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Similarities in Marketing
Changes in Marketing
Thirty years ago marketers did not have today’s marketing tools, such as the technology today
(internet, Direct TV, CD burners, MP3s, e-commerce, etc). New technologies have broadened
the scope and reach of marketing messages.
Marketing Similarities
The marketing of sports and entertainment products differs from marketing traditional products
in four areas: product, price, place, promotion.
Product

By nature, sports and entertainment products are often not physical goods that can be
stacked on a store shelf (restaurants, hotels, insurance, etc).

Golf celebrity, Tiger Woods, sells everything from cars to watches to clothing.

Woods uses his appeal as a sportsman to promote these non-sports-related products.

Endorsement is approval or support of a product or idea, usually by a celebrity lending
his or her image or name to a product.

Marketers must match their product with the correct celebrities.

To create an effective endorsement, the celebrity who endorses a product should be
popular with people who would buy the product.

Core product is the main product, such as sports event, movie, stage show, or book.

Ancillary product is a product related to or created from the core product (an amusement
park ride based on a movie, a DVD recording of a stage show)

Companies can earn additional revenue, or gross income, by using those core and
ancillary products as promotional tools to promote and market even more unrelated
products (a character in a movie, the core product, can be sold later as toys, t-shirts, etc).
Place

Affects traditional marketing more than sports and entertainment marketing, due to ecommerce.

Successful sports and entertainment marketing strategies have always appealed to the
desire to go out to a special event.

When fans get home, they can also go online and purchase products related to the special
event.
Price

Is set and adhered to uniformly, based on what theaters and sports teams can charge and
what people will pay.

Price becomes an issue when highly paid players and celebrities go on strike for salary
increases – fan loyalty can be damaged.

Other price issues include ticket scalping and piracy.

When people purchase entertainment, or use it in another form for profit, a portion of the
profit goes to the artist or owner as a royalty (payment for materials that has been
copyrighted).
Promotion

Sports and entertainment marketing uses two tools to promote goods: product tie-in and
cross promotion.

Product tie-in is the use of ancillary products such as merchandise as promotional tools
(McDonald’s Happy Meals free toy – from the newest Disney film).

Cross promotion is any form of communication through which one industry relies on
another industry to promote its product (celebrities promoting their latest film through
exclusive interviews, TV promotions).
Convergence (Part of the Marketing Mix)

Is the overlapping of product promotion (websites hosting links and online shopping)

This expands the potential for profit.
Synergy

One of the biggest similarities between sports and entertainment marketing is the
potential for convergence and cross promotion.

Synergy is a combined action that occurs when products owned by one source promote
the growth of related products (Oprah – has a TV show as the core product and promotes
ancillary businesses, her magazine, her production company, products she endorses).

Synergy is not easy to achieve.
Risks and Risk Management

Risks are unforeseen events or obstacles that can negatively affect business.

Sports and entertainment is especially risky because of the unpredictable nature of the
product (athletes and entertainers are subject to injury and illness).

Knowing that there are risks, successful sports and entertainment marketers develop risk
management.

Risk management is a strategy to offset business risks (help write contracts, purchase
insurance policies).