Sports and Entertainment Marketing 1a: Introduction
The bright lights. The roaring crowds. The chants and cheers and applause. If you are drawn to the electricity of large events and the challenge of making events successful, a career in sports and entertainment marketing may be for you! In this course, you will trace the development of these industries, dissect their dual nature, and discover what it takes to pitch, promote, and deliver on these services. You ‘ll also explore the necessary steps to chart your own career path from among the professional roles that these industries need to operate. Let’s get off the sidelines and hop into the primetime of the sporting and entertainment worlds!
Units at a Glance
Unit 1: The Big Ideas of Sports and Entertainment Marketing
Adding the words “sports” and “entertainment” in front of the word “marketing” makes the topic of marketing seem much more exciting, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is! If you’re taking this course, then you too are probably drawn to sports, entertainment, or both. Maybe you’re an athlete. Or maybe you’re a sports fan. Or maybe you love going to concerts or going to the theater. Whatever drives your interest, this course will help you understand why the Sports and Entertainment industry generates more than a trillion dollars in global business every year—and it’s only growing. That’s why it’s critical for organizations to market their goods and services effectively to the people who will ultimately purchase what they are offering. After all, customers want what the industry is selling, and there’s a lot of money to be made in this industry!
What will you learn in this unit?
- Identify the structure of the sports and entertainment industry
- Define and distinguish between marketing, sports marketing, and entertainment marketing
- Connect historical developments to both current and future trends in sports and entertainment marketing
- Explain how target market, market segmentation, and the marketing mix relates to and impacts consumer purchasing decisions
Unit 2: Product and Service Central
After completing the last unit, competitions, athletes, spectators, and fans should be fresh on your mind. And so should half-time shows, in-game entertainment, partners, and sponsors. By now, you’ve had a solid introduction to these concepts and how they all play into sports and entertainment marketing. But marketers themselves must consider all these shifting components (and more!) in order to promote and sell just one successful sports and entertainment product. Is that even possible with so many different factors involved? Yes, it is. It’s not easy by any means, and it’s certainly more challenging than marketing a traditional product—but it is possible. In this unit, we’ll see how marketers are able to do this.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Identify all the variables in a sports and entertainment product
- Recognize the importance of branding and its impact on service quality
- Define the stages of a product life cycle
- Determine why some new products fail or succeed
Unit 3: The ABCs of Business Communications
Communications for public and media relations is about building relationships. But that’s just the beginning. You’ll need to provide important information to the people in those relationships so they can share that information to the public to promote your product. More importantly, the person responsible for public relations within an organization must be able to reach these intermediary groups in unique and meaningful ways. That’s why a skillful public relations expert must be an effective communicator—someone who’s able to produce materials that contain up-to-date, accurate, and reliable information in clear, concise, and interesting ways.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Determine the strategies for communicating information through promotional presentations
- Describe public relations and publicity, and review how a company builds goodwill and public awareness through community relations
- Identify elements of a press release, a press kit, and a press conference
- Define media relations, and examine the unique partnership media partners have with the sports and entertainment industry
Unit 4: Principles of Promotion
Promotion is a word that’s frequently used in sports and entertainment marketing. Organizations deploy many promotional strategies to engage and excite the customer, and each strategy presents a different purpose where marketing is concerned. Each strategy, at its core, is all about communication. It takes a savvy marketing team to determine which strategy, or which combination of strategies, will be optimal to use in any given situation. This unit will delve into each of these approaches as we focus on the kinds of events that occur in the sports and entertainment industry.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Define each element of the promotional mix
- Compare different promotional strategies for different events
- Determine the design elements of effective promotions
- Identify and describe how digital marketing impacts the fan experience
Unit 5: Money and Marketing
This unit will have you exploring the retail side of the sports and entertainment industry, focusing on the sporting goods sector. We’ll be examining both the identity of the customers and the changes in how sporting goods are sold. But with that knowledge comes the need for understanding when to raise and lower prices, as well as when to offer promotions to increase company revenue. As you continue through the unit, you will be introduced to the ways that sports and entertainment events contribute to both tourism and the economy.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Understand challenges that retailers face in a free-enterprise system
- Review approaches and methods used to understand and sell to the retail sporting goods consumer
- Complete sales and payroll-related transactions by analyzing pricing techniques and payment strategies used in retail marketing
- Examine how sports and entertainment events contribute to tourism and impact the economy
Unit 6: Career Investigation and Planning
By now you’ve been introduced to many functional tasks facing the sports and entertainment marketer. Have any of these areas appealed to you enough for you to pursue a potential career in this line of work? Whether you’re leaning toward a career in sports and entertainment or in another field altogether, this unit will help you set goals and know where to research jobs so that you can be prepared for an exciting career ahead—no matter where you go.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Recognize different sports and entertainment marketing career paths
- Develop a plan of action for researching potential career paths
- Identify available resources to search for potential job leads
- Determine the essential elements of a career portfolio
Unit 7: Entrepreneurship 101
Owning your own business takes passion, commitment, and resilience. Every business owner face challenges, but those who learn to operate efficiently can also reap the rewards that come with owning a business. In this unit, you’ll learn how to capitalize on changing market trends in the sports and entertainment industry. Identifying these trends will help you in determining where to find fresh opportunities for potential new business ventures. Once you’ve discovered how to spot promising opportunities in a particular market, you will then learn what it takes to be your own boss as well as the steps you’ll need to take to get your business venture going.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Identify the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs
- Define and compare different types of business ownership
- Research market opportunities in the sports and entertainment industry
- Establish the base components of a successful business plan
Unit 8: The Big Picture of Business
In this final unit of the course, you will begin pulling together everything you’ve learned up to this point so that you can develop your own personal business plan of action. The plan you craft should clearly reflect both your short-term and long-term business goals. Your plan will also need to communicate the incentives that your business opportunity offers so that you can generate the interest you will need for potential investors and stakeholders to fund your venture. An effective business plan will present readers with an accurate depiction of the present state of the business, where you intend to take the business moving forward, and how you will manage to achieve your business growth. It should provide enough detail to direct your efforts, but it also needs to be flexible and fluid enough to incorporate new opportunities and to face unforeseen challenges. Think of it as a revisable roadmap you can employ to chart your future path to business success.
What will you learn in this unit?
- Identify the fundamental functions of a business
- Explain how supporting roles contribute to fundamental business functions
- Interpret the two financial statements legally required of all businesses
Required Materials
Physical
- Audio recording device
- Video recording device
Software
- Presentation software
- Word processing software
- Spreadsheet software
Optional
- Timeline creation software
- Image editing software
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