Sports Marketing

Marketing plans and strategies are an important part of almost any business today. One of the biggest industries marketing plans have benefited and changed in a number of different ways is the sports industry. The development of the sports marketing industry has led companies to invest millions of dollars to have their product associated with specific teams, players, and sporting events attempting to connect with consumer and create profit for both parties involved. The money involved in sports marketing calls for these sponsorships and endorsement decisions to be made both strategically and confidently. After researching the sports industry from a business perspective the importance of marketing decisions is
Teams in a variety of sports across the world have payrolls ranging anywhere from 40 million dollars to 300 million dollars for just the players alone. One of the main factors to the increase in salaries for all athletes and employees of the teams over the last 20 years is the influence of sports marketing. The three main factors in sports marketing sales that have increased these numbers so greatly are naming rights to stadiums, advertising on the fields and throughout stadiums, and promotional giveaways on a certain night from a company. The first factor is probably the most noticeable because it involves the actual name of the stadium where the team plays. The naming rights for stadiums are usually long term contracts that bring in several millions of dollars per season to the team. Each contract is different and in some cases naming rights must be changed due to financial troubles companies may come across. For example, the baseball team the Houston Astros opened a new stadium in the early 2000s called Enron Field. Most people know of the illegal financial activity taking place at Enron during those years, so the Astros voided the contract and signed a new deal with Coca Cola. The new deal is for $6 million per season until 2030 and to have the stadium called Minute Maid Park. This is one of the richest deals in Major League Baseball in comparison to other teams. (N/A, 2009) Sports like baseball, hockey, and basketball play 40 to 80 home games a year,