1. Introduction
With around 320 million citizens, the U.S. is the 3rd largest nation worldwide. This dimension is associated with a high diversity among the population and thus it is not surprising that many different sports became characteristic for this nation. Besides American football as the number one sport, there are for example Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, Golf or Ice-Hockey, which find deep interest among many people. This is the perfect fundament to create a large sport event which is most likely to find great interest among all classes of population. Since we do not want to address just a small group of people we decided to create an event, mixing various types of sports, which will serve the needs of all people interested in sport. In this context, the main idea is to create a sporting event, where students compete against professors and other staff of the university on a yearly basis.
Free space for exact rules and structure of the event. The introduction already says that we create an event mixing various kinds of sports, so it have to be more than 2. remember that we do not have 1, 2,... specific sports, but that they always change. but you can count examples for specific types of sports which will be included. text me after for gym!
Structure:
A selection process will take place a few weeks in advance of the main sport event. Students and Professors have the opportunity for registering to participate on the main sport event, which includes the two different sports, "brainsport" and soccer. Therefore the interested parties have to fill out a schedule which is located at the Student Union, lying roughly on the mid of the Fresno State Campus. The opportunity to register will last three weeks and afterwards all possible participants will get into two different pools of applicants, depending on which type of sport the individual has chosen. One individual is only allowed to participate at one sport, either soccer or brainsport. So nobody can register for both sports simultaneously. Now that every application is collected, a voluntary group of helpers will count the amount of registrations and will start the drawing of lots. 14 students and 9 professors will be randomly selected for the soccer event. The team of professors will receive additional 5 players from the Fresno State soccer team. Soccer will be played in a scaled down mode which means that each team has one goal keeper, six players on the field and seven substitute players. "Brainsport" involves only five players for each team. So further five students and further five teacher will get drawn out of the applicant pool. It is a quiz, where two different teams are competing against each other. The quiz provides 20 different questions from different category groups like nature, sports, science, politics, history and geography. Each question has five different answer possibilities, which are showed on three big screens, one in front of the student team, the second in front of the team of professors and the third in front of the crowd of spectators. Each group receives a buzzer and the individual who knows the answer at first can push the buzzer. .
At the beginning of the event there should be a opening speech, where students and professors are introducing themselves to the several visitors. The speech should include the elucidation of the whole event-procedure in order that the crowd is prepared for the event and has knowledge about several offers around the main event. Afterwards the
We decided to choose Fresno as location for our sporting event as this is the 5th largest city in California and has plenty of strengths and opportunities to offer. The following assignment reveals this potential, not only in financial regards, but also in terms of building unity and strengthen cohesion among all spectators, students and professors.
2. SWOT Analysis
A SWOT Analysis is "a careful analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization as well as the opportunities and threats in the marketplace or beyond" (Buch S. 35 Zitieren). Therefore, it is the perfect tool for us to investigate the potential of our event, as well as to become aware of any mistakes we have made during the planning process before we finally move on to the implementation it (The Implementation will be discussed in part 6 of the assignment).
Strengths
Visitors of the venue are one of the most important elements of every sporting event. They pay for tickets, create an environment of fun and are crucial for a memorable atmosphere. This directly is a strength of our event, since we already have a solid basis of visitors, who are most likely to attend. This basis includes Fresno State employees, as well as Fresno State students, their family and friends outside of the university, since they have a personal connection to the players on the field. This connection then will build unity and cohesion not only during the event, but also among all members of Fresno State in the long-run. As already stated, there will not be the exact same game and rules every year. Therefore, event managers have the possibility to adjust the kind of game being played and the according rules frequently (das muss auch irgendwo in der einleitung stehen unter rules and structure!!!) This flexible approach leaves a lot of space for change, which constitutes a great option to improve the event over the years if appropriately used.
Weaknesses
However, there are not only positive factors. Possible accidents may occur during the games, leaving students and teachers injured and not able to attend to work for some time. This weakness is tightly associated with the budgeting, since costs for participant insurances must be considered. Furthermore, part of the costs must be spent for security to ensure a safe and sound environment for all visitors in case some of the fans become violent. In addition to that there also have to be external health services present at the event, for whatever incidents might happen to players or spectators in case of riots.
Opportunities
As mentioned before, Fresno State employees, Fresno State students and their families already build a basis of visitors. One of the largest opportunities for the event is the potential of attracting many more people on top of that, since the general interest in sport is widespread in the whole Fresno area (This will be discussed in part 3 of the assignment). Another opportunity is the detection of sponsors for the university, because those will be easy to find if they see the success of the event and accordingly the potential to address a lot of people at the same time.
Threats
Big sport events like the games of the Fresno State Bulldogs football team do already exist in Fresno and are one of the biggest threats to our event, concerning competition. Some people may not have the time to attend to several different events or simply are bored when watching too much sport. Not only sport events endanger our idea, but also other big events, as for example concerts, operas or musicals. Especially older people or citizens, which cannot be addressed by marketing efforts may most likely shape their leisure time in other ways. However, those threats will not be a too big problem, since our event only takes place once a year and thus depicts a very special occasion compared to events that take place multiple times a year or even regularly throughout an entire season.
3. Target Markets
The target market for all marketing efforts consists of everyone who may principally be interested in attending our sport event. Besides of the concentration on Fresno State employees, Fresno State students and their families, the advertisement efforts will also address all the citizens in the Fresno area, who have no direct connection to the university. But not only permanent residents will be considered. Also, visitors from other cities and sports interested people in general will be included, since our sport event will be a great opportunity for them to experience parts of the culture and values Fresno State represents.
All in all we do not want to exclude anybody from our marketing efforts, since the event itself is very special and unique and thus has a great potential to entertain a very broad range of people.
4. Marketing Objectives
5. Marketing Strategies and Tactics
6. Implementation & Control
Without a smooth implementation, the best ideas are useless and without an excellent controlling of the financial success of the sports event, its long-term existence is unlikely. In the following, tactics for a frictionless implementation will be discussed in detail firtstly and afterwards ways for the efficient controlling.
Implementation
In order to implement the sporting event and to make reality out of the planning, one has to focus on several key points. Those are the choice of the best fitting venue, the budgeting of the event which goes hand in hand with the funding options, approvals and permits that have to be taken into account, the search for employees/ volunteers and the evaluation/minimization of risks.
Venue
The search for the best fitting venue is highly dependent on the choice of the aforementioned event. Besides this first step of the venue planning, several other steps have to be taken into consideration. First of all, the needs for the venue have to be figured out. In this part, one has to determine the needed capacity of the venue and the timeframe in which it is needed. Furthermore, the emergency-standards of the venue have to be taken into consideration, meaning for example: how accessible is the venue for emergency cars and how many different exits are available. Moreover, it has to be looked at how many restaurants, cafes and other eating and drinking possibilities are integrated in the venue.
Hand in hand with these preparations goes the actual renting price of the venue, which is a key aspect for the whole success of the event. Since the sport event of choice is organized and controlled by the university, it would be preferable in terms of costs to pick a university owned venue such as the the bulldog stadium, if however, it fits the above mentioned needs.
Budgeting
Independent from the kind of sport of the chosen venue, an accurate budgeting is always critical for the success of a sports event. The key points of a budget for sport events are the venue price, the employees needed for the event (consisting not only of the organization team and the stuff around the venue but also of officials, the team itself, medical stuff, referees, coaches and commentators), marketing instruments to make the event popular, equipment and insurance costs. The event's budget needs to be high enough to cover all these costs but is moreover a function of the expected income from ticket selling, sponsors and grant. Therefore the budget needs continual adjustments and control, to adapt to the ever changing circumstances.
Since the sporting event is organized by the university, finding volunteers and sponsors is going to be comparably simple; also a grant from authority could be possible. Volunteers can be formed by students, who may get credits for their work or some other form of non-monetary compensation. Since the university already has some sponsors from other sport events, the organizers can leverage pre-existing sponsoring structures. By offering those parties to sponsor our event, we also increase their public perception and reputation and thus mutually benefit.
Approvals and permits
One key element of the organization of the sport event is obtaining approvals and permits. Under these duties falls the approval of the event by the university in general, permits for the preparation and sale of food and licenses for e.g. liquor sales. Since the university would be the main contact for negotiations of this kind, organizers would have to apply for the approvals and permits from the California State University Fresno.
Evaluation/Minimization of risks
The list of possible risks for a sporting event is very long, ranging from injuries of any kind to insurances against fire. In order to assure for all these risks, the very first step is always their identification and analysis. Once this step is done, a risk management plan should be implemented, which covers the following aspects: security, the behavior and control of participants, parking, transportation, traffic control, safety and health. The following step should cover the financial risk. This kind of risk includes payments for possible injuries and also insurance premiums.
Controlling
The evaluation of the financial success of a sporting event is crucial in order to assure its long lasting existence. It helps the event organizer to calculate if the event's objectives were met and furthermore offers possibilities for improvement. Myhill and Phillips (2010) developed a six step model to post-evaluate a sporting event, which can be seen in Figure xy.
Figure xy - Myhill's and Phillips' six step model (2010)
Level 0 Statistics, scope, and volume; this level collects data such as the scope and volume of attendance, press coverage, website traffic, and other similar statistics.
Level 1 Reaction, satisfaction, and planned action; this level gathers information on what stakeholders thought of the planning process, marketing efforts, facilities, and so forth.
Level 2 Learning evaluation measures the extent to which principles, facts, techniques, skills, and professional contacts have been acquired during the meeting. Similar types of learning take place at a sporting event and can be applied in a similar manner.
Level 3 Application measures the extent to which skills, knowledge, and professional contacts, learned at the meeting, were applied in the job or in the personal life of attendees.
Level 4 Business impacts monitors organizational improvement of business measures such as sales, cost savings, work output, and quality changes. Within the context of sport event management, business impacts would refer to sponsor impacts.
Level 5 Return on investment (ROI) for the various stakeholders of the meeting, calculated as the ratio of benefits to costs.
Source: Own representation based on: https://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/postevent-communication-an-integral-component-to-overall-event-success
As an extension to those controlling mechanisms, organizers should also consider staff evaluations, post-budgeting evaluation, management evaluation and attendance evaluation.
7. Summary and Conclusion