From ESPN.com
Review by Ethan Miller in SRM 435 (section 2)
The NFL is one of the biggest organizations in America; along with have one of the most loyal fan bases to go along with it. However, are those fans actually loyal to the NFL or loyal to the NFL team themselves? This article answers that question, by proving that fans are more loyal to the team itself rather than the organization that created them.
Throughout the years the NFL has grown to become almost unrecognizable compared to the league that existed 50 years ago. The game on the field is part of the changes that have gone on, but what has changed the most is the fans’ experience. Now more than ever the fan experience at a NFL game is one of the greatest in all of sports. This has helped them develop the loyal and vast fan base that they’ve become known for. This same fan base is quick to turn though as shown by the banner that they posted at Mile High stadium of Joe Flacco. The NFL posted to banners next to each other, one of the Denver Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning and the other of the Baltimore Ravens’ quarterback Joe Flacco. The NFL said that they were simply promoting the opening night of the season and there was no harm meant. Needless to say, the whole city of Denver was outraged and began defacing some of the NFL promotions as a form of protest against the advertisements.
Was this the right move by the NFL? It’s tough to tell. The NFL Kickoff game is one of the most important games during the season. In 2010, the Kickoff game brought in 27.485 million viewers to the game. Other than the Superbowl, this is the largest viewership the NFL has during the season. Another factor that went into the banner placement was the fact that ever since 2004 the Kickoff game has been played at the defending Superbowl champion’s stadium. However, due to scheduling conflicts, the NFL was forced to schedule the Kickoff game in Denver and forced the Baltimore Ravens to be the away team. This put the NFL in a huge bind because they were forced to advertise the Kickoff game as the big event that it is for the league, but were advertising the Broncos’ opposing QB on their stadium. (Not to mention it was the same QB that knocked them out of the playoffs the previous year).
The intention of the banner and smaller ads was to promote the NFL as a whole. They were trying to promote the brand and organization. However, the NFL failed to realize that by doing this they were alienating the Denver fans. Ultimately this promotion actually hurt the NFL because the people they were advertising to (the city of Denver) were the people who hated the ad the most. If anything this made the city of Denver lose brand loyalty to the NFL, and instead be loyal to the Denver Broncos instead.This article relates to this class because the NFL is always trying to expand their brand and fan base. They often are very successful in including the fans and increasing the fan experience, but when they misfire they misfire bad and causes a city to cause uproar like in Denver.
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Review by Chase Warren in SRM 435 (section 2)
Opening kickoff for the NFL season holds almost as much prestige as Super Bowl Sunday Kickoff. This years season opener featured the defending Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens visiting the Denver Broncos at Sports Authority at Mile High. In the article “Joe Flacco understands fans’ ire”, Jeff Legwold expresses to us the way that Joe Flacco felt about the fact that he, along with Peyton Manning, would be featured on large banners outside of Sports Authority Field at Mile High. Obviously, Denver fans were not happy with the fact that Flacco’s banner was hanging on their stadium alongside the beloved Manning. When Flacco heard that this was going to be happening he was very surprised and actually agreed with the Denver fans. He exclaimed, “ I think it’s all deserved, I don’t know if it’s deserved towards me, I happen to be the guy they put up there. But I don’t think here or anybody in our city would be too happy if we had somebody else from a different team on our stadium. I wouldn’t expect anything different than all of the people in Denver to be pretty upset by it.” Again, Flacco understood the fans dismay, and he made a good point that any other city in the league would feel the exact same way if that was happening in their stadium.
From a marketing standpoint, there is no one to blame besides the NFL itself. It was not the Denver Broncos or the Baltimore Ravens that were to blame for all of this controversy. The “NFL Kickoff Special” is nothing but an NFL promotion. The NFL decided that they would feature both teams because they were coming from a neutral standpoint, trying to promote the game to all NFL fans, rather than just one team. NFL vice president Brian McCarthy called it a “celebration” of the NFL season, not just the Denver Bronco’s season. This makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint. It is much important to appeal to the entire league as a whole. Fans that have a neutral standpoint on the game do not want to see any favoritism towards a certain team during the first game of the 2013 NFL season. As stated before, it is a “celebration” of a new season for everyone, not a promotion for the Denver Broncos. This article is relevant to the course because it touches on how it is important to target the right audience in order to maximize fan potential. This article was very interesting and was a perfect example of sports marketing in a certain industry. There is a lot more to simple marketing strategies than what shows on the surface.
From Athletic Business
Analysis by Cameron McKinley in SRM 435 (section 1)
Football has been a long standing tradition of the college experience, however recent trends may suggest a falling off of the place gameday holds in the hearts of many students. This article by Paul Steinbach entitled “Schools Strategize to Increase Football Attendance” spoke towards the increasing difficulty with which college football marketers are trying to engage their respective student populations in order to increase involvement and attendance. Not only does the article go into depth about the course of action taken by many schools, but also details the reasoning behind the alarming trends schools are starting to see. This trend is not solely based on the smaller schools not traditionally known as powerhouses. The blue-bloods of college football, such as Alabama and Michigan, nor teams celebrating recent success they have long since been without, such as South Carolina and Georgia, are not exempt from having difficulty attracting fans and convincing them to stay for the entirety of the game. In all, there is a two percent decrease in student attendance while schools seek out solutions to reverse this trend.
In the article, the main two conferences detailed about their recent lack of student involvement for football games are the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and the Big 10, perhaps the two biggest conferences in terms of fan base and money-making power. SEC school Alabama, which has won three out of the past four NCAA National Titles and is this generation’s closest thing to a college football dynasty, has seen the percentage of student tickets used hover at about 70 percent. At the University of Georgia, another SEC school, only approximately two thirds of its student tickets are being used on a per game basis. At South Carolina, a team that has enjoyed back-to-back 11 win seasons and an Eastern Division Championship, there is a new trend of a mass student exodus at halftime. For a conference that boasts about its football fan bases, these trends can be unsettling for schools across the nation as they seek out ways to combat them before they take their toll on the programs.
Schools across the country are employing a multitude of new ways to get students more involved in the gameday atmosphere. For example, Michigan State has added a two million dollar wi-fi system that will run throughout the stadium in an attempt to keep students connected while they are in the game. Maryland has upgraded their ticketing operations to allow students to access games via their smartphone rather than traditional ticket printouts. Both of these examples shows that teams no longer want to compete with the technology craze of this generation and are accepting it as a way to lure fans into the games.As covered in our class, higher attendance rates can lead to more money for the respective program. This is not just due to an increase in ticket revenue, as many student tickets are priced at a point where they will do little to increase overall income on gameday. However, many of these teams are ones that play on television week in and week out. These bigger names in college football are ones with which sponsors can easily get their names out on a national stage. But they are more willing to spend their money in sponsorship deals with teams that are able to fill their stadium and have their names be seen by the highest amount of people. Without being able to fill their stadiums and create an atmosphere that sponsors will want to be a part of, teams may see their revenues fall if they are not able to reverse these gameday trends.
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Analysis by Dejor Simmons in SRM 435 (section 1)
Student’s involvement in games is a big problem in collegiate sports. Most students are either leaving the game early or arriving late which is a problem in keeping the home team at an advantage when it comes to the twelve man. Even big schools like the University of Alabama who won three out of the last four national championships, has seen ticket sales hover between 68.4 and 71.8 making student apathy one of the biggest concerns facing the school’s football association. University of Georgia officials are heated with the turnout of the student section that usually sat 17,910 people only averaged 11,800. Now officials are opening more than 2,000 seats to recent graduates who will be willing to pay $40 per ticket compared to the $5 student price. South Carolina students almost made it a weekly tradition to leave games at halftime, pressuring Coach Steve Spurrier to publicly plead students to act like they're part of a winning program and stay to the end of the Gamecocks' home finale. Making USC officials wonder if it’s the heavy party scene in Colombia or the social media that make students leave maybe even the heat. So a solution to the weather they offered free bottled water on the hot games. There are many different things that collegiate officials are doing to make the students attendance increase and making and keeping them satisfied during and before games. Michigan is raising student prices by 23 percent and switching the policy for student seating to first come first serve in hopes of contesting a student no-show rate last season of 25 percent and a late-arrival rate of 50 percent. The University of Minnesota are dedicating parking lots close to the stadium for tailgating since studies shown that students want places to gather before the game. Also, a year after installing a new sound system and two new video boards in its stadium, Michigan State invested in a stadium wide Wi-Fi system to allow greater fan interaction. And lastly, Maryland has a new ticket system where students can get there tickets via email instead of the hard process of printing out tickets which allow greater ease of access.
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