The NBA lockout was obviously a hot topic in the sports world this season. With no games being played, rookie and veteran players alike had a lot more time on their hands to spend as they pleased. For rookie Blake Griffin, he chose to sign an endorsement deal with Red Bull Energy Drink—and have fun while doing it. The article I reviewed, titled “For Blake Griffin, Lockout -- and Short-Lived Ping-Pong Career -- Ends Just in Time,” discusses Griffin’s recent signing with Red Bull and provides a link to the promotional video of the product. The video, running just under three minutes in length, shows Griffin (sporting Clippers colors and a Red Bull sweatband) playing a ping-pong match against professional player Soo Yeon Lee. Although the whole idea of the basketball superstar ‘aspiring’ to become a professional ping-pong player has a sarcastic undertone, the benefits of this creative and humorous ad are far-reaching. Some may think it is risky to endorse an athlete in a sport that is currently undergoing lockout, but I believe in this case it was a smart move on Red Bull’s part. Who better to pick than a fan-favorite, Slam Dunk champion, and they successfully use Griffin’s popularity and charismatic personality to their advantage to promote the brand. This is also a smart business move on Griffin’s part. Not only is he making money for himself—and being likened to other great athletes who have been sponsored by Red Bull, including Reggie Bush and Rajon Rondo—but he is also helping his team, the Los Angeles Clippers, make money. Fans will be attracted by this humorous marketing video and be more enticed to watch Griffin play, increasing ticket sales for the Clippers. Anytime people see a Red Bull logo they will be reminded of the ad and will think to purchase tickets to Clippers games. The article also states that Red Bull “is now the official energy product of the Los Angeles Clippers,” so it is clear that this NBA franchise will see many sales benefits from selling Red Bull products at the arena. Although Griffin’s ping-pong career was short-lived, his signing with Red Bull will continue to bring in revenue for all that took part in the deal far into the future.
Many college football teams are finding themselves in difficult positions now that it is bowl season again. Virginia and Virginia Tech are two of the many ACC schools struggling to sell all of their allotted tickets. According to this article, Tech had only sold about 53% of their ticket allotment to the 2012 Sugar Bowl game and Virginia was expected to fall at least 4,000 tickets short of their allotment to the 2012 Chik-fil-A bowl. The problem with the decline in ticket sales is that the school and the ACC Conference are responsible for the unsold tickets. Tech was expected to receive its largest-ever bowl payout as a result from being in the bowl game. Due to the unsold tickets, Tech will not receive nearly as large payout as expected.
Virginia Tech’s reputation was on the line for this bowl game. Tech was selected to play in the game because of their reputation as having a large fan base that travels well. The school was expected to fill a lot of seats and a lot of hotel rooms, but found themselves failing. Head Coach Frank Beamer transformed himself into a salesman, pleading with students at halftime of a men’s basketball game to buy their bowl game tickets through the school.
The problem lies within the secondary ticket market. The secondary ticket market used to consist of people selling tickets on corners outside of stadiums. Now people can go online and buy better, cheaper tickets. StubHub listed more than 7,000 available tickets for the Sugar Bowl and 4,000 for the Chik-fil-A bowl. To fix this problem, Tech needed to implement some sort of incentive for students and fans to buy their tickets through the school. Why should students buy a random ticket in the nose-bleed section through Tech, when they could buy their ticket on Stubhub and pick their own seat? They needed some sort of program where if fans bought their ticket through the school, they got a discounted price on transportation to the game. While it is understandable that the ACC has rules about ticket allotments, it might be time for them to realize that secondary ticket markets are becoming the primary source of ticket sales. It is unfair to put so much financial burden on the schools when it is constantly getting harder for them to sell tickets. I feel a good solution would be to lower the ticket allotment to each school and put more tickets for sale on websites such as StubHub where they ultimately would make more of a profit.
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Review by Bekah Jarzombek in KIN 435 (section 1)
For the 2012 Bowl Championship Series, ACC schools were feeling the pressure to meet ticket sales numbers. The secondary ticket market was stealing fan’s business by providing lower ticket prices and convenience. Specifically, as of December 12, 2011, Virginia Tech had only sold 53% of the 17,500-ticket allotment for the Allstate Sugar Bowl on January 3, 2012. There was strong concern considering the game was less than a month away. Failure to sell tickets meant Virginia Tech and the ACC must pay for the unsold tickets. Less profit would be made off of the game. In desperation, Coach Beamer of Virginia Tech spoke at a men’s basketball game. He attempted to persuade students to buy their Sugar Bowl tickets from Virginia Tech. In addition, football players threw Mardi Gras beads into the crowd for extra motivation.
Other than the men’s’ basketball event, the article did not expand on ways Virginia Tech was attempting to fix the ticket problem. It seems the school and ACC should have recognized the problem earlier. With that said, resorting to Beamer’s begging session, three weeks before the game, was not an effective way to persuade students’ ticket decisions. The root of the problem is the Virginia Tech ticket prices are more expensive than companies such at StubHub. They can beg all they want, but a student is not going to buy a more expensive ticket if they know they can get it for a cheaper price. That doesn’t mean the fans lack passion for Virginia Tech. Their job is to go the game, and that is what they are doing…at a cheaper price.
The article that I read was a study on the relationship between promotion at baseball games and the attendance at those games. The article was submitted by Robert Aaron Browning. This article took four Ohio River Area baseball teams and study the effects of promotion as it related to attendance for these baseball teams.
Before the author conducted his own research with these teams he presents some research that helps to form a hypothesis for his research later. Early baseball research said that attendance to baseball games could be placed in four categories economics, demographics, game attractiveness, and other factors. However, later there were changes added to it such as, economics, average income and population. Not until recently did people realize that they could control one of the factors which was promotion, or pre-event marketing. The author noted that there had been a positive increase of 14% at games that offered such promotions at games. However, the biggest increase in attendance happened when teams offered bobble-heads, over “Baseball for a Buck” night by the New York Mets, or opening weekend giveaways by the L.A. Dodgers. Many baseball teams can be victim to “water down” promotions by offering too much price promotions (giving discounts on tickets, food, etc). The results concluded that every team had an increase in attendance whenever there was some sort of promotion. Non price promotion was the most successful because this category showed the most increase in attendance in all three organizations.
I was surprised when I read the results. I would have thought that since we are in such a bad economy people would have wanted discounted tickets, or food instead of entertainment promotions. Promotion is a crucial part of the sports industry right now because that is really what gets people to the game. On the whole people aren't really going to games as sport enthusiasts but more of an entertainment for the day. It is important for organizations to look at this data and try to use it to their advantage for attracting fans to the ball park. Honestly as a fan, I get really tired of seeing all the different promotions that just drag the game on. When I go to a game, I go to watch the sport and not to see all the ads, and other different promotions. However, I can see how many people like the promotions, especially if they have kids. If you take a kid to a baseball game it is going to be hard for them to just sit there and watch a game for two to three hours, so promotions kind of give them a change of something to do. I think it is important to use promotions to draw people to the game because thats obviously something thats getting them there, and they have to compete with people sitting at home and watching the game on their TVs.
