use of Social Media to Advance Sports Marketing: The Atlantic Hockey Conference. Rochester Institute of Technology. Web.
Nuseir, M. T. (2020). The effects of sponsorship on the promotion of sports events. International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 22(2), 191.