Final Post.....For Now

As we begin to round up the end of the semester,  I want to take the time to write on a new sport that I have not mentioned in the past, and that is Major League Soccer.  The reason that I am choosing the MLS to write about is because this league will start to struggle getting sponsors.  Since the league formed it has taken a back seat to the other leagues such as the NFL, Major League Baseball and the NBA to name a few.  As well the lack of television spots, are not exactly appealing to sponsors looking to put their name on a team or stadium.  With that problem already in place for the league, the economy slowing getting worse it will only lead to less sponsorship money for the league and its teams.  The future of the league looks really grim right now, just when after the World Cup everyone thought that American soccer was on the rise.  The problem of lack of sponsorships also leads to low pay for many of the players in the league.  If the player is really good, they pack their things and go over seas to play in bigger and better leagues, and mostly importantly they are paid more over there.  While the economy will have a negative impact on the the future of the MLS, the technology may help their cause a little bit.  Now that it is possible to stream live feeds over the Internet, the league has many options compared to just trying to find a station on television to show their games.  The advancement of online television will help the league gain more viewers, and most importantly more selling points for future sponsors.  There are still people who want to watch the games, however like I said before it is hard because very few games are shown.  This will now make it easier for people who want to watch the games have chance to watch.  The end result will possible give the MLS more of a chance to add more sponsors to their list.

Sports Writing and Promotions

During my time of studying the elements and examples of sports writing and promotions, I have realized how complex it can really be.  There are so many elements that go into marketing an event of any size, weather it be the Super Bowl or a local charity basketball game, every element and characteristic of the event must be considered.  After doing my own marketing plan in this class it helped me gain a new understanding that an event must be marketed to the correct market segmentation and at the appropriate time.  Any flaw in the marketing plan could lead to the disapproval of the event and the worst outcome of the event being a complete failure.  That point brings me to the next thing that I have realized after this class, you can't be afraid of your event or idea failing.  There are hundreds of thousand ideas and events that have failed, do you think that Bill Veck was afraid of his corky ideas failing?  Of course not!  He had confidence in everyone of his ideas because they were well planned and well marketed.  This leads me to the my last point and that is about sponsorships.  The last part of the semester I have realized that companies are more than willing to sponsor just about any kind of sporting event, as long as the benefits fit with what they are trying accomplish.  While the size of the event does matter in how much the company will be willing to pay, it does not affect their decision on wether or not to sponsor the event.  The key is to make sure that they know the value they will get with the money they will be spending.

Aside from what I learned from the material that was covered in the book, I have recieved real world knowledge of sports writing and promotions through the various real marketing plans and promotions we got to talk about.  Along with the links that Dr. Tiell put up on the course page, she talked about her experiences of being on a committee planning the Women's Leadership Symposium that is associated with the NCAA.  Not only is this a huge event for the NCAA, but to have someone who is in charge of gaining sponsorships and marketing the event really adds to the complete experience that every student in the class will leave with.  Learning happens every day, but learning through real world events and happenings is the best way to obtain knowledge about a given field.  I feel that given the oppurtunity to do a real marketing plan or given the task of gaining sponsorships, I would be able to succeed after what I have gained from this class.

Olympic Athlete Endorsements

After Michael Phelps record setting summer Olympics in Beijing where he eight gold medals, there were many companies knocking at his door wanting him to endorse the products.  The two companies that he does endorse are Speedo and Kellogg's.  Speedo being the one of the biggest swimming apparel providers in the world and Kellogg's a family oriented cereal company.  When the picture of Phelps smoking Marijuana at a college party leaked these two companies happened to be in two very different situations.  The decision for Kellogg's to drop him did not come as a surprise to many,but the decision for Speedo to keep him on as a endorser was.  Let us first justify why Kellogg's did what it did and dropped his endorsement contract.  The Olympics is only every four years, and if this is the only time that people really follow swimming why keep a person on to endorse you when they can't keep a good image and they are really not in the spot light to endorse your product.  This is more than likely what Kellogg's had going through their minds when they decided to drop him.  Why keep him around, there were more down sides to keeping him on than there were upsides.  So in other words it was best to just cut their loses and move on.  Now to justify why Speedo kept him is a whole different story.  The consumers who buy Speedo products follow swimming outside of when it is on during the Olympics.  If Speedo were to drop him there would be a whole slew of companies, that are Speedo's competitors, coming to sign him to a sponsorship deal.  While in society he may be considered a deviant, in the swimming society he is still the worlds best known swimmer and the greatest swimmer maybe of all time.  It would be like Nike cutting off Tiger Woods for his actions, that would be catastrophic to the sales of the product.

Just because I think that Speedo was justified in keeping Phelps as a sponsor, does not mean that I agree with his actions.  In fact I think that a "moral clauses" in contract as big as the one he signed is a great idea.  You are making millions of dollars at the sake of a companies brand and image, the least you can do is behave yourself or at least be smart enough to do it in private.  I do not think we have enough instances where world famous athletes are held responsible for their actions.  When I mean held responsible I mean money wise, which is why I truly believe that moral clauses need to be in every contract anyone signs.  I think that Phelps has felt the wrath of his moral clause, and more athletes need to go through the same thing he is.

Honda Center Partnership Opportunities

The Honda Center is one of the premier sports and entertainment center in the world by welcoming nearly 1.7 million guest a year.  This provides a great opportunity for the center to create long time relationships with many companies and can make a lot of money doing it.  Their state of the art center offers multiple opportunities to display advertisements for many different companies at once.  On top of that their prime location right off Freeway 57 offers the opportunity to reach people who may never even go to an event in the Honda Center.  The Freeway 57 Marquee would be very easy to sell because of the easy visibility it has from the highway.  The set up that the arena has for advertising areas is prime for the guest in the events as well.  First would be the Honda Vision scoreboard that hangs in the middle which has four upper panels for advertisements, as well as four lower panels that provide the same space.  In addition to that the arena has four corner panels, four center scoreboard panels and two 360 degree LED rings that offer fully animated branding opportunities.  When there are hockey games at the arena it offers for even more signs.  These signs are located on the the bench and penalty boxes for both teams, as well as the four dashboards that are part of the rink.  As you can see, with the amounts of guest that the arena houses every year and the amount of signage that the arena can house offers a great opportunity for the arena to make a profit and its partners as well.

While the arena does have the opportunity to advertise all over, there is a chance that over-commercialization could detract from exposure benefits for clients.  When there are signs from ten different companies all over the arena it would be hard for guest to really take in all of the signs.  There would come a point that people would just start ignoring them.  For me, when I am at an event such as a MLB game or an NFL game I get tired of all the advertisements that they flash on the boards and the announcements they make about the teams partners.  I just think when it comes to advertising in a venue such as the Honda Center, less is more and the over advertising could harm the effectiveness.

The Naming Game in Sport Sponsorships

Companies around the globe are buying names of stadiums and even games between teams in order to get their name out to potential customers.  This is no tiny bill when companies try to buy the naming rights, they are forking out million and millions of dollars to get their name out.  One of the biggest examples of this in the sporting world today would be the the Bowl Championship Series in college football.  This series consist of four different bowl games in which all of them are have naming rights attached to them which include the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the All-State Sugar Bowl, the Discover Orange Bowl and the Rose Bowl Presented by Vizio.  This is just one example of many where companies buy the naming rights for certain events.  However, the rising trend in sports advertising and revenue generation is selling the naming rights of a stadium.  It seems today that almost every stadium has a name that represents a business or organization.  For some people it just does not seem the same with their favorite stadiums change the name to some multi billion dollar business.  For many Indians fans their stadium has been known mostly by the name Jacobs Field, until 2008 when the organization sold the naming rights to the Progressive Insurance agency for $3.6 million annually until 2023.  While the name is now Progressive Field many fans still call it by its old name Jacobs Field.  While I understand why companies sell the naming rights for stadiums, you have to think it ruins so many fan's prospective towards the organization.  Now a days it seems to be a trend among many college and professional teams except a couple universities, which include Notre Dame, Ohio State and Michigan.  Either the university officials of both Michigan and Ohio State have not realized the trend yet, or they want to preserve the integrity of the 107 year old football rivalry.  The universities probably have realized they could sell off the naming rights for millions of dollars, but choose to keep the games rich history in their hands and not some one else.  While there are some options for these two schools could explore if they ever wanted to have the games naming rights auctioned off.  Some of their options would include companies with rich histories in our country, which would tie in to the rich history the rivalry brings with it.  A couple companies that come to mind would be General Motors and John Hancock.  These two companies fit the description and really ties into the history of this game that I explained earlier.  This also ties into why there are still major college athletic programs who have not sold off the naming rights for their stadiums.  With the rich and old history of college football, which has been going on much longer than professional football, stadiums have names that make their programs prestige.  Certain stadiums have names such as the Horseshoe (Ohio State), The Big House (Michigan) and the Swamp (Florida).  The way that these universities see it is that they already bring in profit from their programs, why ruin the tradition that they have with the names of their stadiums for and extra $3 million a year.  The fans would not like it and it would certainly change the atmosphere of the game that attracts the millions of fans to watch the games.  Seriously would you rather hear the announcer say "It's the 108th meeting between Ohio State and Michigan here at The Big House" or "It's the 108th meeting between Ohio State and Michigan here at All-State Stadium"?  To me it is a no brainer, and I am glad that the major universities in college sports are not entertaining their options of naming rights.

Coors Company and FedEx Sports Sponsorship

After reading about the elements that go into getting sponsored by the Coors Company.  While nothing really suprised me about what types of events they sponsor, it was the depth in which they go to see if the event qualifies.  Coors will only sponsor events that score high on the beer drinker index survey, which practically means it must have the stigma of having alcohol involved.  The biggest thing that I learned from reading about the Coors Company sponsorship requirements, and that was the requirement for television coverage and a governing body (NASCAR) in charge.  This is somewhat different than other beer companies, most others will put their name on many events that do not have television coverage.  With these requirements it somewhat limits the Coors Company to the type of events that they can sponsor.  These limits that they have with their requirements is they will not be able to sponsor any type of high school or big youth sporting event.  While it limits them in that respect it also opens many doors for them.  These opportunities spread into sponsoring many college sporting events and the opportunity to get in to larger professional sporting events.  With that being said lets take a look at what events appeal to just FedEx, events that appeal to just Coors and events that would appeal to both.  Let us start at what events appeal to the Coors Company, but not FedEx.  Since we now know that Coors likes the event to be high on the beer drinker index, events that would appeal to them would be NASCAR races, rodeos, beach volleyball tournaments and the NHL.  The reason these events are so appealign to Coors is that thereis usually alot of alcohol consumed at these events and these sports are usually watched by the average person.  This is why it does not appeal to FedEx because they are looking for the CEO of the company instead of the average Joe.  That leads us to what type of events appeal to FedEx, but not to Coors.  These type of events would consist of NCAA sporting events, the Little League World Series and PGA golf tournaments.  These are usually events that are very respected and they draw in many higher class people and would fit into what FedEx is trying to accomplish.  There are many different opportunities for both companies, but both of these companies could benefit from some of the same events.  These events you could possible see both of these companies sponsor would be the Olympics, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the World Cup.  These companies for the most part are very different, but they do share many similarties.  In the end both companies are trying to strategically sponsor events that will help them recieve a huge return on their investment.

Names that you will see come the 2012 London Olympics

You may think that in this colomn that we will explore what athletes we will see break out in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, well you were wrong.  What we will look at is what companies are coming up with the mass of amounts of cash to be able to put there mark on the 2012 Olympic Games.  Lets face it with out sponsorships not many sporting events would take place, the Olympics is no different.  In fact, their sponsors make the contributions that make the whole event come to life in the manner that it usually happens.  The sponsors are broken up by the London Organizing Committee into different levels of committment.  Companies and organizations can become a worldwide sponsor, an official partner, an official supporter, or an official supplier/contributor.  The worldwide sponsors are the biggest contributors to the games, these companies are forking out millions and millions of dollars to have their commercials and name all around the venues of the games.  The companies that make up this level for London 2012 are Coca-Cola, Acer, Atos Origin, Dow, GE, McDonalds, Omega, Panasonic, P&G, Samsung and Visa.  These companies will not only be financially assisting the games, but they will also be providing their services to the games and the patrons attending the games.  Most of the companies that are on this list are not new names to the worldwide sponsors catagory, but some of the new names for these games are Atos Origin, Omega, and Dow.  From here it moves on to the official partnerships, the companies that fall into this catagory are Adidas, BMW, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF, and Llodys TBS.  These companies will provide their products to the games production in exchange for their name on the event.  For example, Adidas will be supplying uniforms to the athletes, BMW will provide the complementery cars for transportation and BP will be providing fuel to all official vehicles.  The last catagory that rounds out the committments by companies is the official suppliers and contributors.  Some of the companies on this list are UPS, Cisco, Cadury and Cadbury.  These companies will provide their services to the running of the event, mostly technical services from these listed companies.  Their committment is important to the event, but is not as much of a committment as the other two catagories.  Without these companies deep pockets and drive to get their name out there, there would be no Olympics.  So when the 2012 games finally arrive and you complain about all the commercials during the events, remember it might not even be possible with out all the sponsors contributions.