Chapter 1 opens with hyping up David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA during its rise to international success. A lot of what he did was not specifically good for the NBA but instead expended NBA resources on making basketball more widely popular in general, even to getting TV stations to broadcast local games, and training Chinese BBall referees in the US.

HMMMMMMM.

Sport marketing can actually be two things: marketing of a sport (most of the book) and using sports to market your thing (chapter 9).

Marketing Myopia (this looks like fun!)

• Focus on selling goods/services instead of identifying needs of customers
• Belief that winning is the only factor in marketing
• Not recognizing promotion’s place in marketing
• Ignorance of competition
• Shortsightedness (not playing the long game)
• Poor quality research
• Poor sales and service
• Arrogance and laziness
• Failure to adapt to the landscape

Bill Veek’s 12 rules basically say to be a good person. I like them.

Waiting for people to come to you = inbound; going to to make sales = outbound

Keys to success of the ‘Cat Crew Internship program:

• Provide titles that match responsibilities
• Support teamwork
• Create opportunity

Sport product:

• Core benefits: Health, entertainment, sociability, achievement
• Generic sport form: play, rules, equipment, etc.
• Specific sport form: soccer, tennis, hockey, etc.
• Marketing mix: procut, place, price, public relations, promotion

Things that make sport product unique:

• The human experience (the intangible nature of being a fan)
• Personal/emotional identification (BIRGing/CORFing)
• Simultaneous production and consumption of product
• Dependence on social facilitation (pandemics are bad for sports watching…)
• Inconsistency and unpredictability (any given day)
• The marketer has little control of the on-field/pitch/green product
  • Must sell the sizzle as much as the steak

Features of the sport market

• Orgs compete and cooperate at the same time (rivalries, league health, etc)
• Many sports consumers consider themselves experts
• Demand fluctuates wildly (potentially high sensitivity to team performance and other factors outside control)
• Near-universal appeal

Sport financing special issues

• Pricing can’t be done by traditional means (esp. since marginal cost for additional unit [fan] is v. small) like with groceries or w/e
• The price of the sport product (ticket) is only part of the cost paid by the consumer
• Indirect revenues are frequently greater than direct operating revenues (sponsorships, etc)

Sport promotion has special issues

• Widespread media exposure is a double edged sword
• Celebrity can transform relationships

That’s all for chapter 1! The end of chapter questions are mostly comprehension, but there is this little gem:

“Discuss how two golf players might consume different products in terms of benefits, sport forms, or marketing mix.” I suppose it’s referring to how one person might play to stay active, another might play primarily to socialize, and a third to have a venue for business negotiations.