Sports Marketing And Its Applications: Why Communicate Through Sport?

Passion for sport is constantly growing, both in terms of numbers of fans,
and numbers of active participants. At times of big international sports events
such as the Olympics or the World Cup, it is easy to see how the number of
companies that decide to allocate their advertising budgets to sports
sponsorship or other sport-related activities increases. Advertising
agencies
themselves often pin their strategies on a sense of sporting spirit in order to
enhance the appeal of the message conveyed.

RTR believes that the strength of sports marketing lies precisely in its
capacity to leverage the passion that consumers nurture towards sport.
Sponsorship is not merely a question of appearing with one’s logo on a
competitor’s shirt or on the advertising hoardings at an event. Above all, it

means projecting the specific values of the sport onto the company and its
brands and ensuring that this association registers with the target group in
question.

Sport is an extremely flexible tool, as it allows businesses and advertising
agencies to communicate with different types of target and to put together
modular campaigns that can be shaped according to the specific requirements of
the sponsor. It is also an effective medium because it permits actions to be
measured on a case-by-case basis and to transform the activity into promotional
campaigns whose purpose is to leave their mark on different types of public, off
the field of play as well as on it.

Yet this is not all: sport is one of the few tools which, as well as ensuring

repeatability and continuity, offers the opportunity to engage in co-marketing,
B2B and public relations ventures, the relevance of which is stressed by all
advertising agencies.

The tradition of sports marketing shows how, until now, throughout the entire
sponsorship world, two different models have been applied. The first is the
classic model, in which the sponsor purchases a package that has already been
devised and is only involved in the final stages of the event. Another model,
which is certainly more current, is the one in which the sponsor plays an active
role in the creation of the event, taking part in the planning stages and
fashioning it around its own goals and values. The latter model, if it is
coordinated effectively by a competent advertising agency, is without doubt the
best, as it allows event-moments to be crafted that are rich in meaning for the
consumer.

The prevailing trend, then, is to move away from the “Buy” model