Paper Topics

Currently, I have several ideas for my report, and each of my ideas revolves around sports. In addition to being a fun and entertaining, sports are a multi-billion dollar per year industry. I plan on using marketing knowledge and customer insights in order to explore various opportunities and possibilities for future growth and expansion in sports.

Handball is one sport I am interested in exploring. Those who play handball refer to it as “the perfect game.” It is perhaps one of the easiest sports to get equipment for- all you really need is a ball and a wall. The rules of handball are simple, and the game itself is fun, exciting, and challenging. So why isn’t handball more popular across the United States? What can the United States Handball Association (USHA) do to spread handball to more people? How can other sports leagues be a positive example for handball? Thinking about all of the sports programs across the nation that are overcrowded or turning people away from participation in a sports program makes me think that there is room in the American sports market for another great sport. I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to play sports, but sometimes overcrowding or under-funding prevents that from happening. Handball is probably one of the cheapest sports to fund (no expensive equipment unlike football, or baseball), and the nature of the game allows for an open roster that can accommodate multiple players at all skill levels (unlike basketball or volleyball which requires a set roster of only 5-15 players). So how can handball and USHA use these insights and other sports examples to grow the game of handball and generate new loyal customers?

Sports are not only popular in the United States, but they are popular worldwide. Nearly every nation seems to have a fascination or obsession with sports. Yet despite the popularity of sports, there are very few global sports events or leagues. Some domestic leagues enjoy tremendous popularity outside of the U.S., but still have trouble expanding and growing, while some leagues have trouble appealing to foreign markets and gaining fans outside of their own countries. How can sports leagues use positive examples of globalization for their own benefit? How should leagues like the NFL, NBA, and MLB approach the idea of international expansion? What insights can sports leagues gain from the history of sports globalization? How can less mainstream international sports gain global popularity? How should “foreign sports” such as cricket, rugby, and even soccer approach the idea of expanding into the U.S. markets?

Sports have always been my passion. As a dual major in marketing and sport management, I am constantly seeing connections between the sports world and the business world. While studying sport management, I have been exposed to interesting issues in the sports world that could be explored using marketing and customer insight techniques.

Sports “customers” are unique from other customers. The customers of a sport are the fans. Fans have distinct characteristics of high-loyalty toward and high-enjoyment of the product. Also, as in the case of exploring the growth of handball, the customer could actually be the participant in the sport itself. Either way, the “customers” of sports are not always buying our product directly, and they do not switch products or try new products very easily. Because of these distinctions of the sports customer from normal customers, sports have several advantages and disadvantages over typical products when marketing to the general public.

There are several articles on the topics of sports, marketing, and globalization, but here are just a few:

“Sport Sponsorship in a Global Age” by Amis and Cornwell
“Global Sport and Global Mass Media” by George Sage
“What is the Sports Product and Who Buys it? The Marketing of Professional Sports Leagues” by Daniel Mason

Each of these explores sports and marketing while the first two specifically explore new issues in sports related to globalization.