In February of 2010, I was recruited by Full Sail University to create a program for educating prospective graduates to have success in the sports industry. We had to determine whether that degree program would involve sports management, sports business, sports production or something else. We conducted a four month marketing campaign in which we talked to hundreds of people from the industry, who with near unanimity indicated that they were having all kinds of difficulty negotiating the digital landscape. Similarly, they reported that they were having difficulty connecting their Generation X sales and sponsorship teams with the need to engage both their Millennial-aged fan base and their clients who want to engage that fan base. Those businesses obviously include sports franchises, but also merchandisers, networks, agencies and their brethren.
The move into the digital arena, for nebulous topics like branding and engagement, as well as for specific initiatives like sales, is at once a thrilling opportunity and an enormous undertaking which is both inconvenient and expensive. In the most broad definition of digital marketing, the topic covers an incredibly wide swath of areas for any sports businesses. For businesses like a franchise, this is an intimidating gamut of possibilities to entertain. It is problematic because the very idea of digital marketing runs counter to how their most experienced sales people have been trained. And it is additionally problematic because any dollar wasted on a failed marketing campaign is one dollar less than that franchise can spend on improving the quality of its on-field organization. It is more so when we think beyond the front line of major professional sports teams and start looking into minor league teams and less popular circuits that often operate with even tighter margins.
These kinds of businesses need counseling both for strategy and for specific activations, which is why some larger agencies have developed divisions exclusively dedicated to digital marketing and why other smaller agencies have popped up to fill different niches within the larger topic. That said, there should be openings for new businesses to consult and connect sports properties with products -- and vice versa -- to help create strategies specifically designed to maximize exposure and revenue generation. Those revenue generation opportunities could include traditional marketing options and modern online marketing techniques including "social media, blogging, SEO, PPC, branding, content marketing, video marketing and app creation." (Perrin, 2012).
Larger companies have faced similar quandaries, but have had better success entering the digital arena, in part because they have larger margins of error. It is interesting, because so often when there are technological evolutions and revolutions, innovation comes from the ground up. In the digital media landscape, market leaders like ESPN and Nike are leading the way, from different parts of the business. Nike has reduced its famous television ad campaigns to reach customers through a variety of digital products that track analytics and communicate directly with users. (Image from Cendrowski, 2012).
ESPN is trying to lead the way in digital application of technology, and finding new ways to connect with fans through advances in production and collaboration, many of which give fans opportunities to have direct P2P feedback with the network. (Videos from Lynch, 2012)
These ESPN innovations may not be digital marketing, per se, in that we aren't creating quantifiable metrics based on clicks and generated leads, but if we are considering digital marketing for sports in its broadest possible terms -- all of the ways in which sports businesses interact with fans and clients -- than we absolutely need to understand the importance of connecting with those consumers in this way.
What this tells us, as observers of the industry, is that there is little limit to what may lie ahead concerning the role of digital application for sports and sports marketing. As the creator of a program which proposes to graduate future members of the labor force for this industry, my job is to continue to monitor and receive feedback from the industry, to make sure that the students who leave this program understand -- in the academic sense -- what matters in the industry and what skill sets are going to matter in the future of the industry. Today's students need exposure to as many of these areas as possible, with the hope that they will discover their own particular passions and niches in which they can be successful.
REFERENCES
Cendrowski, S. (2012, February 13). Nike's new marketing mojo. Fortune, Retrieved from http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/13/nike-digital-marketing/
Lynch, C. (2012, June 11). Learn how ESPN tackles tech problems, fosters innovation. Retrieved from http://frontrow.espn.go.com/tag/espn-emerging-technology/
Perrin, J. (2012, July 23). How digital marketing is changing the sports industry. Retrieved from http://www.koozai.com/blog/branding/how-digital-marketing-is-changing-the-sports-industry/
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