Sustainable Strategies for Hosting Mega Events like the Olympics

Introduction

Hosting mega events like Olympics can be a costly endeavour for countries as it involves not just the short term hosting of a particular event, but also a year round maintenance of stadiums and grounds (Giraud, 2014). The Russian town of Sochi was rendered a ghost town post hosting the winter Olympics of 2014, after which the town couldn’t endure the costs of operation anymore (AFP, 2013). Hence, there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that all the public resources do not get sapped in hosting big events, especially when seeking marketing dissertation help, and also support the sustainability of the smaller, permanent sporting bodies in the region.

The purpose of this report is to reiterate on the importance of small scale events and funding them, in the context of funding the “Brixton High School Football Festival” which is being organised by the organisation Brixton Football & Fun Club (or, ‘the club’).

2. Mission Statement

The report will look into the potential marketing strategies which could be held in order to attract funding from both public and private bodies for the club. The report will examine the methods that can be used to promote and publicise the event and look at which marketing tools can be used to achieve the same. The report will look at primarily three forms of marketing techniques, which are social media marketing, poster marketing and and television marketing. The report will support a series of strategies which can be used in order to make a successful marketing strategy.

3. Analysis of Target Audience

Tang et al (2010) elucidate that the reason individuals watch sporting events is because they identify with the sportsmen and want to support the ones who possess the same identity as them. Milne and McDonald (1999) discover something similar, whereby the conclude that once identification is correlated between the sportsman and the viewer, the viewer gets emotionally invested in the sport and personally commits to it. Hence, the target audience for this report will be mostly citizens of Brixton, across all ages and genders. The levels of testosterone is directly correlated to the feeling of dominance in men, and studies have discovered that watching sports leads to increased levels of testosterone (Dabbs et al, 1998). Hence, the target audience will specifically constitute men. Another possibly viable audience for the tournament could be children, because in a study done in 2014, it was discovered that 77% of the children who were interviewed were fans of the said sport. Hence, there is a large demographic of sports fans which could be found in children, across all genders and the event needs to be marketed as such (Miller and Washington, 2014).

4. Analysis of Competition

Presently, the tournament is competing most steeply with the Olympic Games which is to be held in the same city, this year. The cost of hosting the Olympics is a significant financial exercise. Although the exact figures aren’t known, in 2019 the budget for hosting the Olympics (which was postponed) was 12.6 billion dollars, where 75 per cent of the money would be coming from public funding (Ayesh, 2019).

Sources of funding for sports clubs come from sources like memberships, merchandise income, grants, sponsorships from bodies like the National Lottery and other awarding bodies (leoisaac.com). The club city being the site for the Olympics means funds from official awarding bodies like the National Lottery has been redirected towards the Olympics related jobs lie upkeep and maintenance of stadiums, hiring and training of staff, beautification of infrastructure and so on. Promotional Tools

The promotional tools which will be used in this marketing strategy will be making use of social media marketing, television coverage and posters.

Posters

Posters will be designed to create a memorable image in the eyes of the viewer, which will draw them to the idea of attending the event. Posters are advantageous as they involve a one-time investment and will remain in the assigned place for a long time (billetto.co.uk). The purpose of doing this is to insinuate strong images that will be embedded in the memory of people and encourage them to buy tickets (Bradbury and O’Boyle, 2017). This can be done by incorporating posters in the publicity process, whereby people can associate the event with images. According to 7 P’s of marketing, place is important and some of the places where the posters can be stuck are as follows (medium.com):

Schools

Gymnasiums

Parks

Playing Grounds

Television Marketing

The following steps need to be undertaken in order to develop an effective TV campaign:

According to research, ITV, BBC Two and Channel 4 are the most popular channels in the UK, the channel should also contact local cable channels to book advertising spots (yougov.co.uk).

Agencies like Guerrilla Scope or TV Advertising should be contacted, this will ensure they conduct their own marketing research before running ads (tvadvertising.co.uk; guerillascope.ie).

The player profile needs to be emphasised in order to gain more viewership, the free nature of the event needs to be emphasised in order to encourage people to apply as low prices affect consumer behaviour in events (Mihai, 2013; Kang and Lee, 2011).

Social Media Marketing

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will be used by the event to market the event, the following steps will be undertaken:

A daily budget needs to be set by bidding on ads on Facebook, the ad will depend on the audience and the impression (en-gb.facebook.com). According to research, ads need to be targeted most to age groups between 36 to 49 years of age (statista.com).

Facebook posts are a free and easy way to advertise events and the club’s page needs to be updated in order to create more visibility.

Twitter alerts need to be scheduled by the usage of services of Hootsuite which plans out tweets in advance for events, tweets should be scheduled for when registration for tickets open and when places are filling up fast (ticketbooth.com).

Twitter handles of the players need to be used every time the event is tweeted.

In Twitter, the usage of hashtag can considerably improve the visibility of the event in the eyes of potential attendees and they could use the same for tagging pictures at the sporting event themselves (Blazska et al, 2012). The following page gives some examples of social media marketing posts that can be followed.

Instagram stories need to be used in order to create events of immediate concern, like when ticket registration opens, Instagram stories can be used in order to draw attention to the event opening of the ticket registration.

Instagram stories can be used to tag the players from their profiles, which is also a method through which the players can be incorporated as celebrities. According to a report for The Medium, the influence of celebrity endorsements is enormous in promoting contemporary events and play a significant role in the influencing of public opinion (LaFreniere, 2018).

Since this is a community event and the budget for this event is not big, there is a possibility that there would be a paucity of funds in the planning of this event. Hence, the event needs to promote its players as celebrities in order to make the most of its social media strategies.

Miscellaneous Methods of Marketing

According to 7 P’s, product is an important part of the promotion process, for this souvenirs are an excellent way to increase revenue by the sporting bodies for their respective clubs, the licensed sports merchandise industry has been steadily growing in the past decade and is expected to grow further (Statista, 2021).

Another important aspect is the processes. The processes which will deliver the final event to the audience needs to be effectively delivered and consist of the sequence of actions which take place before the sporting event. In order to make the event successful, this event needs to have a working schedule and recruit staff for promotional and fundraising functions, in order to be able to attract adequate number of people to the tournament (Ratten, 2016).

Marketing Schedule

The marketing schedule of the event encompasses a four month schedule of the event and lays down the steps that the club can take in order to successfully promote its events.

References

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Statista. 2021. Licensed sports merchandise market value worldwide 2018-2023 | Statista. [online] Available at: [Accessed 30 March 2021].

Dublin.info. 2021. Dublin.info - Dublin Sports. [online] Available at: [Accessed 30 March 2021].

Medium. 2021. 6 Reasons To Sell Event Tickets Online.. [online] Available at: [Accessed 30 March 2021].

Lee, Y.H. and Kang, J.H., 2011. Designing ticket price strategies for professional sports teams using conjoint analysis. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.

Scolere, L., Pruchniewska, U. and Duffy, B.E., 2018. Constructing the platform-specific self-brand: The labor of social media promotion. Social Media+ Society, 4(3), p.2056305118784768.

Blaszka, M., Burch, L.M., Frederick, E.L., Clavio, G. and Walsh, P., 2012. # WorldSeries: An empirical examination of a Twitter hashtag during a major sporting event. International Journal of Sport Communication, 5(4), pp.435-453.

Paris, C.M., Lee, W. and Seery, P., 2010. The role of social media in promoting special events: acceptance of Facebook ‘events’ (pp. 531-541).

da Silva, E.C. and Las Casas, A.L., 2020. Key Elements of Sports Marketing Activities for Sports Events. International Journal of Business Administration, 11(1).

Bradbury, T. and O'Boyle, I. eds., 2017. Understanding sport management: international perspectives. Taylor & Francis.

RATTEN, V., 2009. The Dynamics of Sport Marketing. Suggestions for Mar.

Yougov.co.uk. 2021. The most popular TV channel among | Media | YouGov Ratings. [online] Available at: [Accessed 7 April 2021].

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Statista. 2021. Share of global sports fans by age 2019 | Statista. [online] Available at: [Accessed 7 April 2021].

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