The Challenge Of The Australian Football League

The Cleveland Indians fans have earned the reputation of being extremely dedicated and loyal to their team. According to Rosko (2016), Cleveland Indians’ fan base was ranked in the top 250 in the world. It is no secret that the baseball team has a devoted following, but it does beg the question who are these fans? The followers of the Cleveland Indians’ brand will be segmented into groups based on their demographics and geo-demographics. For the Cleveland Indians, this will entail categorizing consumers into groups based on age, gender, family size, and region.

The Australian Football League (AFL) is a multi-million dollar sports industry consisting of 18 teams that are spread over five states of Australia. In this section, two data sets containing the weight and height of all the players in the 18 AFL teams was analysed to determine whether using normal distribution to describe them is suitable.

The AFL (Australian Football League) is the highest-level professional competition in the sport of Australian Rules Football. The league consists of 18 teams. The AFL season consists of a pre-season competition which consists of 3 rounds, followed by a 23 round regular season. The top eight teams then play off in a four round finals series, finishing in the AFL Grand Final. AFL is one of Australia’s favourite sports to both participate in and watch. Research conducted in 2000, showed that there were roughly 443,000 registered players in Australian, ranking it the third highest sport (Australian Government, 2008). For the 2014 grand final game between the Sydney Swan and Hawthorn there were approximately 2,813,000 people watching

Not only do the “major leagues” participate in the marketing process but so do the smaller, “minor leagues” do as well. Every athletic organization, big or small, needs sports marketing for its survival. Sports marketing is needed because it helps the athletic organizations obtain profit, which is needed for survival.

Professional sports has become one of the most popular industries in the world today. The media spends billions of dollars on advertisements and teams spend millions of dollars on professional athletes all for one reason, the fans. The fans ticket sales and merchandise purchases are what keeps all the sport teams around and prevents professional athletes from losing their jobs. There are three types of fans in the sports world, average fans, fanatics, and fair-weather fans.

3. A vehicle for social change, where homeless and low socioeconomic issues and unemployment are attentioned.

The author sets the stage of his article by talking about the upcoming Super Bowl. He uses distinct adjectives to create imagery that in turn sets the mood for the rest of the writing. Keating goes on to describe how America is the only country to play football and tells that only the best two teams out of thirty-two play in this Super Bowl for the title of “world champion” (1). Football is described as played on a ninety-one meter field involving “two large teams of large men wearing large amounts of protective padding ...while their opponents attempt to knock them to the ground with maximum force” (Keating 1). While the actual playing time is only about eleven minutes, the game usually lasts as long as three hours. It is usually taken up by many advertising commercials and replays. The author explains that the players begin playing at an early age and work their way up. Women are only seen as cheerleaders and dancers in this masculine dominated sport. In his conclusion, Keating demonstrates how businesses get involved by spending millions of dollars in their hopes to show their latest brands.

Although, the case study of Manchester United gives us a good example of a brand’s ability to globalize, it does not give us a clear picture into how a league as a whole accomplishes these same goals. To get this clear picture of a successful global soccer league we can review a case study by Matthew Holt that examines the UEFA Champions League and its ability to succeed. The UEFA Champions League(UCL) was established after the UEFA European cup started to see more revenue increases based on the increase in television and digital technologies. (Holt, 2007) The goal of the UCL was to increase revenue through a newly structured European club soccer league. The first way that UCL accomplished this was through centralized marketing. This was accomplished through selling the television rights as the UCL brand rather than allowing the clubs to individually sell the rights to the games. This increased the value of the television rights and in turn increased the profitability of the clubs. (Holt, 2007) UEFA sold this UCL brand

Marketing plans and strategies are an important part of almost any business today. One of the biggest industries marketing plans have benefited and changed in a number of different ways is the sports industry. The development of the sports marketing industry has led companies to invest millions of dollars to have their product associated with specific teams, players, and sporting events attempting to connect with consumer and create profit for both parties involved. The money involved in sports marketing calls for these sponsorships and endorsement decisions to be made both strategically and confidently. After researching the sports industry from a business perspective the importance of marketing decisions is

Economic theory introduces us to four different types of markets: perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly. Professional sports teams operate in an environment that is different than the typical business structure. The goal of this paper is to look at this industry, in particular the NFL, in an economics context and gain an understanding of the market structure of this unique industry. To do this I will discuss a brief history of the National Football League in the U.S. and how this organization is structured. I will also discuss typical market structures and type of

This article continues to explain that once a sports marketer creates a product and advertises it on a small scale, “Sports marketers get ahead by gradually representing bigger, more important and more prestigious sports teams, companies, associations, and athletes.” In other words, sports marketers need to have a plan of action to promote their product on a larger scale over time. Also, sports marketers spend much of their planning on the aspect of promotion. Mihai verifies that the category of promotion serves to prove that the product is desirable through advertising, sales, sponsorship and public relations. If a sports marketer follows these planning steps, his/her work will lead to a successful product with a large margin of profit.

In this assignment I will be exploring the ways in which Internal and external factors have an impact on the core revenues of Clubs and how clubs themselves can potentially help put the factors in their favour. Topics such as Fans and their behaviour and Player conduct on and off the pitch will be explored. Things that can occur which clubs have little or no power over – such as a major political shift – which can affect a clubs income will also be covered.

Sports' marketing is a comparatively new field and dimension within the broad concept of marketing. It is continuously evolving and changing today as society combats the free market to decide the legal and ethical limitations of business today. It is significant to note that this discipline within marketing is not clearly defined. Sports today use corporate sponsorships and television money in order to contend and pay for top quality athletes. Those companies use teams, leagues, colleges, and individuals to make a distinction between their products in a very aggressive business environment. What makes up sports marketing to one person could be considered selling out to another. The business world keeps pushing to find a competitive advantage and the sports world has in general welcomed the money offered (Weikel, n.d.).

Even though team owners sometimes acknowledge that the subsidies they receive are related to the scarcity of franchises, owners ' demands for public assistance is more often pressured by financial issues that have changed the financial side of professional sports. For example, player salaries have increased rapidly as a result of athletes earning the right to sell their services to the highest bidders (free agency). Normally, these high bids come from teams in the largest markets (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.). Since the leagues protect the power of teams in these markets are able to refuse the creation of new franchises or the movement of existing teams into their market areas, the owners of these coveted franchises amass large revenue bases and can thus afford the best players. To offset the advantages of large market teams, owners in smaller regions seek public subsidies that will permit them to earn revenues similar to those of the teams in the biggest markets. (Pitts, Statlor 2007)

The report will discuss the affiliation between UEFA and marketing specialists Television Event and Media Marketing (TEAM). The writer will show that this association was fundamental to the emergence of the UCL and discuss the strategies developed by TEAM to ensure the competition was seen as a credible and visible brand.